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Jen deHaan

Jen deHaan

Adobe
flashthusiast.com

John Mayhew

John Mayhew

Adobe

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Adding preset and custom eases to motion tweens
  3. Easing properties to achieve
    quick animations
  4. Adding a custom ease
    to a motion tween
  5. Modifying and applying
    a custom ease
  6. Copying and saving custom eases
Created:
4 May 2009
User Level:
Beginner
Products:
Flash

Animation Learning Guide for Flash: Preset and custom eases

Easing refers to the gradual acceleration or deceleration during an animaton, which helps your tweens appear more realistic or natural. You might also use easing to apply a special kind of movement that makes animation tasks, such as "random" movement or a ball bouncing, quicker and easier. For example, you can apply eases to add a more natural appearance of acceleration or deceleration by gradually adjusting the rate of change using a gentle ease curve. You can even add an ease to create a random appearance to one of your properties, such as x and y for random jittery movement, or alpha to create a random flicker.

Requirements

To make this most of this learning guide, you need to install the following software and files:

Flash CS4 Professional

Sample files:

Prerequisite knowledge

A basic knowledge of the Flash workspace.

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About the authors

Jen deHaan was raised by wolves in the deep woods of the Canadian north. Later in life, Jen worked with Flash as a deseloper, then wrote about Flash for five versions, and then worked on stuff that didn't include much Flash. She came to her senses in 2007 by rejoining the fabled Flash team at Adobe as a QE, focusing on the good stuff—Motion (on timelines). Jen enjoys long walks in the rain pondering how many times she can use the word Flash in a bio, and admits that after numerous years in California she is no longer addicted to Tim Horton's coffee.

John Mayhew is a hopeless software developer, and has been for a very long time, but he still loves it. John likes being able to launch an app, demo a feature, and show people exactly what he creates for a living. Along the way he has worked for several small companies and consulted for many years. Among the more notable companies John worked for are Micrografx (ABC FlowCharter and their Graphics Suite offering) and Macromedia (mobile authoring tools), which eventually led him to the Flash authoring team. He has focused for the last few years on creating a simple, yet more powerful animation system in the Flash authoring tool. Achieving both of those goals has proven to be quite a challenge. You can see if John and his colleagues achieved those lofty ambitions in Flash CS4 Professional.