Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5 offers several ways to include animation in your projects. The Animation Learning Guide for Flash explains how to use all of these animation types in Flash Professional, including the improved way of creating and editing motion tweens using the Timeline and Motion Editor. Explore the sections below to dive into whatever topic interests you.

Overview of animation in Flash

Start things off right with this overview of the animation features in Flash Professional.

Understanding frame rates in Flash animations

Learn why it's important to think about the frame rate when working with animations.

Animation timelines and keyframes

Use timelines, keyframes, and layers in your animation projects to best effect.

Animating frame by frame

View multiple frames of a frame-by-frame animation using the onion skin tools.

Exploring motion tweens

Create movement with Flash, as well as minimize file size, using motion tweens.

Manipulating motion tweens

Learn about moving, splitting, joining, and reversing motion tweens in Flash, and more.

Using motion paths in animations

See how manipulating motion paths can achieve special results in your animations.

Using the Motion Editor

Customize and duplicate animations easily using the Motion Editor.

Animating with preset and custom eases

Apply easing to make tweens appear more realistic.

Animating with motion presets

Add animations easily and create a custom preset to reuse throughout your documents.

Using JavaScript APIs for animation

Learn about creating custom commands and tools for motion objects using the updated JavaScript API capabilities.

Using ActionScript 3 for animation

Use ActionScript to add animation to a document, either by referencing an existing motion tween or by copying the animation from a tween span to ActionScript 3 code.

Using shape tweens

Make one shape appear to change into another over time, or create color and gradient animations.

Note: This learning guide introduces animation in Flash Professional and provides you with tools for developing your skills. Always consult the Flash Professional online help first when learning to use new features in Flash.

This learning guide assumes that you have a basic knowledge of the Flash workspace. Read Creating your first Flash Professional document if you are brand new to Flash and need a quick overview of its core features and workspace. Read the Motion migration guide for Flash Professional if you have used animation in earlier versions of Flash and want to learn how to migrate your skill set.

Note: The ActionScript samples in the Animation learning guide for Flash are written in ActionScript 3 and must be used within an ActionScript 3 file. See the Flash 8 version of this article for samples that can be used in an ActionScript 1 or ActionScript 2 file.

Where to go from here

There's a lot more that Flash can do for animation. You can use scripted animation in your SWFs, use inverse kinematics to move characters around, or learn about specific animation techniques on blogs or from your friends. Here are a few places you might want to start:

Creating animation in ActionScript 3: Learn more about scripted animation using ActionScript 3 code.
Character animation with the Bone tool in Flash: Learn about using IK (inverse kinematics) to create a bone structure that can be animated just by dragging things around the Stage, and get tips for articulating the parts of an animated cartoon character to best effect.
Flashthusiast: Learn more animation techniques on the Flash motion blog.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license, pertaining to the examples of code included within this work are available at Adobe.