adobe animate eraser doesnt work logically...

[dominoshore]

hi, im trying to make a simple animation of an eye with a tear slowly dripping down from it. i have the final image, the eye with a full tear coming down from it. in my head what i want to do is erase the tear bit by bit, frame by frame, and then reverse it all so its the right way. however animate doesnt wanna work like that, and every time i try and erase something it just pops straight back. what am i doing wrong??? i've imported the eye from photoshop and made it into a symbol. why doesnt it just work like you'd expect?! someone please help, this is driving me mad!!

[kglad]

select the object you want to erase. > modify > break apart.  now erase

[dominoshore]

thanks for the help. thats definitely a start. is there anyway to edit it on the stage so i dont have to keep going in and out of it, dragging it back into place each time. i should explain that i have the eye and the tear as 2 separate things. 

[kglad]

i don't know why you wouldn't be able to edit it on stage

[dominoshore]

when i do break apart on stage the image disappears completely

[kglad]

what is the symbol type of that object?

[dominoshore]

its a graphic, i assume that's what you mean. Im only very new to this!

[kglad]

do you want to edit all instances of that graphic?

[dominoshore]

i guess so yeh. i just want to remove a bit of it in each frame so the tear is disappearing bit by bit if that makes sense

[kglad]

why is it a graphic symbol?

is there animation on its timeline?

[dominoshore]

no idea. it doesnt really have a timeline. its an image i created in PS and imported as a symbol. Is there a better way to import the image from PS? should i import it as something other than a graphic symbol??

thanks so much for your time and help btw!

[kglad]

it doesn't much matter.  you can adjust things after the import to best suit your needs.

in general, it's a good idea to creat a symbol of some kind from anything that's going to be used on more than 1 frame.  if nothing else it preserves things in a library symbol that can always be accessed.

anyway, you have something on your main timeline.  when you double click it you're taken to another timeline (the symbol's timeline) where you can erase the way you want, correct?

if so, and you want to do that erasing on the main timeline, copy what's on symbol's timeline and paste that into a layer/frame on the main timeline.

[dominoshore]

ok, il have ago and see if that solves it, thanks!

[kglad]

btw, you should be saving your fla project file with increasing version number appended and periodically closing and opening the latest version to confirm your fla's not corrupt.

ie, project1.fla > project1_v000.fla, project1_v001.fla etc