Flash Site Design - Creating Website in Flash

Author

Creating Website in Flash

kirstyburgoine

2006-11-05, 10:33 pm

Hi,
I'm trying to create a website for a new brand of guitars in Flash. The site
has to have the same feel as the brochure we had created by a professional
design agency.

I have been supplied with a flat tiff file of the 2 page spreads used to show
the guitars in the brochure. What I want to do is when you click on any guitar
on that page the rest of the page to fades out leaving just that guitar
showing. Then as you roll over parts of the guitar close ups show with some
detail about the spec.

I'm stuck because I can't think of a way to make the whole page fade out to
leave just the one guitar. I'm used to using Photoshop where I would use the
pen tool to draw around the specific guitar, then turn the path into a
selection and then drop the opacity of the background. Is there something
similar I can do in Flash?

I've tried laying a gif image with transparent background on the layer above
and then motion tweening the background layer so it fades out but the gif file
has jagged edges that look awful.

I'm sure there must be a way to achieve this I just can't think how.

Thanks
Kirsty

derobinson

2006-11-05, 10:33 pm

You should get that professional design agency to give you the source files
with the objects still in their layers. It would make your life a lot easier.
Place the various elements (background, individual guitars, etc) on their own
layers in the Flash timeline and work with things from there.

Good luck!

Mister Peanut

2006-11-05, 10:33 pm

Unsing PNG files instead of Gif may help with your jagged edges, but getting
original elements would be best. Cutting the guitar out in Photosho the way
you like it and saving as a separate PNG might work. This way, you can use
the PNG file as a separate layer in Flash, and fade out your other image layer
as you are right now. I think jagged edges are a result of either not a high
enough resolution on your graphic file, or not using Quick Mask Mode - which
should yield great results if the resolution is high enough.

It seems like it could be impossible to get a good effect with the file you've
been given.

hope this may have helped in the slightest, sorry, I'm not so advanced at this
stuff.