STEP 01 manifestival in DEPTH

In creating the ManiFestival movie, the first step was to break out the movie into objects. In this relatively simple example, I look at what needs to move and change programmatically.

creating objects

The ManiFestival movie has five things that need to be controlled by ActionScript:

Dancer

Line

Logo

Subway

Tunnel

There are also three buttons: About ManiFestival, About the Films, and Featured Animation (see figure 08:10). These buttons control each of the five objects via Rollover and Rollout scripts.

Figure 08:10.

I need to make each of the objects into movie clips so I can talk to them via ActionScript. We don't need to go into great detail on each of these, but let's have a look at each one and what it contains.

the dancer object

The Dancer movie clip consists of a series of video images of a pirouette (see figure 08:11). The first part of the sequence labeled "start" has three frames spaced at three-frame intervals showing the first quarter turn of the pirouette. The second part of the sequence is labeled "one" and shows the next half-turn of the pirouette in three-frame intervals. The next sequence, labeled "two," is the last quarter- turn of the sequence and again is in three-frame intervals.

Figure 08:11.

Following this sequence is another sequence called "spin," consisting of the first half of the pirouette but with only one image per frame, making it much faster than the earlier sequence. The last sequence is called "spin2" and is the last half of this faster pirouette, again at one-frame intervals.

the line object

The Line object is a movie clip containing a vertical line, a sequence of numbers alongside it, and a sound clip (see figure 08:12). As the movie clip plays, the line moves horizontally to the left. The numbers change and follow the line horizontally. A small ambient sound clip plays. This movie clip does not contain any labels. There are Stop actions at the beginning and end of the Timeline.

Figure 08:12.

the logo object

The Logo object is a movie clip that contains the word ManiFestival (see figure 08:13). The word moves across the screen from right to left and fades out to 0 alpha transparency.

Figure 08:13.

There are 41 frames in this movie clip. One label, called Start, is in this clip. There is a stop action at the end of the Timeline.