Flash Layers and Libraries:
"The Moral of the Story"

Project: “ The Moral of the Story”- Layers and Libraries in Flash

Overview: Students will be using their newfound Flash skills to create a short animation in which a “Moral” of a story is demonstrated, using actual photographs and photographic cutouts for animation subjects.

Getting Started: Create a "lastname_moral" folder in your Flash folder on the network. You will be saving all of your files to this folder.

Video Tutorials Needed for This Project:

How to Proceed:

  1. First, think of the moral that you would like to describe. Anything school appropriate would be fine. (IF YOUR MORAL IS NOT APPROPRIATE, YOU WILL RECEIVE A ZERO!) If you don’t like any that you can think of, make some up. Possible morals from the past:
    • “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow”
    • “Don’t Make Fun of Santa Claus”
    • “Never Stand Under a Monkey”
    • “Superman Always Wins”
    • “Don’t Mess with the Deathstar”
    • "Never Date a Ninja"
    • "Don't Buy Your Prom Dress From the Back of a Van"
  2. Decide the layout of your animation, what is going to move when and where.
  3. Go on the internet and find AT LEAST FIVE different photographs or graphics that you can use for your Moral of the Story. Save them to your lastname_moral folder.
  4. You can have ONE PICTURE as the background for your moral. The other FOUR pictures will have to be masked so that they can move freely through your animation. When you are done with your masking, you will need to do the following:
    • FILE> EXPORT PREVIEW>GIF (with ALPHA TRANSPARENCY)
  5. Open up Flash and create a blank stage.
  6. Use FILE> IMPORT TO LIBRARY to bring each of your FIVE pictures into the Flash Library for your animation.
  7. Now, start creating LAYERS. Make sure that you label your LAYERS as you create them. Your first LAYER should be your background layer:
    • On FRAME ONE of your background layer, open your F-11 LIBRARY, locate your picture of your background and drag it to the stage.
    • Your picture is a media file, which we cannot manipulate very well. Hit F-8 to CONVERT IT TO A SYMBOL. Make it a GRAPHIC and name it!
    • You can now move this around like any other graphic.
  8. Keep adding layers to your animation, remembering the LAYER RULE: EVERYTHING THAT MOVES GETS ITS OWN LAYER!
  9. Move things as you wish to create your story. You need to be actively animating the progression of the story that demonstrates your moral. The story MUST include AT LEAST 10 SECONDS OF ACTION AND ANIMATION (120 FRAMES)!
  10. At the end of your animation, after the movie has finished, please ADD A NEW LAYER called MORAL. On this layer, use the text tool to print out the MORAL OF THE STORY. Have Flash hold the text for at least 5 seconds.
  11. Hit Ctrl-Enter to preview your movie.
  12. Save your Flash Animation as lastname_moral.fla.

Mr. B.'s Moral of the Story Movie: "Elephants are more dangerous than they look."

Project Submission: Projects will be submitted to the class DROP folder on the M: Drive. Please make sure to submit your final work as:

lastname_moral.fla (I want the RED ICON file, not the silver icon file!)

Grading: 100 points for this assignment, given as follows:

  • 10 points for each of the FIVE graphics (including the background) that you use in your animation.
  • 40 points for the proper animation of all layers.
  • 10 points for the extra "Moral of the Story" Layer at the end of your animation.