Design and Implement Star Effects using Adobe Flash - Stars, fireworks and more!

 
WebArticles Media Network team has the pleasure to welcome you to our new Flash website, where we aim to explain Flash techniques for working with objects with a star shape, in order to obtain cool animations with great effects. You will learn how to create your own stars from scratch, or where to look for one, how to make a star blink, fall, or how to make it move like crazy in your movie. After reading our indications and studying our samples we hope you will also have the ability to recognize a perfect picture for the background when you see one.

The examples presented are designed to be medium in difficulty so you will need some Flash experience in order to fully understand them. You can get some basic lessons by reading the first two chapters of Flash Text Effects.

Here's our tip: use a star effect and a text effect on a nice background and the result will be a cool header on your website. The purpose of this website is not to offer free star effects for you to download and use (which of course we don't mind), but it is meant to teach you the basics of animating so you can start "thinking" in Flash at star animation level. Start creating your own effects, send us your work, and we will be glad to present your own effects on our website with your name along with your samples.
We invite you to discover:

Code:
Falling Stars Effect

We will show next how we created the falling stars with nothing but flash objects. This effect is related to "Effect inside the text" from Flash Text Effects. Just read carefully the information bellow.
You need 3 things to do this effect: a good picture (like the one we used), the girl that swings and the other sparkly effects near her. You will find these three elements in the source file as the only three layers in the Main Stage.
How to chose the background:
we chose a mysterious looking picture with light abstract shapes on witch we can design other effects
very important on the picture is the area near the big girl's face where the effect takes place; that area is almost white and it serves as way for the girl swinging to disappear smoothly (like in a fog)
you can do the effect without the white area, because by using a mask you will create the impression that the girl swings behind the woman's face but we like the mysterious appearance better
place the picture on the last layer (CTRL-R is the shortcut or File/Import/)
Code:
Fireworks

Flash Text Effects.

• I designed my own background but you can use a similar one
  

• we will discuss now how to create one fireworks
  

• draw a white dot with a fading tail, like a comet and move it on a curve path, like you see in the picture above
  

• use a Guide for the curved direction
  

• now you need the shapes from the image above (get them from inside the source file) and create a Tween Shape between them and you will obtain something that looks like a fireworks exploding