Flash 101 - Part 1: The Hammer and The Chisel

Stretching Yourself

Thus far, everything you've read has been about drawing different shapes and filling them with colour. But once you've drawn an object, Flash also allows you to modify it further by scaling it, rotating it or grouping it with other objects.

In order to modify an object (or a group of objects), you need to first select it (them) with the Arrow or Lasso tool (you can select more than one object by holding down the Shift key at the time of selection.) You also have the option of treating multiple objects as a single "group" - this allows you to manipulate more than one object at a time. You can group objects by selecting them and using the Modify->Group menu item (the grouped items will appear in an enclosed box.)

Once you have your object or group the way you want it, you can:

• delete the object (or group) by hitting the Delete key;
• move the object (or group) by click-dragging the selected object (or group);
• copy the object (or group) by holding down the Alt key and click-dragging the selected object (or group);
• scale the object (or group) via the Windows->Panels->Transform panel. You can also scale an object by right-clicking the object (or group), picking the "Scale" option, and dragging the scaling handles that appear at the corners of the objects. Dragging a corner handle scales the object along both X- and Y-axes without affecting the aspect ratio, while dragging any other handle scales the object along that axis only.
• rotate the object (or group) via the Windows->Panels->Transform tool panel, or via the "Rotate" option on the right-click menu;
• skew the object (or group) via the Windows->Panels->Transform tool panel;
• flip the object via the Modify->Transform->Flip Vertical and Modify->Transform->Flip Vertical menu items;

Zoom Out

As with every single image manipulation package out there, Flash also has a Zoom tool, available against the keyboard shortcut Z, and a Hand tool, which is accessible by hitting H.

The Zoom tool allows you to increase or decrease the level of magnification at which you view your Flash scene - you can zoom in or out of the scene by using the "enlarge" and "reduce" modifiers on the toolbar.

The Hand tool allows you to alter your view of the scene by moving the visible area, so that you can view different parts of the composition without needing to resort to the scroll bars - this comes in very handy if your composition spans more than one screen.

As you can see, the toolbar offers quite a lot of power - more than sufficient for most requirements. You should now play with it a little, and get comfortable with what each tool does. In the meanwhile, I'm outta here - but I'll be back next week with the second part of this tutorial, where I'll be talking about the basic components of a Flash animation.

Be good, now!

Note: All examples in this article have been tested on Macromedia Flash 5. Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment.

Copyright Melonfire, 2000. All rights reserved.