Keyframe Basics

This tutorial is going to be fairly brief. It is ideally for those of you getting started with Flash.

The Keyframe is the foundation of the project that you are developing. Without Keyframes, you won't get very far. In pretty much everything that is made in Flash, there will be Keyframes making it work. The Keyframe marks where a specific change or event occurs, which could be the end of an animation, or the over state of a button.

To apply a Keyframe, you simply need to right-click the frame where you wish for it to be, and select Insert Keyframe. This can also be done by pressing the hotkey F6 (for Windows users).

[click to enlarge]

You can also insert a keyframe by selecting the frame then selecting Insert > Keyframe or Insert > Timeline > Keyframe if you have the newer versions of Flash.

If you have a blank stage when inserting a Keyframe then a Blank Keyframe will be added. This will be signified on your timeline by a hollow circle, as seen below. A blank keyframe simply means that there is no symbol present on that frame.

When you do have a symbol present on the frame, the keyframe will become solid, and will look like the following.

Your first keyframe is completed. It is very simple and you should experiment with keyframes on different layers with graphics, in movies and animations.

You should know...
- Keyframes represent changes
- A hollow dot means there is no symbol
- A solid dot means there is a symbol
- F6 can be pressed to save time