Creating Symbols in Adobe Animate

Creating Symbols in Adobe Animate

Symbols are fundamental building blocks in Adobe Animate, enabling you to reuse and manipulate graphical assets efficiently. Symbols allow you to group and organize elements, apply actions, and define animation behaviors consistently across your project.

Types of Symbols in Adobe Animate

1. Graphics Symbol: A graphics symbol is a reusable group of vector or bitmap artwork. It maintains its original appearance and quality when resized, positioned, or duplicated.
2. Button Symbol: A button symbol enables you to create interactive buttons with various states, such as rollover, down, and disabled.
3. Movie Clip Symbol: A movie clip symbol is a self-contained animation unit that can play independently and interact with other objects.

Why Use Symbols in Adobe Animate

1. Reusability: Symbols allow you to reuse artwork multiple times without creating multiple copies, saving memory and improving workflow efficiency.
2. Consistency: Symbols ensure consistent look and behavior across your project, eliminating the need to manually update multiple instances of the same artwork.
3. Efficiency: Symbols allow you to easily group and manage complex artwork, making it easier to organize and manipulate your project.

Creating a Graphics Symbol

1. Draw or Import Artwork: Create or import the artwork you want to convert into a symbol.
2. Convert to Symbol: Select the artwork and choose “Convert to Symbol” from the “Insert” menu or press Ctrl+F8 (Windows) or Command+F8 (Mac).
3. Symbol Properties: In the “Symbol Properties” window, choose “Graphics Symbol” as the symbol type and enter a name for the symbol.
4. Define Instances: Click on the “OK” button. The artwork will be converted into a symbol instance, which you can duplicate and manipulate across your project.

Creating a Button Symbol

1. Draw or Import Artwork: Create or import the artwork you want to use for the button’s different states (up, rollover, down, disabled).
2. Create Layers: Create separate layers for each button state. Arrange the artwork on the appropriate layers.
3. Convert to Symbol: Select all the artwork on the layers and choose “Convert to Symbol” from the “Insert” menu or press Ctrl+F8 (Windows) or Command+F8 (Mac).
4. Button Symbol Properties: In the “Symbol Properties” window, choose “Button Symbol” as the symbol type and enter a name for the symbol.
5. Assign Actions: Click on the “Actions” tab and assign actions to the different states of the button. For example, you can assign a “play” action to the down state and a “stop” action to the up state.
6. Define Instances: Click on the “OK” button. The button symbol will be created, and you can create button instances by dragging and dropping the symbol onto the Stage.
7. Set Instances to Match: Select multiple button instances and use the “Assign Instances to Symbol States” button in the Properties panel to associate each instance with the appropriate button state.

Creating a Movie Clip Symbol

1. Draw or Import Artwork: Create or import the animation sequence you want to convert into a movie clip symbol.
2. Convert to Symbol: Select the animation art and choose “Convert to Symbol” from the “Insert” menu or press Ctrl+F8 (Windows) or Command+F8 (Mac).
3. Movie Clip Symbol Properties: In the “Symbol Properties” window, choose “Movie Clip Symbol” as the symbol type and enter a name for the symbol.
4. Timeline Options: In the “Timeline Options” section, you can set the looping behavior of the movie clip and whether it should play when inserted into the Stage.
5. Define Instances: Click on the “OK” button. The movie clip symbol will be created, and you can create movie clip instances by dragging and dropping the symbol onto the Stage.

Additional Tips for Using Symbols

1. Use Symbols Early and Often: Start incorporating symbols into your project from the beginning to streamline your workflow and maintain consistency.
2. Create Library Symbols: Group frequently used symbols into a library for easy access and management.
3. Leverage Advanced Properties: Utilize advanced symbol properties, such as “Mask” and “Transform”, to create more complex animations and interactions.