Creating the robot.

The next step for this comic was to make the character. To do this,in Photoshop, I made each part of the robot and imported them individually to the library.

 Over ten frames I import the separate parts of the robot. For the moving parts at frame five I create a new key frame with them in their different position and in frame ten return them to their original position, I then tween the key frame to make the movements move smooth.

 To make the moving parts of the robot repeat, I add an action to frame ten that says return to frame one. By adding this action I can tween the robot across the main stage, with it moving, until I get to frame 59 on the main stage where I add the action below.

 On frame 59 of the main stage I add an action that says as follows:

robot.gotoAndStop (11), this makes the robot stage go to its frame 11 and stop. At frame 11 within the robot stage there is a still of the robot in a standing position with a speech bubble and some text.

stop(), this action will stop all the animation within the main stage. This means that the street lamp on the backdrop will stop moving across the stage.


robot.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, fl_ClickToGoToAndPlayFromFrame_2);


function fl_ClickToGoToAndPlayFromFrame_2(event:MouseEvent):void
{
robot.gotoAndPlay(1);
gotoAndPlay (59)
}
This action says that when the screen is clicked, "robot" goes to frame 1 and play, and on the main stage "go to and play" at frame 59. By using this action once the viewer has read the captions they can click the screen to carry on with the comic.

At frame 90 on the main stage I have tweened the robot to move to the other side of the stage. At frame 90 the robot is about to fly off, so it's arms and legs need to stop moving. To achieve this I add an action that says, "robot. gotoAndStop (12)" at frame 12 within the robot stage there is a still of the robot which is what I need to create the fly effect.

The last part of this scene was to have the robot flying off the stage, to do this I tweened the robot between frames 90 and 123 changing the angle and position.

Adding the back drop.

The backdrop to this part of the comic is a city, so I made some tower blocks in Photoshop and imported them into the Flash library. I made the towers much bigger than the stage as later in the scene they will move across the stage to give the effect of faster movement.

To emphasise the effect of movement I have added a street lamp, which I made in Photoshop, that will move across the stage.

Making the pulsating start screen.

To make the word start pulsate I created a scene that was 60 frame long. At frame 1 the word start was at its smallest. At frame 30 I made a key frame and adjusted the "start" to it's largest, and finally at frame 60 made another key frame and returned "start" to the same size as frame 1. By then tweening these key frames together I crate the pulsing effect as the 60 frames constantly repeat.

Above is a close up of the key frames and the tweening between them.

To make the "start" keep pulsating and the spiral to keep turning until it is clicked I must create an action on the main stage. The action code is above, but in short says that until the screen is clicked return to frame 1 within "start" stage. And once the screen is clicked got to frame 3 on the main stage to continue the rest of the animation/comic.

Creating the turning background

After creating the spiral background I place it into a new 960x640px Flash document. To make the spiral turn I first made it into a move clip, I then made four key frames between each the spiral would turn 45 degrees.

Creating the back ground for the first part of my comic.

To create the background for this section in my comic I made a spiral in Photoshop using the brush tool. I found the center of the document, and from there made in coming out in different shades of red. When I have this rotating in the background I think it will give a really good effect.

Storyboard.

This is my storyboard that shows the sequence in which my animation will take place.

Flash zooming and panning.

 First I imported a photo of a town centre and converted it into a movie clip. Using the transform tool I resized it so the height was just larger the the stage.

To create the zoom I clicked on frame 50 and pressed F6 to create a new keyframe. With frame 50 selected I scaled up the photo, I then right clicked between frame 1 and 50 and chose create classic tween. By doing this the computer fills in the frames to create a smooth animation of the photo scaling.

For the panning animation I did the same steps as before, apart from this time I changed the photo's position instead of it's size.  

Below is the clip.