Format Flash file(SWF) is based on vector graphics and is designed for scalable, compact graphics for the Internet. Because this file format is based on vector graphics, the object maintains image quality at any resolution and is ideal for creating animation frames. In Illustrator, you can create individual animation frames on layers and then export the image layers as individual frames for use on your website. You can also define symbols in the Illustrator file to reduce the size of the animation. When exporting, each symbol is defined only once in the SWF file.

Export Command (SWF)

Provides the most control over animation and bit compression.

Provides more control over the mix of SWF and bitmap formats in a fragmented layout. This command offers fewer image options than the Export (SWF) command, but uses the last used Export command options (see ).

When preparing an object for saving in SWF format, keep the following guidelines in mind.

By using Device applications Central you can see what an Illustrator graphic will look like in the application Flash Player on various handheld devices.

Inserting an Illustrator graphic

A graphic created in Illustrator can be quickly, easily, and easily copied and pasted into Flash.

When you insert an Illustrator graphic into a Flash application, the following attributes are preserved.

Outlines and shapes

• Stroke thickness

  Definitions of gradients

  Text (including OpenType fonts)

  Related Images

• Blend Modes

In addition, Illustrator and Flash support the following options when inserting a graphic.

When you select entire top-level layers in an Illustrator graphic and paste them into a Flash application, the layers and their properties (visibility and locking) are preserved.

Illustrator color formats other than RGB (CMYK, grayscale, and custom formats) are converted by Flash to RGB format. RGB colors are inserted as usual.

When you import or insert an Illustrator graphic, you can use various options to save certain effects (such as text shadows) as Flash filters.

Flash retains Illustrator masks.

Exporting SWF Files from Illustrator

SWF files exported from Illustrator match the quality and compression ratio of SWF files exported from Flash.

When you export, you can choose from a variety of predefined styles for optimal output, and specify how you want to use multiple artboards and how you want to transform symbols, layers, text, and masks. For example, you can choose to export Illustrator symbols as movies or graphic images, and creating SWF symbols from Illustrator layers.

Importing Illustrator files into a Flash application

To create a complete layout in Illustrator and then import it into Flash in one step, you can save the artwork in Illustrator's native (AI) format and import it with precision into Flash using the File > Import to Workbench commands. area" or "File" > "Import to Library".

If your Illustrator file contains multiple artboards, select the artboard to import in Flash's Import dialog box and specify settings for each layer in that artboard. All objects in the selected artboard are imported into Flash program as a single layer. When you import another artboard from the same AI file, the objects in that artboard are imported into Flash as a new layer.

When importing Illustrator artwork as AI, EPS, or PDF application Flash retains the same attributes as when inserting Illustrator graphics. Additionally, if the Illustrator file you are importing contains layers, you can import them using one of the following methods.

Convert Illustrator layers to Flash layers.

Convert Illustrator layers to Flash frames.

Convert all Illustrator layers to one Flash layer.

Today we have an unusual Adobe Illustrator lesson. Because this time we will not make a static picture, but a real animation. Imagine, it turns out with using Adobe Illustrator can also draw cartoons :)

And for this we need nothing at all. Proper organization of layers and export of the final work to swf format, where each layer is converted into an animation frame. In today's tutorial we will draw a countdown animation in the style of a retro movie. The output should be a flash video with this same countdown.

The first thing you need to do is draw all the necessary elements for future animation. To do this, in a separate document, I made two positions of a film frame, a circle for reference, which is cut into separate sectors, a texture and a vertical scratch to add the effect of antiquity, as well as all the numbers and inscriptions.

When all the parts of our cartoon are ready, we can start creating the animation itself. For convenience, it is better to do this in a new document. In this case, our layers will play the role of animation frames. And in the very first layer you just need to copy a frame of film. Place it in the middle of your work area.

Now create a second layer and copy a frame of film into it, in which the holes along the edges are made with an offset. It also needs to be placed in the center.

From these two layers you can already get animation of moving film. But later we will need many more layers. So select the first two layers, go to the panel options and make a copy of the layers.

