Hour 9. Using Shape Tweens to Morph

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• How to make shape tweens

• What alternatives to shape tweening are available

• How to apply shape hints for more control

There are several ways to keep a Flash movie small and running swiftly. Recycling symbols from the Library and using motion tweening are two of the best ways. Unfortunately, the shape tween, as you're about to learn, is one of the least efficient features in Flash because it causes file size will grow. However, shape tweening is pretty cool looking! There's no other way to get the "morph" effect in Flash. So when appropriate, it's perfectly acceptable to use shape tweens.

A morph is a kind of animation that naturally changes one shape to another. Morph is a general term, but it's the closest common term that describes how Flash's shape tween works.