Okay if you’re as lazy as me, you can use this method to quickly shade your animations in Adobe Flash! Some people have asked me about this on Twitter about how I did the shading effect in my latest animation. It’s not great looking, but if you have a simple art style, this can look kinda decent especially for back light (dunno what it’s called, light from behind).
Make sure the animation is inside a symbol. Make sure the symbol is a graphic (just so you can still see the animation). Skip step 1 and 2 if the light source is coming from the front of the character. For light from behind, decrease the brightness a little bit.
Change the color style to “Advanced” so it retains the brightness settings. Add a little blue and/or red tint so it doesn’t look kind of grey-ish.
Duplicate the symbol and put it on the layer above this one. Change the symbol from graphic to movie clip. Just so you know, Movie Clips don’t play in the timeline; they only play when you export the movie as a .swf. Make sure to remove any of the color effects. Give it a drop shadow filter. Make sure to check Knockout and inner shadow. Change the drop shadow color to something like yellow or white. Fiddle around with the blurriness, strength, angle and distance to what you want.
Change the blending mode to “Overlay”. And you’re done!
If the light source is in front of the character, change the blending mode to “Multiply” and choose a lighter shade of a dark color like blue or purple.
I should have made the shading a little darker but oh well.
