Use Flash color morphing techniques to create dazzling virtual sunrises.
Morphing, or transforming the shape or color, of an object is a technique that is used in professional video game design. When an object such as an alien spaceship explodes, morphing techniques can be used to transform the object into a ball of flames. The expansion of a balloon or the flattening of a tire are two more examples where morphing can reduce the work needed to make animations. With Flash, shape and color morphing is made easy with its built-in tweening function. This function includes automated interpolation, which reduces the number of drawings needed for morphing.
Instructions
1. Start the Flash program. Click "Flash File (ActionScript 3.0)" from the splash window to create a new file for your Flash animation project.
2. Click the "Designer" option from the Workspace menu within the Window menu to display the Flash drawing tools and color swatch panels. Click "Timeline" in the Window menu to display the timeline panel.
3. Press the "O" key on your keyboard to activate the Flash Oval tool. Position your mouse cursor over the stage and click and drag your mouse to draw an oval. Click a color in the color swatch panel to change the color of the oval.
4. Press and release the "." (period) key repeatedly to move to Frame 50 on the timeline. Click in Frame 50, right-mouse and select "Insert Keyframe" on the context menu.
5. Click in Frame 49. Click on a different color in the color swatch panel to change the color of the oval again (the color to which it will morph).
6. Click in any frame between 2 and 49, then right-mouse and select "Create Shape Tween" from the context menu.
7. Click "Test Movie" from the Control menu to play the color morphing Flash movie. Observe that the color of the oval changes in a gradual or color gradient type fashion from the initial color of the oval (at Frame 1) to the color selected for Frame 50.
Tags: color oval, color morphing, color swatch, change color, change color oval