Here’s a new Flash extension I put together based a question from Chris Georgenes’ helpful new Ask Chris section of his popular Keyframer blog.

This extension adds two items to the Commands menu in Flash:

• COLOR – match Fill to Stroke
• COLOR – match Stroke to Fill

I recommend adding keyboard shortcuts to really make these commands useful.

Download

(compatible back to Flash MX 2004)
COLOR – Unify Stroke and Fill.mxp

As promised, Adobe Flash CS4 appears to have added some really great features for animators. Chris Georgenes has a great run-down.

The vCam was a camera tool for Flash created by Sham Bhangal, primarily for the work of Adam Phillips. It’s intuitive and easy to use, and creates some excellent effects. It appears as though it’s now being maintained by Bryan Heisey. Bryan’s got an AS2 version, an AS3 version for better performance, and an interactive AS3 version.

This is a handy-dandy animation plug-in similar to Animonger’s AnimSlider, except that it uses frame labels and requires no other setup.

Update: The video tutorial is now live. See the extension in action!

I picked up this style of lip syncing in Flash from Chris Georgenes’ tutorial.

Update (8/26/09): A savvy user caught a stage refresh bug introduced in Flash CS4 with AS3. If you’re using Flash CS4 & AS3 and the symbol isn’t updating when you select a new frame from the panel, download the most recent version below (1.0.3 has the fix).

Update (8/16/10): Version 2.0 now has some great new features, including a “keyframe” mode, audio playback and frame navigation for Flash CS5, and performance improvements. See this post for more details on the updates.

Update (10/5/10): Check out SmartMouth, the new extension that automatically lip syncs.

Update (11/19/10): See Chris Georgenes demo FrameSync in his MAX 2010 Animation session.

Download

(compatible with Flash MX 2004 & up)

FrameSync.mxp

Finally put together animation reel…

Just as you were getting used to CS3…

I can’t say that I’m not looking forward to it after seeing the new features previewed at Flash Forward.

Just found this funny nerd cartoon on SuperDeluxe, check it out.

While you’re there, though it’s not animation, Maria Bamford’s series is fantastically funny.