Flash Explained

In this easy Flash 8 Pro lesson, I will show you how to make a cool 3-D logo in a few easy steps. You will see:

• How to make primary vector shapes from static text field,
• How to apply a gradient fill to all the letters evenly,
• How to make create a 3-D effect with your text by distorting it and putting it into perspective,
• How to apply a drop shadow effect to the logo to add more depth to it and more.

You can see the final result below — the finished 3-D logo.

Read more...

In this easy ActionScript lesson I will explain to you how to create professional, clean and polished buttons. No design tools will be used in this tutorial. Just pure ActionScript code! Please note that this is a lesson made for Flash 8 pro. You will learn how to:

• Create new movie clips from scratch,
• Create nested movie clips with ActionScript too,
• Create stunning gradients and other graphics via ActionScript,
• Import and embed fonts into Flash, understand how they work and add to the size of your SWF movie,
• Create dynamic text fields from scratch and format them using the myriad properties available in ActionScript,
• Import, create and apply filter effects to movie clips and text fields, and more.

Below are a few examples of the many buttons, menus and designs that you can create via ActionScript.

Read more...

In this easy lesson made for Flash 8 professional I will explain to you how to create a cool website menu, with gel buttons, that are encased (inset) in a metal background. You will, among other things, learn the following Flash techniques:

• How to use the linear gradient fill option to create a realistic metal background for your website menu,
• How to create great looking gel buttons, with a nice gradient fill, a white shine and overlay to make them look more realistic,
• How to apply the Bevel filter available in Flash 8 professional to have that great inset effect that will make the buttons seem encased in the metal menu background,
• How to easily create multiple menu buttons from a single button symbol, and more.

You can see the live Flash example of the menu that you are going to learn to make below.

Read more...

In this thoroughly explained, detailed lesson made for Flash 8, I will show you how to create a really cool, complete Flash website navigation and loading system. The menu that you will make has a built-in animated preloader. You will learn:

• How to design a menu with a built-in preloader (a numerical one),
• How to create a preloader animation behind the menu buttons,
• How to create stylish menu buttons,
• How to make ActionScript code that will enable the preloading of external Flash (SWF) content
• How to make a main preloader for the menu system and much more.

This Flash menu/preloader system works seamlessly in the following browsers on a Windows machine: Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 6 and Opera 9. I have yet to test it on a Mac, but I suppose it will work perfectly there too.

Below is an example of the Flash website system that you are going to create. Try clicking the buttons to see what you’ll learn to make!

Read more...

In this easy Flash lesson I will show you how to use the coordinate system in Flash. You will learn the following:

• The directions in the Flash coordinate system,
• The difference between the way the coordinate system works in the Flash authoring environment and the way it is used by ActionScript,
• The main coordinate system and the movie clip based ones and more.

Read more…

In this easy lesson made for Flash 8 pro, I will teach you how to make a cool shiny orb using many of the available filters and blend modes that Flash 8 pro makes available. You will learn:

• How to combine various effects stacked one upon another on different layers,
• How to use the many Flash filters on movie clips,
• How to apply blend modes to movie clip symbols to achieve particular results,
• How to use radial gradient fills for background color and shiny light creation and much more!

Below is the live Flash example of the orb that you are going to make in this tutorial. You will also see some variations that can be applied to the orb once the basic form is finished.

NOTE: The SWF file containing the orb shown below has a size of only 503 bytes!!! Had this nice graphic been created in Photoshop, it would weigh at least 8 KB (in JPEG format) to look nice. Flash rules! Not that I don’t like Photoshop, quite the contrary :-).

Read more...

In one of my previous tutorials, I have explained how to make a cool sharp/blur effect by applying filters to symbols on the stage and making transitions via motion tweens. This time, I will show you how to apply the blur filter to objects in Flash through some simple ActionScript code. You will learn the following:

• How to import an image in Flash,
• How to convert a bitmap image into a symbol,
• How to import the blur filter through a single ActionScript command,
• How to define the parameters of the blur filter,
• How to remove the blur filter dynamically and more.

Below is the live Flash example of what you are going to create in this tutorial. Move your mouse over the blurred buttons to see how they sharpen once the cursor comes into contact with them.

Read more...

In this really easy lesson, I will explain to you how to create ice text in Flash 8 Pro. This effect is possible to obtain thanks to the blending filters. You will learn the following techniques:

• How to draw a borderless rectangle,
• How to select all the right options for a text field so that it will look good and be ready to have blending effects applied to it,
• How to tweak the options of the Glow filter in Flash so that you can have the real ice-text effect in your SWF movies.

See the example of this effect below.

Read more...

In this detailed lesson for Flash 8 professional I will show you how to create one of this nifty, sharp-looking pixel buttons. You will use exclusively the design tools and effects available in Flash 8 professional to create the pixel button. You will learn the following Flash techniques:

• How to use the Rectangle tool to create a rounded button background,
• How to use a pixel font in Flash,
• How to apply a sharp and precisely outlined shadow to the button label,
• How to create a border around the button by using a blending filter and more.

Below is a live Flash example of the pixel buttons that you are going to learn to create in this lesson.

Read more...

In this easy lesson made for Flash 8 and ActionScript 2.0, I will show you how to create a really nice easing slider, for a minimalistic vertical menu. In this tutorial, you will learn:

• How to create minimalistic menu buttons,
• How to quickly duplicate the buttons,
• How to write a really simple but effective ActionScript function that will tell Flash what to do when any of the buttons has been clicked,
• How to write an easing equation (simple, no hard math here :)) so that the slider will move with an ever-decreasing speed towards the clicked button and some more tricks.

You can see the example of the menu that you are building in this lesson below — try clicking on the buttons!

Read more...