In this tutorial, we're going to work with the .SWF file. (Pronounce it "swif" if you want to throw it into your conversations)
SWF stands for shock wave format, and is the primary product of an application called Flash.
I use Flash. I love Flash. Flash has made the animation process so slick and easy compared to what I used to have to do before I had Flash, that it boggles my mind. And yet, I still do the bulk of my work in Illustrator. And the reason for that is simple. Flash is (among other things) an animation program. Illustrator is a drawing program. You can draw in Flash, but compared to Illustrator...I think it sucks. It's getting better, but it has a ways to go. Besides, since Adobe makes both of them, they work pretty well together. I think you can almost look at Illustrator and Flash as a single application - with Illustrator being the drawing side and Flash being the animation side.
But the thing I love about Illustrator (besides its most excellent drawing capabilities) is that you can use it to create animation without Flash. In fact with Illustrator and a web browser - and nothing else, you can make and view animations. Of course, the more stuff you have, the more you're able to do - but we'll talk about that later.
For these first few tutorials, all you need is Illustrator and a web browser.
The basic process is pretty simple to understand. You create a sequence of images in an Illustrator document where each image of the sequence is on a layer. Then you export the layers as a .swf. The .swf file opens in the Flash Player and displays the image sequence at the frame rate specified - or the closest that the computer can come to that. And you see it as a moving picture.
The first thing you need to do is create the blank document.
Then you create the image sequence by duping and modifying layers
Then you go File - Export - Flash and make the basic settings as shown here.
Then click the ADVANCED button, and make the settings shown here
Then you click OK.
If you have Adobe Flash®, then just double click the .swf file. If you don't have Flash, go to Open File in your web browser, and navigate to the file, and open it that way. Either way, you see the layers of your Illustrator file played at the rate specified (in this case, 15 fps), and the image moves like so:
The two projects in this lesson are designed to show you this basic process. They will review the settings for creating the initial Illustrator document, show you how to create a sequence and how to export the sequence as a .swf file.