Section 7.5. What s Next?

7.5. What's Next?

As you can see, Flash provides a wide array of animation tools and techniques for you to use. Making the most of Flash often comes down to choosing the right tool for the job.

Before moving on, practice with some of the skills you've learned in this chapter. Try to create some interesting shape tweens, morphing words into drawings and drawings into words. You'll probably need to use shape hints for more complex images, but the review may help develop your tweening skills. Try a hand-drawn animation and see if the Onion Skin feature, perhaps in concert with the Edit Multiple Frames option, helps you perfect the final sequence.

You will likely find yourself using masks more often than you think, so brush up on their use. Don't think of masks strictly as an animation technique. They can be useful in animations and as transitions, but they are also useful in experimental art and even in more static application interfaces. Try creating something new with a scriptable mask, and adding alpha transparency to the effect.

Finally, take a moment to review the previous in-depth looks at ActionScriptnot only in this chapter, but in previous chapters as well. Remember that the sidebars in this book are not meant to be casual supplemental references.

Rather, they are meant to be isolated explorations that have been separated from the main text to allow a smoother flow of the step-by-step projects. You'll be using a lot more ActionScript from here on out, so this extra effort will serve you well.

In the next chapter, you'll learn how to work with sound. You'll see:

• How to import audio files for use in the timeline

• How to make basic edits to embedded sound files

• How to encode sounds for use when loading them externally

• How to use components to control external sounds

• How to write your own sound control scripts when component use is not preferred