Susan asks,

"I've been working with ActionScript 2.0 for a while and I'm pretty comfortable with it. Now I'd like to start more robust scripting using ActionScript 3.0, but nothing I try works. Why won't the old code transfer to 3.0? Can't I use the same commands? Aren't they the same language?"

ActionScript 3.0 actually represents a pretty big departure in methodology, and is an entirely new codebase - almost a new way of thinking. It's been around for a while now, but a lot of people are still having trouble adopting it because it's so different...and knowing ActionScript 2.0 doesn't always help.

The Flash Properties Panel / Document Property Inspector is pretty much one of the focal points of Flash, with necessary information on things such as the dimensions, framerate, and scripting for your movie. More often than not, you'll turn to the Document Property Inspector to determine the next step in your workflow or gather key information. With that in mind...you'd be surprised how many people don't know how the Document Property Inspector works, and how to use it.

While many learn to animate in Flash without ever learning the basic principles of traditional animation, often knowing the fundamentals can enhance the way you use Flash to produce truly stellar work. Applying pencil-and-paper methods in Flash is actually fairly easy, with the tools of pencil and paper replaced by your screen / Flash stage and a cursor or tablet pen. Once you get used to working on-screen and using virtual frames instead of individual pages, you'll find the workflows are surprisingly similar.

Shannon asks:

"I've seen documentaries about people working in animation studios, and they always show people drawing and painting. Then later they show them working on the video either with real video or on-screen. What they never show is how the drawings got to be on-screen and sequenced together. How is that done? How do they make the drawings into TV?"

Magic.

No, really.

...

Well, maybe not. Unless you count cameras and scanners as magic, as that's how the images get from one medium to another. Some people think cameras really are magic and can capture your soul, but in this case all they capture is one frame in a sequence that will eventually become a moving animation.