Flash MX 2004 Games : Art to ActionScript

Chapter 3: Simple cut-out animation
Most of the script simply tells the playback head to move to another label. The only code that is
a little more complicated is for the loop back for the walks; in this code the keyboard is tested and if
the arrow keys are not down then the playback jumps to the ‘StopLeft’ or ‘StopRight’ dependent
on the current direction. Now that the animation is all prepared we need to place this inside a
symbol. Open the project ‘Examples/Chapter03.FatCatSprite.fla’. In this project the animations
from the earlier project have all been pasted into a symbol called ‘Cat’. To paste the frames, simply
select them all in the timeline and choose ‘Copy Frames’ from the context menu. Then move to
the new location and choose ‘Paste Frames’ from the context menu.
By pressing the left or right arrow keys the cat will now walk either left or right, turning at the
edges of the screen. See if you can work out how the code works; it is very simple and after you
have completed Section 3 of this book you will definitely understand exactly how it is done. But
that is for a later chapter.
Summary
In this chapter we looked at how to create interesting and dynamic animation that is both quick
to produce and small in file size. We looked at creating this using motion tweening and using
keyframes. We looked at how to enhance a cut-out animation using additional drawn frames and
how setting the properties for a ‘graphic’ can control the playback of these. Finally we looked at
connecting several animation loops together so we can put a character under user control. In the
next chapter we will look into how we can create animations using computer animation packages
and import these into Flash.
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