It seems rather nonsensical to make animations from animations. Why wouldn’t you simply create the animation in a liner fashion and avoid all the worry surrounding synchronization and playback?

Well, it is any consolation; most good sites today are rife with multiple layers or animation. Even the most seemingly benign elements can be movies or animated graphic symbols sitting dormant, waiting for some cue to play.

You need to understand this foundation of development to be able to push you Flash movies beyond neat shapes bouncing around the board a morphing back and forth. Today, the cutting-edge designs use embedded animations that blend with their otherwise static surroundings, creating entire environments that function and move.

With that basic premise, you can start to grapple with more complex endeavors. But first, you must understand how these special elements behave.

Understanding Conventional Animation Methods

Under normal circumstances, animations run in a linear fashion, picking up individual symbols and elements, and moving them around to create the visual changes the eye sees. As the playback moves across the individual frames, the content through each layer is displayed.

This progression enables a great deal of creativity, but truly inspiring Flash results often are a well-choreographed soup of multiple symbols, objects, and shapes. In some cases, it simply might be too extreme a task to coordinate all the tiny interacting elements on the stage. Diving down, even for just a moment, into another layer-a universe within universe-offers an added dimension beyond the traditional frame-by-frame playback.

Placing a Graphic Symbol into a Sequence

Until now, you might have seen graphic symbols as individual objects representing a single shape or bitmap. Graphic symbols, however, also can be sequences-multiple frames and multiple layers.

For example, if you have a sequence for you movie that requires several parts-a vector based lens flare, for example-you can wind up placing several elements (each on its own layer) that will change over time, including changes in alpha transparency, color changes, and scaling adjustments.

But for the sake of the main movie itself, you also might want change the entire collage. Perhaps you want to scale all the items at once. As independent pieces, this could wind up being, at best, difficult. At worst, it might be impossible if any of the pieces already has a motion tween associated with it.

Using an animated graphic, you can double up on your motion effects and manage the entire group simultaneously. Although the individual pieces function inside the animated graphic symbol, you also can tween the entire symbol itself, moving it across the stage as the individual elements move, too.

You can convert a sequence of frames to an animated graphic by simply cutting them and pasting them into the timeline of a graphic symbol. Select the frames you want to use in the main movie timeline, and then select Edit, Cut Frames from the main menu (or right-click in Windows, Command-click on the Mac to access the contextual menu).

Now create a new symbol (Insert, New Symbol) and select Graphic in the Symbol Properties dialog box. A blank canvas comes up, along with a new, blank timeline. Select the first frame in this new timeline; then select Edit, Paste Frames forms the main menu or form the context menu.

All frames and layers from the main menu timeline will be added to the new symbol. Double-click an empty part of the canvas, or click the Scene button at the top left of the timeline to return to the main movie.

The animated graphic symbol now appears in the movie Library with the same icon as any other graphic symbol. The only discernible differences are the Play and Stop buttons that appear in the preview screen of the Library when the animation is selected.

Applying and Synchronizing Animated Graphic Symbols

When an animation becomes an animated graphic symbol, you are, in effect, compressing all the layers of that symbol into one master layer for the primary movie. All the layers are still in place in the symbol itself, but the group now functions as one unit on the main timeline.

So, to use an animated graphic symbol, you need only one layer. But you do need to have the same number of frames allocated in the main movie that the animation uses in the symbol.

To apply the symbol, drag it from the Library onto the stage. Flash usually allocates only one frame for the symbol, unless a series of empty frames exists. With the symbol occupying only one frame, you’ll notice that only the first frame in that symbol appears during playback. Two frames allocated for the symbol let you play the first two frames in the sequence and so on until the total numbers of frames in the symbol equals the number of frames in the main movie timeline.

If you allocate more than that number, Flash simply starts playing the movie all over again. Because symbols occupy frames in the timeline, they are subject to adjustment and coordination with other symbols, and even commands on the timeline. If your movie is paused halfway through the playback of an animated symbol, the playback of that symbol itself is paused as well. As the symbol plays, other objects also can interact with it, creating unique sequences from the same animation.

Changing a Sequence to a Movie Symbol

The process to convert a sequence to a movie symbol is an almost identical to the animated graphic symbol conversion. Start a new symbol by selecting Insert, New Symbol from the main menu, and then select Movie Clip from the Symbol Properties dialog box. Cut the sequence of frames you want to use from the main timeline; then apply them in the timeline of the movie clip symbol.

To apply the movie back on the main stage, you must drag it from the Library and place it into one frame. Unlike the animated graphic symbol, you don’t need to allocate the same number of frames in the master timeline that the movie clip uses.

Also, unlike an animated graphic symbol, the movie clip will not play back in the authoring environment. To view it in action, you must either test the movie in the Flash player or publish and run the SWF.

Differences Between Animated Graphics and Movie Symbols

The main difference between a movie clip symbol and an animated graphic symbol is fairly straightforward: Animated graphics need the timeline to run through completely. Movie symbols run independently of the timeline.

Animated graphic symbols play only when frames are allocated to them. That means they appear as still images with only one frame, and they can run in several loops if multiple amounts of the requisite frame numbers are supplied. It also means you can carefully line up other symbols to interact on the timeline with your animated graphic symbols.

Movie clip symbols, conversely, need only one frame to play back. Unless they are told otherwise in the movie clip timeline, they will loop indefinitely. This makes movie clips ideal for small, repeating symbols on the stage, which will run fairly independently and run several cycles over time. You don’t need to allocate dozens of frames just to get repeating cycles.

That doesn’t mean you can’t choreograph motion with a movie, either. It just isn’t as definitive for playbacks. You wind up synchronizing acetones intuitively instead of being able to line up things frame by frame.

The difference boils down to independence. Remembering that movie clip symbols also can respond to commands and scripts internal, giving you another layer of interactivity outside the main movie.

Modifying the Instance Properties

The advantage in applying movie clip symbols and animated graphic symbols is roughly the same as with any other symbol: You can apply them several times over the length of a main movie without any serious penalty in terms of file size.

But you can also modify the properties of each instance. You already read that you can transform, color, move, and rotate these objects. You also can apply these affects over several frames using motion tween.

Animated graphic symbol instances also can be modified using the Instance panel. You can select how the symbol will play back using one of these three options:

Loop-Lets you play an animation over and over again as long as frames are allocated for the playback in the main timeline.

Play Once-Runs the animation through to the end (provided at least the minimum number of frames exist), and then the symbol disappears from the stage.

Single Frame-Freezes the animation and displays it as a graphic. You can designate on which frame you want to freeze the animation by entering that frame number in the First box.