Shape Tween

1. New flash document...

2. Draw a ball on the stage in frame 1...

3. Insert a keyframe later on (around frame 10), grab the arrow on the right of the drawing toolbar... click on the ball and drag the points out to make it a star:

4.Left click on the time line between the two keyframes to place the cursor in between the "bits" we want to animate... then select "Shape" tween from the drop down box on the properties bar, as illustrated in the following picture:

5. Did you get a green tween line between the two keyframes? should look something like this... (if not, read on - you might need to perform the next step as well)...

6. Shape tween works for text and imported characters as well. But you have to do an extra step - for example, after writing some text and applying the shape tween, you have to break apart the text in both the first and last keyframe... to do this, right click on the text and select "Break Apart" (illustrated below):

7. Break the text apart until it can be broken apart no more! make take a few "break aparts"... -

8. Try and make your first name shape tween into your last name. Control --> Test Movie... what do you think? Save both exercises as ballshapetween.fla and nameshapetween.fla