Hypnotic gear rotation tutorial

I'm not sure what inspired me to do this crazy gear rotating animation, but for some reason I just started making a simple gear in flash, then what does a gear do? well it rotates!.

So enough for the introduction, here you can see how to make a gear in flash, then animate it so it rotates, make a couple of copies and the result might seem a bit hypnotic as I think it did.

Start by making an oval on the stage as shown below, then make 4 more ovals, smaller and place them as shown below.

gear rotation flash tutorial

Select all the four small ovals, make a copy and rotate it so we now a 8 following around the big oval shape.

gear rotation flash tutorial

Now if you delete all the small ovals, your shape should look like below.

gear rotation flash tutorial

One last thing to do with the shape is to make on big hole in the middle using the same method as before.

Right click your new gear shape and convert it to a movie clip.

gear rotation flash tutorial

In the timeline make a new keyframe at frame 10, right click between frame 1 and 10, choose motion tween.

gear rotation flash tutorial

Go to the properties panel and change the rotation from auto (default) to CW (clock wise).

flash tutorial

gear rotation flash tutorial

Once again right click your shape and convert it to a movie clip, (so we have an movie clip animation in a movie clip).

Make a copy of your gear, double click it and go to the properties, change the rotation from CW to CCW.

That last thing I did was make a lot of copies, placing them next to each other, testing and testing, so they rotate in oppisit direction to make it look right.

If you have a hard time making it work, here is the Flash project file to help you get the gear rotation working.

dinesh says: 2008-06-25

very interesting and nice

dinesh says: 2008-06-25

very interisting

mohammed boland says: 2008-05-11

i love you guys i forgot to write back i love amroo a lot and ak and i am sorry about what iw

Mousa Behbehani says: 2008-05-11

hey guys back again, thanks for the great tutorial inlove with u guys

mohammed boland says: 2008-05-11

i love you guys so much and hope to see u soon ilike my friend Ak which is my best friend and i love him a lot you are my best friends

Ali Abdelkarim says: 2008-05-08

What a great tutorial, thWith Love to all of u AK!

Admin Bob says: 2008-04-30

hi Roger, its hard to say where you did something wrong, but I will upload the project files for you to see later, (I just have to find it in my archive first) so check back tomorrow and it should be there.

Roger says: 2008-04-29

Confused about something. At some point you say to convert the gear to a movie clip, which I did. Then you say copy it and double click to set motion property to CCW. My copy of the gear movie clip only shows up in the frame 10 keyframe. How do I copy the movieclip such that the motion tween is part of the movie clip and a copy gives me 2 animated movie clips I am clearly missing something here, and that one sentence covers a huge amount of ground with not much explanatory detail. Another clue, perhaps Thanks.

MArio says: 2008-04-29

Hi, I think your gear animation is kinda cool. Can I use it in my website My email is ripperton08@hotmail.com Thanks

Admin Bob says: 2008-03-27

hi Alex, the easy way is to make the animation go over more frames in the timeline, mine is about 10, so set it to 20 frames and it will slow down by half

flash Game maker says: 2008-03-21

Your animation is quite good and hipnostic ya no!

Alex says: 2008-03-24

How do you make it go slower Mine is really speedy.

me says: 2008-03-18

my gear is cute!

ruben says: 2008-03-08

i like it thanks

Admin Bob says: 2008-03-02

hi Jerome, hmm yah, I see I forgot the file hehe, I will upload it later today. Sorry

Jerome says: 2008-02-27

Where is the file you said was downloadable "If you have a hard time making it work, here is the Flash project file to help you get the gear rotation working." I would quite like to download it.

Rotsss says: 2008-02-25

did you want a little stop in youre flash animation because that shouldnt be there...

Flash programing beginer says: 2008-02-15

I think I was downloading the wrong one it seems to be working now. Thanks

Admin Bob says: 2008-02-14

hi Flash Programming Beginner, sorry I must have missed your comment. Well the reason you cant make games or animations is, that what you have is a player only to play animation and games, you will need a program called adobe flash to make stuff. and its quite expensive, but I know you can get a 30 days trial version. try adobe.com

Flash Programming Beginner says: 2008-02-14

Sorry my last post was so long.

Flash Programming Beginner says: 2008-02-14

Admin Bob: Anytime I try to download adobe flash plyer for example it says that IChr(34)ve downloaded it already but there is nothing on my computer that will let me make any games. I was also trying to ask what program is used in this tutorial so that I could try and use that.

Admin Bob says: 2008-02-02

Hi Flash programing beginer, well try to explain what the problem is and I will try to help you.

udayraj says: 2008-01-31

good one

Flash programing beginer says: 2008-01-29

What flash program do you use I canChr(34)t find anything that looks even half decent.

Jovaniz says: 2008-01-25

Thanks!

kamal says: 2008-01-25

nice one.

=) says: 2008-01-21

eheh its nicey dicey! =)

Rananjai says: 2008-01-08

K nvm got it. I think you should write to copy the new gear in another layer!

Rananjai says: 2008-01-08

It doest work out for me after copying it. I cant get the option for rotating for the copied wheel!