Macromedia Flash 8 Morphing Tutorial

Software: Macromedia Flash 8
Subject: Morphing Animation Technique
Difficulty: Easy

This tutorial will guide you through making an animation which will gradually change one shape into another by using the morphing technique. Using this function in Flash allows you to morph 2 images easily and with minimal effort.

To begin, open Macromedia Flash and begin a new Flash document.



You will be presented with a blank new document. From this screen you will be able to do everything needed to create a morphing animation.

Firstly, select the rectangle tool from the tool menu on left of the screen:



The next step is to create a square on the animation canvas in the centre of the screen. The canvas is where all the animation happens. Once you have selected the rectangle tool alter the colour properties at the bottom of the screen. Choose the pencil colour and choose no colour in the top right of the selection window (circled in the below screenshot). Underneath the pencil colour you can choose a fill colour of your choice. For the tutorial I have chosen to use blue.



Now move your cursor to the canvas, hold down shift, which ensures you create a perfect square, and click-and-drag to create a square on the canvas. You should now have a square on the canvas.

Next you must create a blank keyframe somewhere on the timeline. To do this you must first look for the timeline at the top of the screen. Then right click under 20, or a frame of your choice, and choose to ‘Insert Blank Keyframe’ from the list which appears. This creates the frames which Flash will use in the morphing process.



Once the blank keyframe has been added to the timeline the canvas will go blank. You now need to create the second shape which the square will morph into.

Use the oval tool located next to the rectangle tool which you used previously to create a circle. Ensure that you alter the properties again so that the pencil has no colour and choose a fill colour of your choice. For the tutorial I have chosen to make a green circle.

Hold down shift, to ensure you create a perfect circle, and click-and-drag a circle in the same place on the canvas as you created your square. You should now have something which looks like this:



You now have both shapes which are going to morph. In order to get them to morph you must utilise the morphing technique. To do this, click on the timeline anywhere between the first and last frame and then go to the properties box at the bottom of the screen. Open the drop-down box labelled ‘Tween’ and choose the ‘Shape’ option.



You will now have an animation in which a square morphs into a circle. Press Ctrl+Enter to view your animation in a new screen. It should look something like the animation below:



You could expand this by following these steps to make the circle morph back into the original square or another shape.