Movie Symbols

Now we will create a Movie Symbol that includes more complex animation. It’s going to be … “smoke”

Create a graphic symbol with drawings of smoke cloud. Use a pencil with Smooth option and fill the cloud shape with gray-white gradient. Highlight and delete a contour line leaving only fill. Call it -grSmoke
Select Menu-Insert-New Symbol. Make a movie symbol and call it mvSmoke.
From the Library drag grSmoke to the stage.
Create a 15 frames timeline with motion tweening. At the final keyframe make grSmoke larger, move it a bit to the right and make it semitransparent with Alpha.
Now add one more layer
Put a keyframe at frame 5 or 7 and extend the second layer keyframe up to 20-22.
Also drag the grSmoke to the stage, be sure that your cursor at the second frame interval
Animate the symbol in the same way you’ve done with previous layer. You may to change properties a bit differently – to make your second smoke cloud not exactly the same. In our example we used interesting technique. If your symbol size is for example 30px, change it to –30px and it will be displayed as a mirrored image. When working on that step you may find that Onion Skin is useful

Test your movie. Clouds of the smoke should appear quite realistic