animating in flash

[andreasaspenberg]

i am in the process of turning sets into animated gifs. do anybody have any pointers to how i can do that well. i will keep working on my own but it would really help if i get some tips.

[reseph]

What file type(s) are you trying to make into a gif?

[Tru]

Flash can be tricky to use if you're not familiar with its unique quirks. Photoshop would probably be easier if you can get your hands on that. If you do have Photoshop, this video should be helpful to you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXW2vlNu5Rs

If not...well, here's a quick rundown of making a GIF in Flash. First, your GIF is going to be the default resolution (550 x 400, I believe) unless you change that manually. You can do that by going to Modify > Document. Also in that menu is way to tweak the FPS, which controls how fast the GIF will animate. 12 is the default, and indicates that it will cycle through 12 pictures each second, which is probably too fast if you're doing a slide-show. The minimum is 1, so if you want each picture to stay on screen for more than a second at a time, you'll need each picture to be displayed for more than one frame. More on that later.

Now, you can bring in pictures that you've saved by going to File > Import > Import to Stage. This will place the picture on the screen for you to move, resize, whatever. This will be your first frame. Look at the timeline at the top (to the right of where it says "Layer 1" there should be a white bar split into small white rectangles with numbers over some of them; these are your frames). If you've imported your first picture, you'll see the first rectangle is gray and has a solid dot in it. To add your next frame with a different picture, you'll want to click the frame right next to it and hit F6 (or right click and select "Insert Keyframe"). You'll see another gray rectangle with a dot in it because you just duplicated the first frame. Now, if you wanted that first picture to be displayed for more than one frame, that's great, you can move on to the next frame, and the next, inserting keyframes for however many frames you want your first picture to be displayed. When you get to the point where you want the new picture to show up, hit F6 to insert the keyframe as normal, but this time delete the picture on the stage and import a new one. Again, insert more keyframes to lengthen the duration or add new pictures until you're done.

When you're done adding all your pictures, go to File > Export > Export Movie, select "Animated GIF" from the drop-down box, and save it. A new dialog box will pop up with some information about your movie, in case you wanted to change the dimensions or resolution, but you shouldn't have to. Do make sure that Animation is set to 0 to make sure that your GIF never stops looping, and click OK. That should do it.