Flash 101 (part 3): Bouncing Around - Curves In All The Right Places
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Next up, shape tweening. Open up a new Flash movie and use the Pen tool to draw a random series of curves - you should end up with a mess of lines and curves, which might look something like this.



Now click on frame #30, and insert a new keyframe. Delete the shape you just created, and create a new one, again using the Pen tool. Your new shape might look something like this:



Now that you have two separate shapes, you can procced to tween them together. Click the first keyframe, and sellect "Shape" as the tweening type in the Frame pop-up. Flash will fill the intermediate frames with a light green tint, and a solid arrow - this indicates a shape tween.



When you play the animation clip back, your first shape will slowly morph into the second shape - like this:



Yes, it serves no artistic value - but it looks cool, nevertheless. And you can also alter the colour of the shape as the transition takes place - simply stroke/fill one or both shapes with a different colour and line style.

Note, however, that shape tweening will not work on text blocks and symbols.

This article copyright Melonfire 2000. All rights reserved.

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