In a similar way, we need to accumulate 12 layers of film frames that define its movement.

Now we have a whole bunch of layers and they are all visible. In the sense that the upper layers block the lower ones, which is not entirely convenient for work. Therefore, you can turn off some layers by clicking on the icon with an eye to the left of the layer name. To turn all layers off or on at once, hold down the Alt key while clicking on the eye icon. By turning layers on and off, you can see exactly what is located in a specific frame of our future animation. And now, in order for us to add slight shaking to the movement of the film, we need to move the resulting frames slightly in different directions. To do this, turn on only the layer you are going to work with. this moment, and then move the frame a couple of pixels in any direction.

Once you've gone through all the layers and added a little shift, you can start creating the animation of the moving circle. To do this, copy the circle consisting of sectors from the document with the cartoon parts and place it on the first layer on top of the film frame.

If you deselect the circle, it will look like a single whole. This is exactly what we need.

But since it consists of individual sectors, you can create animation very quickly and easily by changing their color. To do this, copy this circle to the second layer and make the first sector lighter. You remember that our film shakes as it moves, so it is not at all necessary to place the circle exactly in the center of the frame. Position it by eye.

In a similar way, you need to copy the circle into each next layer, while painting one sector more with a lighter color than the previous time. Together, these 12 layers form an animation of the film moving with a filling circle.

Next we need to add texture to our layers. Turn on the first layer and copy the texture from the original file with spare parts there.

Then turn on the next layers one by one and copy the same texture there. To make it look different in each frame, simply rotate it 90 degrees. As you may have guessed, we need to add texture to all 12 frames.

If you are already quite tired of copying, then I can please you - there is very little left. The hardest part is over. All that's left is to add vertical scratches and that's almost it. To do this, we again copy the original scratch and place it in an arbitrary place in several layers. In my case, scratches appear in only two layers.

Now that the main cycle with film animation is ready, all that remains is to add the numbers. Since our countdown goes from 3 to 1 plus the word Go!!!, we need even more layers. Not 12, but as many as 48. To do this, you need to make three more copies of ready-made layers with film animation.

And then everything is simple. Turn on the very first layer and put the number three there.

Then you need to copy this number to the next layers until the circle animation ends. When you reach the next copy of the layers, where the circle will again be completely filled in, you need to put the number two. In the same way, copy the number one to the desired layers. And when you get to the final layers for the Go!!! inscription, simply delete the circle before copying the inscription to the desired layer.

That's all for the animation. The main thing here is not to get confused. You can give the layers some convenient names, but I was kind of lazy :) And also, when you finish your work, be sure to turn all the layers back on by clicking on the eye icon.

In the export settings window, be sure to set Export As: AI Layers to SWF Frames. It is this option that turns Illustrator layers into animation frames. Next, click the Advanced button.

Will open additional settings. Here you need to set the Frame Rate. I have 12 frames per second. The Looping checkbox is responsible for the cyclical animation. Thanks to it, the video will be played in a circle. And the Layer Order: Bottom Up option reproduces illustrator layers from bottom to top in the panel. This is exactly how we built our animation.

The output is a flash video with our animation.

Now you see that making simple animation in Adobe Illustrator is not as difficult as it seems at first glance.

But for creating long videos or interactive applications it is still better to use Adobe Flash or other flash editors. For example, I made this cat in an old Macromedia Flash, which I dug up at my work.

Also, recently HTML5 and CSS3 are increasingly being used to create animation. This code supported modern browsers and does not require the use of a flash player.

Roman aka dacascas especially for the blog

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Adobe Illustrator and After Effects
Import and simple animation

Hello. Today we're looking at simple animation in After Effects.

Resources: Adobe Illustrator CC
Adobe After Effects CC

Let's start learning by drawing in Illustrator.

