Editing Your Animations

In Flash 8 you can use various tools to edit your animations, such as commands to insert frames, modify keyframes, onion-skinning tools, and the ability to move your animations around timelines.

After you create a frame or a keyframe, you can move it elsewhere in the active layer or to another layer, remove it, and make other changes. Only keyframes are editable. You can view tweened frames, but you can’t edit them directly. To edit tweened frames, you change one of the defining keyframes or insert a new keyframe between the beginning and ending keyframes. You can drag items from the Library panel onto the Stage to add the items to the current keyframe.

To display and edit more than one frame at a time, use onion skinning, covered next.

Inserting and Modifying Frames

To insert frames in the Timeline, do one of the following:

• To insert a new frame, select Insert > Timeline > Frame.
• To create a new keyframe, select Insert > Timeline > Keyframe, or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the frame where you want to place a keyframe, and select Insert Keyframe from the context menu.
• To create a new blank keyframe, select Insert > Timeline > Blank Keyframe, or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the frame where you want to place the keyframe, and select Insert Blank Keyframe from the context menu.

To delete or modify a frame or keyframe, do one of the following:

• To delete a frame, keyframe, or frame sequence, select the frame, keyframe, or sequence and right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the frame, keyframe, or sequence and select Remove Frames from the context menu. Surrounding frames remain unchanged.
• To move a keyframe or frame sequence and its contents, select the keyframe or sequence, then drag to the desired location.
• To extend the duration of a keyframe, Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Macintosh) the keyframe to the final frame of the new sequence.
• To copy a keyframe or frame sequence by dragging, select the keyframe or sequence, then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Macintosh) to the new location.
• To copy and paste a frame or frame sequence, select the frame or sequence and select Edit > Timeline > Copy Frames. Select a frame or sequence that you want to replace, and select Edit > Timeline > Paste Frames.
• To convert a keyframe to a frame, select the keyframe and select Modify > Timeline > Clear Keyframe, or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the keyframe and select Clear Keyframe from the context menu. The cleared keyframe and all frames up to the subsequent keyframe are replaced with the contents of the frame preceding the cleared keyframe.
• To change the length of a tweened sequence, drag the beginning or ending keyframe left or right. To change the length of a frame-by-frame sequence, see Creating frame-by-frame animations.
• To add a library item to the current keyframe, drag the item from the Library panel onto the Stage.
• To reverse an animation sequence, select the appropriate frames in one or more layers and select Modify > Timeline > Reverse Frames. There must be keyframes at the beginning and end of the sequence.

Using Onion Skinning

Normally, Flash displays one frame of the animation sequence at a time on the Stage. To help you position and edit a frame-by-frame animation, you can view two or more frames on the Stage at once. The frame under the playhead appears in full color, while surrounding frames are dimmed, making it appear as if each frame were drawn on a sheet of translucent onion-skin paper and the sheets were stacked on top of each other. Dimmed frames cannot be edited.

To simultaneously see several frames of an animation on the Stage, click the Onion Skin button. All frames between the Start Onion Skin and End Onion Skin markers (in the Timeline header) are superimposed as one frame in the Document window.

To control onion skinning display, do any of the following:

• To display onion skinned frames as outlines, click the Onion Skin Outlines button.
• To change the position of either onion skin marker, drag its pointer to a new location. (Normally, the onion skin markers move in conjunction with the current frame pointer.)
• To enable editing of all frames between onion skin markers, click the Edit Multiple Frames button. Usually onion skinning lets you edit only the current frame. However, you can display the contents of each frame between the onion skin markers normally, and make each available for editing, regardless of which is the current frame.

Note: Locked layers (those with a padlock icon) aren’t displayed when onion skinning is turned on. To avoid a multitude of confusing images, you can lock or hide the layers you don’t want onion skinned.

To change the display of onion skin markers, click the Modify Onion Markers button and select an item from the menu:

• Always Show Markers displays the onion skin markers in the Timeline header whether or not onion skinning is on.
• Anchor Onion locks the onion skin markers to their current position in the Timeline header. Normally, the Onion Skin range is relative to the current frame pointer and the Onion Skin markers. By anchoring the Onion Skin markers, you prevent them from moving with the current frame pointer.
• Onion 2 displays two frames on either side of the current frame.
• Onion 5 displays five frames on either side of the current frame.
• Onion All displays all frames on either side of the current frame.

Moving an Entire Animation

If you need to move an entire animation on the Stage, you must move the graphics in all frames and layers at once to avoid realigning everything.

To move the entire animation to another location on the Stage:

1. Unlock all layers. To move everything on one or more layers but nothing on other layers, lock or hide all the layers you don’t want to move.
2. Click the Edit Multiple Frames button in the Timeline.
3. Drag the onion skin markers so that they enclose all the frames you want to select, or click Modify Onion Markers and select Onion All.
4. Select Edit > Select All.
5. Drag the entire animation to the new location on the Stage.