Flash 10-Minute Tutorials

The three tutorials below apply to Flash versions BEFORE Adobe Flash CS3.

Basics: Tutorial 1

VIDEO Introducing the Stage, Properties panel, Align panel, Text Tool, Selection tool. Flash 8 and older. (10 min. 26 sec.)

Motion: Tutorial 2

VIDEO Simple animation -- Convert to Symbol, Library, Timeline, frames, keyframes, motion tween. Flash 8 and older. (10 min. 38 sec.)

ActionScript: Tutorial 3

VIDEO Adding new layers, stopping the Timeline, writing ActionScript using the Actions panel, writing ActionScript on a frame Flash 8 and older. (10 min. 35 sec.)

The five tutorials below apply ONLY to Flash CS4 and later. The way animations are done changed drastically with CS4 -- in all previous versions, animation was done the way that is shown in the other tutorials that are listed ABOVE. The tutorials BELOW are very different.

Animation Basics: Flash CS4

These tutorials are brief slideshows that illustrate step by step how to create a Flash animation (Flash CS4, new motion tween). Each of these tutorials builds on the one(s) before it.

  1. Starting from scratch: Create a simple animation, with one symbol.
  2. Editing the motion path: After you have made an animation, you can adjust it quite easily.
  3. Animating two objects: Make two symbols move simultaneously and independently; fix common errors.
  4. Editing CS4 motion tweens: Extend, shorten, move keyframes, add new directions to the animation.
  5. Stopping the animation: Add ActionScript so that the movie does not repeat endlessly.

ActionScript 3.0 Buttons

This tutorial is not a video; it is an interactive Flash movie. It covers the basics of how to script buttons for navigation in a multi-part package, using ActionScript 3.0. This will work in either Flash CS3 or Flash CS4 -- if you are using ActionScript 3.0.

More Flash Tutorials

> Other Flash tutorials (not all by me): This is a list of links to a few good tutorials that I recommend.

> Flash CS4 Examples (by me): This is a collection of FLA files you can download and use for your own learning. I just started making these in early 2010, so you can expect more to show up as time goes by.

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To attribute this work, include my name, Mindy McAdams, and a link to this page.