Set Up Frame 1
Choose Window>Animation to open the Animation palette. Frame 1 of the animation is displayed in that palette. Go to the Layers palette and click in the Visibility field of the following layers, turning on their Eye icons, to make the artwork on these layers visible on Frame 1 of the animation. All the other traffic light layers should be off.
Left_Red (This turns the traffic light on the left to red A.) Mid_Red (This turns the traffic light in the middle to red B.) Rt_Green (This turns the traffic light on the right to green C.) Dark_Blinkers (Don't be confused by the on/off terminology here. When this layer is on, the blinkers on the left side of the truck look dark D.) Add a Time Delay
Click the Time Delay menu under Frame 1 and choose 0.5 seconds to set the approximate timing of Frame 1 and all subsequent frames.
Add Frames 2 through 4
The next three frames are copies of Frame 1. Click the Duplicate Animation Frame button at the bottom of the Animation palette three times. Or hold down the Option/Alt key on your keyboard while clicking and dragging Frame 1 to the right and repeat twice more so you have a total of four frames.
Create Frame 5
On Frame 5, the traffic light on the right changes to yellow. Create Frame 5 by selecting Frame 4 and clicking the Duplicate Animation Frame button at the bottom of the Animation palette. Now change the artwork on Frame 5 by going to the Layers palette, turning on the Rt_Yellow layer, and turning off the Rt_Green layer.
Add Frames 6 through 8
The next three frames are copies of Frame 5. With Frame 5 selected, click the Duplicate Animation Frame button three times. You should have a total of eight frames.
Create Frame 9
On Frame 9, the traffic light on the left changes to green, the traffic light in the middle changes to green, and the traffic light on the right changes to red. Create Frame 9 by selecting Frame 8 and clicking the Duplicate Animation Frame button. Change the artwork on Frame 9 by doing the following in the Layers palette:
Turn off the Left_Red layer Turn on the Left_Green layer Turn off the Mid_Red layer Turn on the Mid_Green layer Turn off the Rt_Yellow layer Turn on the Rt_Red layer Add Frames 10 through 26
The next 17 frames are copies of Frame 9. With Frame 9 selected, click the Duplicate Animation Frame button 17 times. You have a total of 26 frames.
Create Frame 27
You're almost done. On Frame 27, the traffic light on the left changes to yellow, and the middle traffic light changes to yellow. The light on the right stays red. Create Frame 27 by selecting Frame 26 and clicking the Duplicate Animation Frame button. Change the artwork on Frame 27 by doing the following in the Layers palette:
Turn off the Left_Green layer Turn on the Left_Yellow layer Turn off the Mid_Green layer Turn on the Mid_Yellow layer Add Frames 28 through 30
The next three frames are copies of Frame 27. With Frame 27 selected, click the Duplicate Animation Frame button three times. You now have 30 frames.
Create Frame 31
On Frame 31, the traffic light on the left changes to red, the middle traffic light changes to red, and the traffic light on the right changes to green. Select Frame 30 and click the Duplicate Animation Frame button. Change the artwork on Frame 31 by doing the following in the Layers palette:
Turn off the Left_Yellow layer Turn on the Left_Red layer Turn off the Mid_Yellow layer Turn on the Mid_Red layer Turn off the Rt_Red layer Turn on the Rt_Green layer Add Frames 32 through 36
The next five frames are copies of Frame 31. With Frame 31 selected, click the Duplicate Animation Frame button five times. You should have a total of 36 frames. You're done creating frames.
Preview in ImageReady
Preview what you've made so far by clicking the Play arrow at the bottom of the Animation palette. The animation plays in ImageReady's document window. Click the Stop button that replaces the Play arrow to pause the animation.
Add the Blinking Truck Lights
Click the diagonal lines at the bottom right of the Animation palette and stretch the palette out so you can see as many frames as possible A. Click on Frame 2. Then hold the Command/Ctrl key as you click on every other frame (Frames 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36). In the Layers palette, click in the Visibility field of the Dark_Blinkers layer to turn the visibility of that layer off B, so that the colored lights on the back of the truck are visible on the selected frames. Preview again to see these lights blink on and off throughout the animation.
Turn on the Streetlight
Select any frame in the animation. In the Layers palette, turn on the visibility of the Streetlight layer A. Then click on the Streetlight layer to select it and click the Unify Visibility button in the Layers palette B. In the prompt that appears, click Match. This causes the Streetlight layer to become visible on every frame of the animation. The symbol you now see on the Streetlight layer indicates that the change you made to the visibility of this layer has been applied to all frames in the animation.
Preview in a Web Browser
Click the Preview in Web Browser icon in the toolbox to play the animation in your default Web browser. The traffic lights will change color synchronistically and the lights on the truck blink on and off, adding a touch of realism to the scene. If your animation isn't working as expected, debug it by clicking on each frame in the Animation palette and matching layer visibility to the Frame Summary on the facing page.
Optimize and Save
Click the Optimized tab in your document window. Wait a second while the program works through all the frames to generate an optimized preview. At this point you would normally optimize each part of the scene by selecting each user slice and one of the auto slices separately and choosing optimization settings in the Optimize palette (Window>Optimize). However, we had already optimized the existing slices, and the slices you drew took their optimization settings from our underlying slices. Select the slices you drew in the scene and notice the settings in the Optimize palette. Each of them was optimized as a GIF with 64 colors, No Dither, and a Lossy setting of 17 to keep the file size down while maintaining the appearance of the image. Transparency is checked because it is a prerequisite for Redundant Pixel Removal.
Click the arrow on either of the information fields at the bottom of the document window and choose Optimized Information to see the file size of the optimized animated scene. Depending on how you drew your slices, it's about 77K---. Choose File>Save Optimized As, leave Format/Save as Type set to Images Only, and click Save. Choose File>Save to save the original with your changes.
TIP All Frames Optimize the Same. When you optimize an animation (a single file or a slice to which you've applied animation frames), all frames in the animation use the same optimization settings. With the Optimized tab selected in the document window, turn off slice visibility and click through the frames in the Animation palette to check the appearance of the optimized image on each frame.
|
INSIGHT Redundant Pixel Removal. Redundant Pixel Removal minimizes animation file size by making transparent all pixels in a frame that have not changed since the preceding frame. For Redundant Pixel Removal to work, Transparency must be checked in the Optimize palette. Redundant Pixel Removal is on by default in the Optimize Animation dialog box (Animation side arrow>Optimize Animation).
|
INSIGHT Frame Summary. Here's a summary of layer visibility on each animation frame (in addition to the Streetlight, Sky, and Background layers which are always on). Frame | Left_ Red LayerRt_ Red LayerOFF |
---|
|
|