Let's draw
1) Draw a yellow rectangle as the background

Figure 1 - Rectangle

2) Draw a Circle and fill it with a gradient
Let's work a little on the circle:
- delete the bottom point on the contour, we get an arc;
- draw a straight line, closing the bottom of the arc, we get a semicircle

Figure 2 - 1) draw circle; 2) gradient; 3) delete point

3) Draw a Rectangle and make a copy of it
- one gray rectangle;
- another rectangle is dark gray
4) Draw a Triangle from an asterisk by setting the number of rays to 3

Figure 3 - 1) rect light; 2) rect dark; 3) triangle

5) Draw a cat using Pen and simple shapes

Figure 4 - 1) head; 2) neck; 3) body; 4) leg; 5) tail

And now the most MAIN moment
Let's distribute the pictures into layers (what will be animated is on a separate layer) like this:

Figure 5 - all pics (red mark important layers)

That's it, now let's save.
Let's look at the saving settings

Figure 6 - Save

And now the next stage. ClosingAdobe Illustrator and open After Effects.

Import into After Effects
File - Import - File - select our saved file Illustrator.
Let's choose to import layers from Illustrator; if we put in footage, we'll get a picture with merged layers, but we don't need that.

Figure 7 - Import As Composition

That's it, imported.
Now let's see what we have. Double click on a composition , so that it would open and we would see the layers (if everything is done correctly, there will be several layers). We get this, see figure

Figure 8 - Open Composition

And now what we are here for today is Animation.

Animation in After Effects
Set the rotation point at the top of the arrow using the Pan Behind Tool (shortcut - Y). We just take a point and move it where needed. As a result it will look like this..

Figure 9 - Pan tool and Layers

That's it, now let's move on to the layers for animation.
We will need an Arrow and Head_cat layer.
Let's start with arrow.
Let's expand the list, find it and click on the clock. So we set the first point at zero second. The animation will last 2 seconds in total.
So, these are the settings you need to make (we’ll put 3 points in total):

Second	0	1	2
	+66	- 70	+66

This is what it will look like:

Figure 10 - Rotation arrow

Now let's animate the cat's head.
Let's expand head_cat and find Position.
There will be 4 dots here.
Only the last coordinate will be changed without affecting the others.

Second	0.1	0.17	1.12	2.0
Position	689.3	729.3	729.3	689.3

Let's look at the picture.

Figure 11 - Position head

So, the animation principle was like this. The arrow swings from side to side, as soon as it approaches the kitten, it pulls its head in, lingers in this position for a while, and then returns it to its place.

The final stage

Production
You need to create a finished product from your work.
Let's go to the menu - Add to Render Queue
The Render panel will open and in the Output Module (two clicks) select the output format. I took *.mov

Figure 12 - Render

Click on the RENDER button and get the result (just don’t forget to specify the path).
That's all.

You have one or two icons that you'd like to bring to life with animation. Where would you start? Let's say you have SVG files, Illustrator CC and After Effects CC programs, but the solution eludes you.

In this article, I'm going to demonstrate how you can easily animate an SVG file, including preparing the SVG file in Illustrator and importing it into After Effects CC. I'll also explain how you can convert it to Shape Layers and add movement. Finally, let's talk about exporting and rendering.

The final result of the work.

Now let's get to the fun part - learning how to bring images to life.

Preparing an SVG File in Illustrator

Let's start by opening your SVG file in Adobe Illustrator CC. I'll be animating a small car icon that is available for free on Week Of Icons.

After opening the file, we need to ungroup and divide all objects into layers. You can do this manually or use Release to Layers (Sequence) to speed up the process. Before we import the file into After Effects, we need to save it as an Illustrator file format.

We can ungroup objects using Release to Layers (Sequence) so as not to waste precious time.

Import and organize a file in After Effects CC

Now you're ready to import into After Effects CC. Let's use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+I (Windows) or Command+I (Mac) to load the dialog Import File, or go to File > Import > File… There, select the Illustrator CC file we prepared and click Import. A small dialog box should appear with the name of the selected file. Select Composition from the drop-down list called Import Kind.

More quick way importing a file - double-click on the column location in the project panel.

In the Timeline Panel we will see a new composition. Double click on it. We should now see the Illustrator CC layers with orange icons to the left of their names.

