“Symbol” on the “Stage”

To create an instance of a “Symbol” and place it on the “Stage”, click and drag the “Symbol” from the library onto the “Stage”.
This does not place the “Symbol”, but only one instance of this “Symbol” on the “Stage”.
The “Symbol” itself will always remain in the “Library”, so it is actually the title of this chapter and error would be “Body on the Stage”.

You can either select the “Symbol” in the list in the “Preview Pane” and drag it into the “Stage”(1), or you can drag a “Symbol” from the list directly to the “Stage” (2), it does not matter.

The number of times that a “Symbol” is used in a film is listed in the column “Use Count” in the “Symbol” list. You can adjust column width by placing your mouse pointer between two column headings and when it changes into a two-pointed arrow, click and drag it till the desired width is reached.

“Symbol” Editing

In “Flash” we have a number of ways to edit a “Symbol”.
First is to double-click the instance of that “Symbol” that is located on the “Stage” (1).
A second way is to double-click the “Symbol” in the “Library” list (2).
A third way is to select the “Symbol” in the “Library”, then click the downward-pointing arrow button in the gray title bar of the “Library”, and select “Edit” in the drop-down menu.

How you do it does not matter. In all cases this brings you to edit mode of the “Symbol”.
The only difference is that when you double-click the “Symbol” on the “Stage”, the rest of the “Symbols” on the “Stage”, still show, in some cases it may be useful.
When you’re in edit mode of a “Symbol”, you see the name of the “Symbol” appear at the top of the window in which you’re working. The “Symbol” name of the “Symbol” where you’re working will always be displayed at the far right .
To return to your “Flash” movie, click the “Scene 1” tab.
“Scene 1” is also the main “Timeline” of your “Flash” movie. We will learn more about scenes in a later lesson.

Editing instances of “Symbol”

Editing body

We have the ability to edit an instance.

The advantage is that not all instances of that “Symbol” change when we edit this one instance. The disadvantage of this is, the possibilities of modifications are limited.

Now, I should not be here to tell you all that we cannot do but, what we can.

Select the instance you want to change and open the “Properties window”.
The first instance that we can change is the “Free Transform” tool.
With this tool, you can use the body enlarge, shrink, wrap, twist, basically you can do anything with this tool.
In the “Properties window”, we have the “Color Effect” option.
Click the downward pointing arrow next to the box type.
This gives us five options with the authority to change:

1. “None” will remove all child-friendly options.
2. With “Brightness” we adjust the brightness of the body.
3. With “Tint” we apply the color to the body.
4. With “Alpha”, we adjust the transparency of the body.
5. “Advanced” has ability to change both the color as well as the transparency of the body.

Changes in a body, like the tool “Free Transform” refers only to that one body, not the “Symbol”, and definitely not all the other instances of this “Symbol”.

 

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