Let's get right to it- press the "B" key to use the brush tool. In your stage area- draw out a squiggle:

Press the "V" key. Click on your squiggle- you'll notice that it becomes a bit "grayed out." In flash, this discoloration is a visual signal that lets the user know that a vector shape has been selected. Now, click and drag the squiggle- you notice that since the vector was selected, it moves along with the mouse. This is how you will be moving your elements around the screen.

Hit "ctrl-Z" to undo the move you just made, and click anywhere on the stage to deselect the squiggle. (alternatively, you can press "shift-ctrl-A")

Click the squiggle again, and press the "Q" key- this brings up a basic transformer lattice, and looks sorta like this:

Notice the black boxes on the transform lattice? Click on one of the corner boxes, and drag it around- notice that the squiggle scales to the size of the lattice. Release the mouse button, and move your cursor slightly away from the little black box, until your pointer turns into a little circular arrow. Click and drag your mouse. Notice that the squiggle rotates, along with your mouse movement.

Try scaling or rotating the squiggle, with the "shift" key depressed. You'll note that rotation is now restricted to 45-degree increments, and your scaling maintains the aspect ratio of the squiggle. The little black boxes on the middle of the sides of the lattice can be used to further scale and skew the item.

This is how you will be manipulating the dimensions and rotations of the elements in your flash animation.

The Pen (P) and Pencil (Y) tools are basically what you'd expect- try making a few squiggles with them- whee!

If you need to make a straight line, use the Line (N) tool.

Press the "K" key to bring up your paint bucket tool. Take a look over at your color mixer window:

Click on the "Color Swatch" tab, and it should change to this:

Select a nice red color, and click your paint bucket on the big black squiggle we made, at the beginning of this- cool- it turned red!

Press the "S" key to bring up your ink bottle tool. Look at your tool panel on the right-hand side of the screen- notice that the little paint bucket is highlighted, with a little red square next to it.

Click on the little black box that's next to the pencil- neat- a color swatch opens up!

Select a nice green color, and then click on the squiggle you made with the pencil tool, earlier. No great surprise, at this point, that the line turns green.

Click on the big red squiggle- surprise! Rather than turning the squiggle green, it adds a green outline.

This is because Flash handles lines (strokes) and fields of color (fills), as different kinds of objects- we'll get into that, later...

Press the "E" key to bring up your eraser tool. You can use this, of course, to erase vector shapes on your stage. Erase a bit of your big red squiggle.

Pretty much what you'd expect- but click on the little circular icon in the "tool options", and look what pops up.

Select "Erase Fills", and try erasing a bit more of your big red squiggle- notice that it erases the red fill, but leaves the green outline alone... Try other erase options, at your leisure.

The Lasso (L) tool is a selection tool that I have never used. Play with it, if you feel the need...

Press "ctrl-A", to select everything on the the stage, and press "delete", to clear everything away.

The Oval (O) and Rectangle (R) tools Create ovals and rectangles. (Sorry if that last sentence was a tad too swift for ya- trust me- you'll get it...) Press "O", and click-drag your mouse on the stage- voila- an oval magically appears. Press "R", and click-drag again. You guessed it- you've got a rectangle.

Try drawing another oval and rectangle, but this time, hold the "shift" key, while drawing them out- notice that the oval is now a perfect circle, and the rectangle, a perfect square.

The Eyedropper tool (I). Take a look over at your tool panel, click the little icon highlighted below to change your colors to Black and white.

Then, press "I" to bring up the eyedropper. Click the eyedropper in the red center of one of the shapes you just made- notice that the "fill" color in your tool menu just changed back to red, and that your cursor turned into a paint bucket. Press "I" again, and click on one of the green outlines. The "stroke" color in your tool menu changes back to green, and your cursor turns into an ink bottle.

Press "ctrl-A" to select everything, and press "delete" to clear your stage.

The Text tool (T)- a way to add text to the stage. Press "T", and you'll notice that your pointer turns into a cursor. Click anywhere on the stage, and type out your text.

Take a look at your "properties" panel, at the bottom of your stage.

Using these controls, you can change the font, text size, color, etc. Try changing a few of these properties, and see how the text changes.

The Magnifying glass tool (Z), allows you to zoom into your stage, to view details. Hit the "Z" key, and click on the stage- your view zooms in. Press and hold the "alt" key, and click again. Your view zooms out.

The Hand tool (H), is sorta redundant. Just hold down the spacebar, and click and drag anywhere on the stage- you'll be able to pan around your work area, using this function.

The final tool that you'll be interested in using is the Gradient Transform tool. This will be a tad complicated, but try to follow along.

Press "ctrl-A" to select everything, and press "delete" to clear your stage.

Press "R", and click-drag in the stage, to draw out a rectangle.

Now- take a look at your Color window. Press the "color mixer" tab.

When you've switched over to the color mixer, click on the "Type" drop down list, and select "linear."

The panel will change a bit to what you see below:

Press the "K" button, and click the center of your rectangle. The fill changes to the black-to-white fade we see in the color mixer window.

Finally, press "F" to use the Gradient Transform tool. click on the center of your rectangle, and manipulators should appear.

Click and drag the circular manipulator on the upper right. You will notice that the gradient fade rotates, to follow your mouse. The square manipulator on the right hand scales the gradient- click and drag it to see what happens. Finally, clicking and dragging the white circle in the middle allows you to move the gradient.

WHEW! That pretty much covers the basics of the tools available to you. There are a million other things you can do with them, but I don't have three years to write a detailed listing. Again, I encourage you spend some time experimenting on your own with these tools until you are comfortable with them. At this stage of the game, there's really no "wrong way" to do anything, and it's unlikely that anything you do will crash the program- so go wild- you might just learn something!

ON TO CHAPTER 4