This content requires Flash

To view this content, JavaScript must be enabled, and you need the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player.

Download the free Flash Player now!

Now, you have seen the steps it takes to make a correct motion tween. I usually think it is a good idea to also take a look at what a bad tween looks like and figure out how to fix it. So, let us spend a moment doing some bad tweens. I am going to make a new file for this so we do not mess up our robot head. So, I am just going to go up to the file menu and choose new. I will leave it at flash file action script two and we have got a nice clean empty movie to work in. Now, I just need some kind of object to tween. So, I am just going to make a square. I have got my colors set to black stroke and gray fill, so let us just put something in brighter here so you can see every thing, a big red there and I will make a rectangle that we are going to tween.

Now, what I want to do is run to the steps of creating a tween using this object, but I am going to make a few mistakes along the way just so we can see how this is going to look. The first thing is, I am just going to forget that we cannot do a motion tween with a shape object. So, I am just going to go on my merry way here and make a keyframes. So I put one at frame 20, F6 key and I will move this object over and let us see what happens when we try to make a tween out of that. Now, I have actually broken both rules at once.

The rules for a Motion Tween say, I cannot motion tween a shape and I cannot motion tween more than one object per later but we have actually got a fill shape, a few stroke shapes. We definitely have more than one here. If I try to set tweening on this, I am going to go back to the keyframe, that brings up my tween settings and I will set this to motion. The first thing that you will see in a bad tween is usually a dotted line. Now basically, that is telling you, you broke one of the two rules. I can try and fix this tween by correcting those problems. So, what I am going to do is select everything in keyframe 1 and I am going to make it into a symbol. So, I will press F8, so I will select it. I will make this into a symbol. I will call it rectangle and everything should be fixed but it is still broken because I have only fixed one end of the tween. I have to have the same rules applied to other end of the tween. That is still a shape.

Now, here is a place where I am probably going to have to do part of this over because I do not want just to make this into another symbol. Then I will have two rectangle symbols. And the whole idea is to take one rectangle and move it to the other side. Not have two rectangles that were running in between. So, at this point, I would most likely delete everything in this keyframe. I will just hit the delete key. We mentioned before that it does not delete the keyframe, it deletes what is inside of it. I will drag out the rectangle and now I have actually fulfilled all of the requirements of my motion tween and you can see that the tween looks right here as well.

Now hopefully that is going to help you recognize the most common problem tween and be able to go in and fix it. Now, I am going to show you one other problem that people will get themselves into when they are getting started with this animation. So, I am going to start over and do this same thing again with one little difference. Let us make a new layer and just to clean of the screen, I am going to take layer one and delete it so that all that stuff is gone and we will kind of do the same thing again. I will do with ovals this time, just so we can see the difference. I will start it with an oval object. We will add a keyframe to our timeline, F6 and I will take our new oval object with the select tool and just move it over here and what the heck, I will even scale it down a little bit.

Now, I have actually made the same mistake I did last time. I am intending to do a motion tween but I am trying to do with a shape object instead of a symbol. Now, here is when I do things a little bit differently. I like keyboard shortcuts so I am going to up to the screen here and select the first keyframe and we have set our tween settings down the property window, but if you use the r

Now, you have seen the steps it takes to make a correct motion tween. I usually think it is a good idea to also take a look at what a bad tween looks like and figure out how to fix it. So, let us spend a moment doing some bad... click to read more