Frame 2In the Frame Gallery. Select Frame 1 and click Copy to create the second frame that is an exact copy of the first. Move the two groups of flakes vertically down the frame. Increase the size of the flake groups (by about 200% in my example).To give some randomness to the movement of the snow flakes, Ctrl + click to select individual flakes inside the groups and adjust their transparency and position. You can also rotate each flake by 180 degrees - the easiest way to do that is to enter a value of 180 in the angle of field on the top Selector Tool InfoBar.Change the Color Our animation fades from blue to an orange-red color. If we were to simply edit the Theme Color 1, then all graphics, across all frames would change color. So we need to be a bit sneaky to create a second Named Color.The first stage is to edit the Theme Color 1 to be your required second color. Just right click on the Theme Color 1 on the Color Line and select Edit. After you’ve made your change, Select All on the Frame 2 (Ctrl+A) and copy this to the clipboard. Then undo the color change you just made - you may have to Undo twice to get back to the blue colors.Now delete everything on Frame 2, and Paste in Place (Ctrl+Shift+V) which puts the re-colored graphics back on Frame 2. You now have two Named Colors on the color line and you can now change the color of all the graphics on Frame 1 and 2 independently. Move the text The ‘Seasons Greetings’ text is invisible still, so go into Outline View so you can see it. Enlarge and re-position it, and adjust the Transparency to be 0%, so it should look like this see Final image below. Now is a good time to preview your animation. Click on the Preview Flash icon on the top animation toolbar and hopefully you will see something like this. Not bad for a two frame animation.One last thing for Frame 2. I introduced some transparent text immediately under Seasons Greetings (my text says ‘from all at Xara’ across two lines), which I want to fade in to end my animation.So create your text, make it small and completely transparent, and give it a name, as described before, say ‘FinalText’. I have placed it in the center of the image, but you can make its start position anywhere.
Frame 2
In the Frame Gallery. Select Frame 1 and click Copy to create the second frame that is an exact copy of the first. Move the two groups of flakes
vertically down the frame. Increase the size of the flake groups (by about 200% in my example).
To give some randomness to the movement of the snow flakes, Ctrl + click to select individual flakes inside the groups and adjust their transparency and
position. You can also rotate each flake by 180 degrees - the easiest way to do that is to enter a value of 180 in the angle of field on the top Selector
Tool InfoBar.
Change the Color
Our animation fades from blue to an orange-red color. If we were to simply edit the Theme Color 1, then all graphics, across all
frames would change color. So we need to be a bit sneaky to create a second Named Color.
The first stage is to edit the Theme Color 1 to be your required second color. Just right click on the Theme Color 1 on the Color Line and select Edit.
After you’ve made your change, Select All on the Frame 2 (Ctrl+A) and copy this to the clipboard. Then undo the color change you just made - you may
have to Undo twice to get back to the blue colors.
Now delete everything on Frame 2, and Paste in Place (Ctrl+Shift+V) which puts the re-colored graphics back on Frame 2. You now have two Named
Colors on the color line and you can now change the color of all the graphics on Frame 1 and 2 independently.
Move the text
The ‘Seasons Greetings’ text is invisible still, so go into Outline View so you can see it. Enlarge and re-position it, and adjust the Transparency to be 0%,
so it should look like this see Final image below.
Now is a good time to preview your animation. Click on the Preview Flash icon on the top animation toolbar
and hopefully you will see something like this. Not bad for a two frame animation.
One last thing for Frame 2. I introduced some transparent text immediately under Seasons Greetings (my text says ‘from all at Xara’ across two lines),
which I want to fade in to end my animation.
So create your text, make it small and completely transparent, and give it a name, as described before, say ‘FinalText’. I have placed it in the center
of the image, but you can make its start position anywhere.
Final image
The final image for Frame 2 (The Outline view shows
the tiny transparent text in the center, that will
expand in the final Frame 3)