Before we get started, we need to convert all these layers to Shape Layers. We need to select them all with Ctrl+A/Command+A, or manually using Shift + Left Mouse. After that click right click mouse over the layer and select Create > Create Shapes from Vector Layer.

Now that the new layers are selected, drag them to the top of the panel above the Illustrator CC layers, and then delete the Illustrator CC layers so they are out of the way.

Convert Illustrator CC Layers to Shape Layers in After Effects CC

Although this is not necessary, it is important that we give each layer an appropriate name and/or color code it. This will allow us to work more efficiently as we focus on key frames. In the example below, the colors of the labels more or less match the fill of their corresponding layers.

Labeling Shape Layers with appropriate names, colors, text, and placement is very practical.

Use the keyboard shortcut to configure settings Ctrl+K/Command+K or Composition > Composition Settings… From Composition Settings we need to select Width, Height, Frame Rate, and Duration. For this project I chose 60 frames per second to keep the animation smooth.

At this point everything seems to be ready to go, but there is one more thing that needs to be done. We need to group certain layers together so that their movements are in sync with the main layer, which we can control. This method is called Parenting.

Use Pick Whip to assign a parent layer to multiple layers.

In our example, I assigned less significant layers (child layers) such as the windshield, body parts, wood and ropes to the primary body layer (parent layer). This allowed me to control the position and rotation of the entire car (except the wheels) using the parent layer.

Creating Animation

I wanted the car to hit a rock and hang in the air for a bit. I also wanted the tree to move up and down and open the trunk. I started by creating a stone, a car and wheels. Then it's time to overcome the biggest hurdle - putting the action on the tree. Once that was done I moved on to the smaller parts like the rack and ropes.

Sketch describing the animation

The first step was to make a rock element or layer, but instead of going back to Illustrator CC to add another layer, I just used the Pen Tool in After Effects CC. This allowed me to quickly design a small stone.

Oh, the mighty Pen Tool!

The trunk was a relatively simple task. I mounted it to the back of the car and made an anchor point at the bottom left vertex. Using Pick Whip I assigned it to the parent body layer. The penultimate step was to give the effect of rotation, which in turn made the moment the car bounces more realistic. Bodymovin in combination with the Lottie mobile library.

P.S. you can find my Illustrator CC and After Effects CC files.

The icon set is available for download for free on .

Hi all! Today I’ll try to describe the program’s capabilities Adobe Illustrator, comparing it with the capabilities of flash. This will not be a global analysis of the program, but rather a description of some interesting features that I discovered in this program. I collected information piece by piece as I studied it in order to post everything in one post. I’ll admit right away that I’m not a super-experienced user of Illustrator, I’ve only been using it for drawing for the last six months (before that I drew everything in Flash). Many people complain that the illustrator is complex and not always intuitive. To some extent, I agree that after the flush this program is complex. But the main thing here is not to give up, but to continue studying. And after a couple of weeks the thought arises, how did I manage without it before!

So, what did I like about the illustrator, and what did I find that was not in flash?
1. I’ll start with the simplest, but at the same time necessary. Try arranging objects in a circle in Flash. Was previously Deco Tool, but it was removed, apparently considered unnecessary. We decided that it would be more fun to do it with hands. Illustrator has this function: Effect – Distort&Transform – Transform.

Everything is quick and simple; we set the values ​​(distance between objects, number of copies) ourselves in the settings.

2. Zig-zag

An even simpler, but nonetheless useful thing. It would seem like a small thing, but in Flash you have to draw by hand, in Illustrator it’s a matter of seconds.

3. Deformation of objects (Warp)

There is nothing like this in Flash. In the example below, I showed only 2 ways to deform simple shapes (Effect – Warp – Arc/Fish). In fact there are 15 of them in latest version programs.

4. Automatic rounding of corners (Round Corners)

You can do it manually: on a graphic object, when selected in the corner (in all eyes), a white dot and a rounded line sign. We drag with the mouse and adjust it to your taste.

But this only applies to shapes, with a pencil line we do it a little differently - we apply a rounding effect ( Effect – Stylize – Round Corners). At the exit we get the same result.

