- Getting Started
- About Animation
- Understanding the Project File
- Animating Position
- Changing the Pacing and Timing
- Animating Transparency
- Animating Filters
- Animating Transformations
- Changing the Path of the Motion
- Swapping Tween Targets
- Creating Nested Animations
- Easing
- Frame-by-Frame Animation
- Animating 3D Motion
- Testing Your Movie
- Review Questions
- Review Answers
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Changing the Pacing and Timing
You can change the duration of the entire tween span or change the timing of the animation by clicking and dragging keyframes on the Timeline.
Changing the animation duration
If you want the animation to proceed at a slower pace (and thus take up a much longer period of time), you need to lengthen the entire tween span between the beginning and end keyframes. If you want to shorten the animation, you need to decrease the tween span. Lengthen or shorten a motion tween by dragging the ends on the Timeline.
Move your mouse cursor close to the end of the tween span in the city layer.
Your cursor changes to a double-headed arrow, indicating that you can lengthen or shorten the tween span.
Click and drag the end of the tween span back toward frame 60.
Your motion tween shortens to 60 frames, reducing the time it takes the cityscape to move.
Move your mouse cursor close to the beginning of the tween span (at frame 1).
Click and drag the beginning of the frame span forward to frame 10.
Your motion tween begins at an earlier time, so it now plays only from frame 10 to frame 60.
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Adding frames
You’ll want the last keyframe of your motion tween to hold for the remainder of the animation. Add frames by Shift-dragging the end of a tween span.
Move your mouse cursor close to the end of the tween span.
Hold down the Shift key, and click and drag the end of the tween span forward to frame 190.
The last keyframe in the motion tween remains at frame 60, but Flash adds frames to frame 190.
Moving keyframes
If you want to change the pacing of an animation, you can select individual keyframes, then click and drag the keyframes to new positions.
Click the keyframe at frame 60.
The keyframe at frame 60 is selected. A tiny box appears next to your mouse cursor, indicating that you can move the keyframe.
Click and drag the keyframe to frame 40.
The last keyframe in the motion tween moves to frame 40, so the motion of the cityscape proceeds quicker.
Span-Based vs. Frame-Based Selections
By default, Flash does not use span-based selection, which means you can select individual keyframes within a motion tween. However, if you prefer to click on a motion tween and have the entire span (the beginning and end keyframes, and all the frames in between) be selected, you can enable Span Based Selection from the Options menu on the upper-right corner of the Timeline (or you can Shift-click to select the entire span).
With Span Based Selection enabled, you can click anywhere within the motion tween to select it, and move the whole animation backward or forward along the Timeline as a single unit.
If you want to select individual keyframes while Span Based Selection is enabled, hold down the Command/Ctrl key and click a keyframe.