tip: gradient fills

You can use gradient fills to create shapes in Flash that appear to be three-dimensional.

Pop open this SWF to see how it's done.

Keep in mind that if you use a motion tween on shapes that have gradient fills, the SWF file size may increase dramatically, or the overall speed of the movie may degrade, or both. A stationary gradient is not a big deal, but a moving gradient puts some demands on the user's computer processor.