Animation 101: How to Teach Students Adobe Flash

The Adobe Creative Suite of graphic design, video editing and web development applications allows users to create multimedia content. As students master the basics of Adobe Flash, an animation and multimedia tool within the collection, they not only become producers of engaging content while completing their coursework, they also strengthen their technology credentials in preparation for college or the workforce.

For this lesson, students will hone their media production skills by creating an animated public park scene that transitions from day to night and identifies local flora, constellations and celestial bodies.

Begin by having students draw a sky-blue rectangle the size of the Adobe Flash stage. The rectangle should occupy its own timeline layer and have no stroke. All drawn objects have two parts: a fill and a stroke. The stroke is the outline. If students want clouds in the sky, they should place the clouds on a separate timeline layer. Objects in the same layer get animated as one object. If the clouds are animated to move across the stage, so, too, will the sky.

The second layer should be filled with the elements that are found in a park — the ground itself, trees, plants and benches, for example. Have students research the identities of the indigenous plants that would be found in their park and label their renditions accordingly using Flash’s text tool.

Next, help students animate their rectangles to transition from blue to black with a 120-frame “motion tween.” A motion tween is Flash’s way of creating animations without doing frame-by-frame drawings evidenced in traditional animations, such as animated flipbooks. Motion tweens allow the designer to have two points on an animation timeline to modify or transform an object while Flash makes all of the animation adjustments in between the points (giving the process its name).

Extend the park layer so its length matches that of the sky layer (the one with the blue rectangle). Then, challenge students to draw the sun on its own layer and animate it to set behind the park when they believe sunset would fall along the animation timeline. Similarly, have students add the moon to rise on its own layer when they believe it would rise as the sky transitions from dusk to night.

The scene also should include a twinkling star, which must be created using the software’s “Movie Clip” symbol. Movie clips are self-contained objects that can be animated and manipulated independently from a project’s main timeline. To do this, instruct students to click Insert Menu on the application toolbar, select “New Symbol” and then “Movie Clip Symbol Type.” On this independent timeline, have students draw a small yellow star and animate it to fade to “alpha transparency zero” for 10 frames. Alpha transparency refers to making the star transparent or invisible. On frame 10, make sure there is a keyframe (a point along the animation timeline inserted by the user to allow objects to be placed on the stage). Open the Properties Palette, select color effect, then Alpha, and move the slider to zero to achieve this effect.

Students should then return to the main timeline by clicking the clapperboard icon identified as “Scene One” and create a final layer. In this layer, students should add a keyframe at the moment when they think the first star would appear in the night sky. They should then open the “Library” icon and drag in an animated star. From there, they can add keyframes along the timeline and drag in more stars. They must be careful, however, not to add more than three stars in a single keyframe as they build the final layer. Otherwise, the stars will blink in synchronization; for this project, the stars should twinkle independently of one another.

Finally, challenge students to add authentic constellations and other celestial bodies that they’ve studied in their middle school and high school science classes.

Test the animation by running “Test Movie” from the software’s Control menu. To stop the animation from looping, so that viewers can enjoy nighttime stargazing, add a “stop action” command on the last keyframe of the main timeline. Do this by typing “stop();” in the Action Panel.

Once the animation work is completed, have students share their animations. Begin a class discussion in which students can ask the designer about specific approaches and techniques used in the development of his or her animation. This exercise also allows students to demonstrate their engineering and design processes.

Subject Area

This project was developed to teach science and technology skills to students in grades six through 12, but it could be adapted to a variety of subjects and grade levels.

Grading Rubric

Students’ work should be evaluated based on the following rubric. Grades are given according to the number of categories in which students achieve a “4” rating. Descriptions include examples of the content either missing or provided by students to achieve a particular rating in a particular category.