changing instances of pics in library?

[winian]

Hello,

sorry if this is long... this is my first posting: I have a dilemma... when I first created my intro animation, I imported large bitmaps into my library, and just sized them down on the stage. To further complicate things, the images (photos) each animate in a "scaling up" animation, so their sizes change.

Now my question: I know you can select any symbol, or instance of that symbol and swap it with another image in the library, but when I replaced the images in the library with smaller images that are sized to the dimensions they are on stage, all of my animations shrink.

I guess it's easier to show you: www.winian.us/wiley/current/ (you may have to wait a while... the images are large)

so, as you can see, the images scale up and down... but I think because I originally imported the images larger than they need to be on stage, it's causing my final movie size to be huge... how do I/can I "swap" out the original photos in the library for images that are sized exactly to the animation on stage, thus lowering my file sizes, w/o screwing up my animations, and having to rebuild my animation again and move everything on stage again, etc...

sorry this is so long... any and all help is greatly appreciated... feel free to email me directly, if you like: winian@gmail.com

ian

[LJK]

Hi -
Yeah, you're right in that using huge, imported images has
bloated the size of the final .fla. Some tips:

1. Always make .pngs or non-prog. .jpgs, etc. to be exactly
the size you know you're going to need in Flash.

2. Create empty movie clips on stage, then use loadMovie
to bring external .jpgs into a file when you can.

3. Convert each graphic needed in an animation into a m. clip
that can then be controlled from the mn. t-line using AS.
[Instead of having many clips w/ code on them...]

-- In fact, although you'd rather not, it may be good to just
save your current file as a reference & re-create a more
streamlined version - which will makes things easier in the end!--

4. Ck. the Compression settings when Exporting an .swf - can
usually slice some sz. off w/ that.

Have fun,
El