One very common effect created in Flash^R is the masking technique that makes it appear that an object grows on to the stage. In itself, this is a very nice effect but have you ever considered adding a little more "sparkle" to the effect. In this tutorial, I will show you how I added a sparkling star animation on a curved path that follows along with the mask reveal animation. The example for this tutorial is a new Christmas ecard for Pamela Gladding. In this ecard we have Pamela's beautiful poinsettia on a classic background pattern. The masking technique reveals a red scroll with holly leaves and berries. Along with this masking reveal, we have a star animation that follows along as the red scroll is revealed.

As you would expect, we begin by building the masking animation. Place the scroll image that you wish to reveal with the masking technique on the Stage and on its own layer in the Timeline. Convert the image to a symbol. Double-click on the symbol to enter Edit mode. There we have only one layer called Layer 1. Rename this layer to "scroll". Next, create a new layer above the image layer and label it "mask". Right-click on this layer and choose Mask from the menu. We now have a mask layer above the image layer. This is where we will build the reveal animation.

On this mask layer, we have only one frame with the default keyframe. The amount of the scroll image that will appear on the stage is control by how much of the image we paint over with the Brush tool. The image has two matching scrolls. It will be nice if we can control the animation to reveal these two scrolls at the same pace. Therefore, we will paint over the same area for each scroll. We don't want too much of the image to appear on the stage on the first frame. To begin building our mask animation, we will use the Brush tool to paint a very small circle over just the tip of the scrolls.

Move on to the next frame and add a Keyframe. Then, paint over a little more of the scrolls. Repeat this until you have painted over the entire image. Add a new layer at the top of the Timeline and name it "actions". We want the mask animtion to play only once. To stop it from repeating, we need to put a stop(); code on the last frame (Frame 100). Add a Keyframe on the last frame of the actions layer. Open the Actions panel and add "stop();". Close the Actions panel and click Control – Test Movie – In Flash Professional to view the masking reveal. If you are happy with the effect, we are ready to add the sparkle.

View Ecard at Pamela Gladding Ecards

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