Quite a few questions...

[CybswithQ]

Hi, I'm very new to Adobe Flash and animating in general, so this is all a lot more complicated than just drawing. I have a project due very soon, and my teacher hasn't had the chance to answer any questions, so here I am. And I have no time to figure it out on my own, since I don't have the program to use at my leisure.

I'm doing a PacMan animation, so here are my questions:

1. I did a motion tween for PacMan, and I want to extend it on the timeline, but when I do, the actions get faster. Is there a way to extend it just so I can insert more keyframes or must I start over with his motions?

2. How can I make an object suddenly appear in a certain frame?

3. I was told to make PacMan run the course all with his mouth open, so now how do I get him to close his mouth? I have an image of him with his mouth closed, so I was going to use that, I just...don't know how.

4. How do I make him turn and face different directions? I've tried rotating him, but all that does is rotate him slowly throughout the whole animation.

I think that's it. Thank you for your help in advance.

[kglad · Accepted solution]

1. I did a motion tween for PacMan, and I want to extend it on the timeline, but when I do, the actions get faster. Is there a way to extend it just so I can insert more keyframes or must I start over with his motions?

actually, if you extend a tween the changes will get slower.  there's nothing easy to do about that except change the framerate, but doing that will affect everything in your swf.

2. How can I make an object suddenly appear in a certain frame?

insert a keyframe on the timeline of the layer where you want the object to appear (right click over the frame>click insert keyframe) and then draw/add your object to the stage while that key frame is selected.  (add an empty keyframe further down that layer to remove the object.)

3. I was told to make PacMan run the course all with his mouth open, so now how do I get him to close his mouth? I have an image of him with his mouth closed, so I was going to use that, I just...don't know how.

make sure pacman is a movieclip. assign pacman an instance name (in the actions panel). add two frames to your pacman timeline.  one with mouth open and one with mouth closed.  put a stop() in frame 1 of pacman's actions panel.  at the keyframe where you want pacman to change from his open mouth frame 1 to his closed mouth frame 2, in the actions panel, add

pacman.gotoAndStop(2);

4. How do I make him turn and face different directions? I've tried rotating him, but all that does is rotate him slowly throughout the whole animation.

you can use the transform tool or actionscript to change his x scale to -1.