Creating user-activated animations

Flash comes equipped with a set of powerful filters that, in the right hands, can add excitement and an animated punch to your Flash work. In the wrong hands they can make your work look cheap and amateurish. The temptation for designers is to become filter-happy, adding them anywhere and everywhere.

A subtle approach is always best and in this tutorial you'll learn how to use filters to create animated Flash neon-style graphics. We'll then add some code to make them user-initiated. Finally, we'll use a very simple masking technique to create an effective site opener.

You can easily adapt the techniques shown in this tutorial for your own work. Perhaps you want to create glowing neon text for your site or have an animated site border with a subtle glowing neon style? It's easy to rework the steps shown here.

Follow this tutorial and you'll be on the right path for adding animated filter effects to your own work.

Click here to download the support files (6.64MB)

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