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Chapter 5: Animation
Animation
is the appearance of an image changing over time. The most common types of animation in Adobe
®
Director
®
involve moving a sprite on the Stage (tweening animation) and using a series of cast members in the same
sprite (frame-by-frame animation).
•
Tweening
is a traditional animation term that describes the process in which a lead animator draws the
animation frames (called
keyframes)
where major changes take place. Assistants draw the frames in between.
Tweening in Director lets you define properties for sprite keyframes, and Director changes the properties in the
frames in between. Tweening is very efficient for adding animation to movies for websites, because no additional
data needs to download when a single cast member changes.
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Frame-by-frame animation involves manually creating every frame in an animation, whether that involves
switching cast members for a sprite or manually changing settings for sprites on the Stage.
Other forms of animation include making a sprite change size, rotate, change colors, or fade in and out.
About tweening in Director
To use tweening in Director, you define properties for a sprite in frames called keyframes and let Director change
the properties in the frames in between.
To specify tweening properties for a sprite, use the Sprite Tweening dialog box.
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Select a sprite, and then select Modify > Sprite > Tweening.
A keyframe usually indicates a change in sprite properties. Properties that can be tweened are position, size, rotation,
skew, blend, and foreground and background color. Each keyframe defines a value for all of these properties, even if
you explicitly define only one.
