PE5 - Flash Part 5

Creating and 
Animating a Mask


I continued going through the tutorials for Flash this week.  One of the very cool things you can do is to insert a mask over an object.  This allows you to hide any part of the object that is not covered by the mask.  When you set keyframes to move the object, it starts by just displaying the part of the object that was covered by the mask.  This gives the effect that you are adding to a graphic as it moves.  For example, you could cover a tree all but the stump.  Then you could set a keyframe to reveal the portion of the tree that is not under the mask.  You could set the action so it looks like the tree is growing.