5. Roughen

The effect applies to simple shapes ( Effect – Distort&Transform – Roughen). The output is something resembling low-poly 3D models. I think it’s cool :) And most importantly, it’s very simple.

6. Pucker&Bloat(Retraction and Inflation)
Example in the picture below:

7. Form expansion (Offset Path)

Flash has an Expand Fill function; it doesn’t work with pencil lines at all, unlike Illustrator.

8. Brushes (Art Brush, Pattern Brush, Scatter Brush)
Look at the picture below with examples:

9.Texture Brush

Illustrator also features many texture brushes, which I wrote about and how they appeared in new version flash - . It was noticed that using brushes in Adobe Animate is terribly slow. That's it:(

10. I’m not sure if this is a real trick, but I want to focus on a brush with a funny name BlobBrush. Located in the toolbar, this is a very nice brush to use. It has a bunch of settings, I like it more than the usual one. It’s hard to explain its benefits in words, it’s better to try it once.

10.Split to Grid

Another useful thing is the Split to Grid (Object-Path-Split to Grid) function. It allows you to cut the shape into equal segments. What does this remind us of? That's right - windows in a high-rise building. I think it’s a cool thing for drawing, for example, city landscapes;)

Another useful tool presented in Illustrator, probably since its first release. With its help you can create, for example, wood textures:

12. Move (right – Transform - Move)

Object offset by specified distance. If desired, you can immediately create a copy that will be placed at the desired distance from the selected object horizontally/or vertically. An earlier version of Flash had a plugin that did this function. Unfortunately, I don't remember its name.

Illustrator is very convenient for creating seamless patterns ( Object-Pattern-Make). I remember how furiously I developed sophistication in flash with the creation of . In the SS 2015 version of Illustrator, everything is automated; a bunch of settings will help you create a pattern in dozens of variations, with just a few graphic elements at hand. In more earlier versions All programs had to be done manually, just like in Flash until now.

(Note – a pattern can be made into a vector editable object using the parse function ( Object – Expand Appearance).

14. Object Mosaic

Creating a color palette based on an existing picture. Import the image you like into illustrator (Open), then Object – Create Object Mosaic. In the settings we specify the frequency of division in height and width.

And at the output we get:

15.Blend

Used to create gradients. You can create step-by-step transitions, such as in the picture. I won’t say that I use it often, but it might be useful to someone. It seems to me that it can be used to create simple background images.

The tool can also be used to clone objects. Place two objects at a distance from each other and apply Blend Options, select the number of steps (the number of cloned objects).

16. Build Shape Tool. A very convenient thing for working with primitives. In flash, it seemed to me, it was less convenient.

Hold Alt and click on the selected segments to delete the segments. If we simply drag the mouse over several selected areas - connections.

Add-on is a tool that helps automatically cut, connect, etc. highlighted forms. As for me, it is not very convenient, I use it more often BuildShapeTool.

(artboards)

18.Custom Tool Panel

The ability to create your own toolbar, discarding unnecessary ones, and choosing only those that you use.

In Flash, artboards, namely scenes ( Scene 1,2,3..) are located separately and you need to switch between them (Shift+F2). In Illustrator, they can all be placed before your eyes. It’s convenient when you make several versions of the same drawing, so that all the options are before your eyes for comparison.

19.Isometrics using Graphic Styles

And the last thing is creating isometry without using it in 1 click (or more precisely, in 3 clicks, because we have 3 sides;) using graphic styles ( Graphic Styles). I’ll describe how this is done next time.

What the illustrator has in common with flash is the ability to save an object into a symbol (symbol) and just as easily this symbol can be transferred to flash (open the file in flash.ai by Import – Import to stage).
The symbol in Illustrator has the same properties as in Flash.
And in conclusion, I will write that in Illustrator, in my opinion, it is inferior to flash. Yes, yes, there is such a thing. And this is the fill tool ( Paint Bucket). No matter how hard I try to get used to it in illusory mode, it is more convenient in flash.
If my notes have become useful for you or if you want to add anything of your own, welcome in the comments! Good luck to all;)