Flash Explained

Learn Flash easily.

Wishing you all the best

December 31st, 2008 by Luka

Happy New Year! Wishing you lots of love, health and money in 2009!

Luka Maras

Flash CS3 animation basics: Animating effects

December 9th, 2008 by Luka


In this easy lesson, you will see how to animate effects in Flash. You’ll learn how to animate a filter and create a glowing effect and more along the way.

Take a peek at what you are going to learn to create below:


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Flash CS3 animation basics: Shape tween

November 21st, 2008 by Luka


After learning how to make a motion tween in Flash CS3, it’s time to see how a shape tween is made.You will see and learn:

  • How to animate a drawn line,
  • How to animate a shape and morph it into something different,
  • You will also learn some really simple drawing and shape manipulation techniques along the way.

The first simple shape tween that you are going to learn to create is shown right below. The second one will follow right after it, in this same lesson.

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Making the ultimate dynamic image gallery in Flash 8 – part 1 of 2

November 20th, 2008 by Luka


In this Flash 8 lesson explained in extreme detail, I will teach you how to make a powerful image gallery. Before proceeding, please note that this lesson is made for intermediate and advanced Flash users — the ActionScript code behind this image gallery is nearly 250 lines long. This image gallery will have the following characteristics:
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Coming soon

November 18th, 2008 by Luka

Hello everybody,

I am back in Europe. My ISP sucks so you’ll have to wait a little bit. But, here is a little tease of the tutorials that I am going to create and post soon:

  • Shape tweens in Flash CS3 explained (how to animate outlines, fills, colors)
  • How to animate cool effects like blurring, glowing etc.
  • How to create a powerful, dynamic image gallery

Stay tuned!

A brief wait & new Flash CS3 tutorials

November 10th, 2008 by Luka

Hi everyone,

This is a flashexplained.com/ update: I am currently moving from Africa back to Europe. This being said, I won’t be able to reply to your comments and questions until somewehere after November 15th, once I settle down. I have so much things to do – moving from one continent to another is no small thing.

Also, there will be just one or two more tutorials for Flash 8, and after that, everything will be made freshly for Flash CS3. Expect new tutorials during the second half of November. In the meantime, enjoy the Flash tutorials and keep on learning.

Luka Maras

Flash CS3 animation basics: Motion tween

November 7th, 2008 by Luka


This lesson will be the first in a series where all the animation techniques in Flash CS3 will be explained in detail. Motion tween animation is one of the most widely used in Flash, so it makes sense to begin with it. You are going to learn:

  • How to draw a basketball using the great drawing tools available,
  • How to create a movieclip symbol, which is a must for any motion tween animation,
  • How to create keyframes,
  • How to create easing effect for better realism and more.

You can see the example of the animation you are going to create below. It is the classic example: an animated, bouncing ball.


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Glowing neon playback control buttons

November 4th, 2008 by Luka

In this easy lesson made for Flash 8 professional I will show you how to create a set of cool, neon glow playback control buttons easily. No other applications will be used to create these buttons, because Flash has so much power on its own! You will see:

  • How to use the basic shapes to create the ones you need,
  • How to use the great blending filters in Flash 8 pro,
  • How to combine multiple filters and objects stacked upon one another, and some more.

You can see the example of the sleek buttons below.


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Sleek green sphere mathematical preloader

November 3rd, 2008 by Luka

In this easy, detailed Flash 8 pro lesson I will show you how to make a sleek green sphere preloader for your website. In this lesson, you will learn:

  • How to create a sphere with a realistic depth effect,
  • How to use the great filters in Flash 8 pro to achieve a realistic sphere,
  • How to use transparency combined with radial gradient fills in Flash,
  • How to create a beveled ring around your preloader,
  • How to create a dynamic text field with pixel fonts and extra effects added to it,
  • How to load an external SWF and more.

Below is an example of how your preloader will look like at the end of this lesson. This is a simulation of course, no real preloading is happening in the example.

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ActionScript drop-down menu – part 1 of 3

November 1st, 2008 by Luka

In this easy tutorial made for Flash 8 I will show you how to create a set of cool drop-down menus for your Flash website. You will see and learn:

  • How to create a generic menu button and prepare it for dynamic use,
  • How to use a loop to create the main horizontal menu bar,
  • How to dynamically assign labels to buttons in a snap,
  • How to change the color of your menu with just a couple of lines of ActionScript code,
  • How to create a drop-down menu for each main link and make it interactive and much more!

You can see the live Flash example of the menu that you are going to create in this tutorial below. The contents of the website are dummy contents, of course, made just for this tutorial.


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