The advent of computers has simplified the tedious task of making animation for the movie. Earlier, for every new frame, the animator had to hand-draw the same image in a slightly different position. Although, this non-automated, frame-by-frame animation is still very useful in certain situations, but computer-aided, quick, automated animation procedure is now a preferred technique.

Macromedia Flash is a vector based graphics animation program that gives you the power to create complex animations with reliable ease. The success of Flash comes from its ambidextrous nature. It is an authoring tool as well as a file format. It is ingrained with important features as keyframe interpolation, motion paths, animated masking, shape morphing, and onion skinning. The root cause of Flash’s popularity is the use of vector-based graphics, which can zoom in and out and occupy less file space. To squeeze more information into the animation and to make its flow smoother, fluid-like, Flash’s timeline option is the appropriate choice. It not only fixes the frame rate, higher frame rate is better frame rate, but also synchronizes sound with the animation. An added bonus in Flash, are its keyframe animation support and tweening option. Both are an animator’s greatest time and energy savers. Keyframes are points in the animation where notable events occur. Tweening is an automatic process in which Flash creates the animation between different keyframes. With the foundations being laid, we can now proceed with the making of animation for movie.

In this simple exercise, we will take an image and learn how to create an animation by manipulating the image one frame at a time.

1. Click File>Import to bring the bitmap image into Flash. A bitmap image is one, in which the information is stored as color pixels on a grid.
2. Select the image and then go to Modify>Trace Bitmap and click Ok to convert the bitmap image into a vector graphics, in which the image is stored as curves and lines.
3. To transform the image into a symbol so that Flash can treat it as an object, select the image and go to Modify>Group. The appearance of a blue square around the image will indicate that it is an object.
4. In the next step, you should place the keyframe in the first frame. In the timeline, then click on frame 20. Click on Insert>Frame. This will create a time span for an animation from the first keyframe to the new frame.
5. To create a series of keyframes with minor variations in the image, click on the frames and put them one by one. Go to Insert>Keyframe (F6). This will put new image in the adjoining keyframe.
6. On the stage, select the image and drag it a little to the right. Now select the same keyframe in the timeline and hit F6 to insert a new keyframe. Repeat the process to fill the range from 1 to 20 on the timeline.
7. To view the movie go to Control>Play
8. The final step is to go to File>Export Movie, give the animation a title, click save and the Flash movie has been created.

The Crest Theatre is located at 1013 K Street in downtown Sacramento, and is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. It has three screens, and can be rented for private screenings as well as other events. Call (916) 442-5189 for more information, including show times and upcoming events.