How to Create Texture Effects

You can see here how I customized my fill color and paint bucket tool by using imported textures which I created previously while experimenting with the different filters in Photoshop. Make sure that the imported bitmaps are optimized in size. This is a cool effect as you can realize because it allows you to add texture to your character instead of painting it with just solid colors. It makes your character look more interesting, don't you agree?

Make your Character Blink in Flash

This tutorial shows you how to make your character blink with the help of movie clip symbols.

The movie clip symbol can be reused and controlled with ease. It can contain animations on a single frame in the timeline, which you can use to create a loop. Aside from an animation, the movie clip can also contain sounds, interactive control, and can even nest another movie clip! You can also have ActionScript applied to it. To create a movie clip, just go to Insert menu, and then click New Symbol. You can also use Ctrl + F8 instead.

It is a very simple and easy trick! This process is really quick, and it adds a lot to the character of your Flash movie. You don't need the CS4 version to follow this tutorial, as any older version of Flash can be used to accomplish this trick.

How to Create a Shadow Effect for a Flash Character

The cool trick of adding illusion of depth and perspective to your character is revealed in this "to-the-point" tutorial. As you can see, my character here, Mr. Banana, is already an animated movie clip symbol. It contains several layers in it, as I deveoped the walk cycle of my character earlier within the mentioned movie clip. Then, I just copied and pasted this same movie clip to use it as the shadow for "Mr. Banana". I changed its tint color in the properties window of my Flash file, and added a blur filter to it. The shadow mimics the movements of my character as you see here. If you need to learn how to create a walk cycle for your character, please refer to the tutorial posted below. Have fun!

How to Draw a Character using Basic Shapes

This video shows you how to draw with basic shapes, while connecting them together to create your character in a simplified way. This technique uses shapes to cut in to each other. I mainly use the oval tool and the selection tool to select the lines that I want to delete while connecting the shapes together. I can also use the selection tool to push, pull, and shape the lines into curves. This is a very fun and intuitive way to draw your character while using the basic tools in Flash.

I used a scanned image as a reference, and I separated the different limbs of my character on different layers so that I can animate it later on.

Use of the Mask Layer in Flash

This tutorial shows you how to apply the mask layer to create a writing text in Flash. The above video is just an example on how to use the mask in Flash to create an animated effect, as there is no limit on what you can achieve with its use... It's all up to your creativity!