Preloader steps

View the example preloader here

1. In your head, break up your flash movie up into parts any way you like. The preloader is within the whole movie, starting before anything in the flash movie you want people to see is played.  In a new layer at frame 1 start the preloader section, add twice as many keyframes as the number of parts you want your movie to be made up of. 10 parts will be used here (so 20 keyframes), and the animation will have 100 frames total, 10 for each part and 80 frames will contain the actual flash movie people are to see. Remember, you want to add these frames for the preloader onto the existing movie you made, so the total number of frames will be more.  Don't have the movie part you want people to see at frame 1 after you have added the preloader frames.

Each section of the preloader part of your movie will have paired frames which will check a specific part of the whole animation to make sure it is loaded (1 with 2, 3 with 4, 5 with 6, 7, with 8, 9 with 10, 11 with 12, 13 with 14, 15 with 16, 17 with 18, and 19 with 20).  The first one goes to the next section in the preoloader when the section of the whole animation it pertains to is fully loaded, and another one creates a loop to repeat checking until that part of the whole animation is loaded.  Think of the preloader as a wind up toy, it can't stop.  So, instead you have to keep checking the first frame (of just the pair, not the whole movie) before it can go to the next pair.

2. Frames 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19 mark the beginning of each pair.  Decide how you want your preloader to appear.  In this it will count by 10's, representing percentages of the whole animation.  Frame 1 will have 0% to start off, then 3, will have 10, followed by 5 with 20, etc...

3. Make a series of single loops to go from the second frame to the first frame in each section of the preloader.

At frame 2, select the frame action to go back to 1 and play. Continue this step until all the even numbered frames are directed to the odd numbered frame preceding it (4 to 3, 6 to 5, etc..)

4. Make note of the sections in your whole flash movie. In here it is 100.

At frame 1, select the frame action "If frame is loaded", then select on the right where it shows "frame number" and put in the last frame number for the first section. In this example, it is 10.

Select the frame action to goto 3. This will start the next loop. Make sure "Control" on the bottom right is selected to play.

Repeat step 4 until all odd numbered frames advance to the next odd numbered frame. (frame 3 correlates here with 10 frames; 5:20, 7:30, 9:40, 11:50, 13:60, 15:70, 17:80, 19:90). At the last loop, it can show 100% completion then play the movie, or just direct it to the movie.

5. You can choose to have a graphic animation and/or text. In this preloader, both are used. There are many ways to alter how you want it to appear.  You can incorporate animation or simply still shots.  If you choose a series of still shots, make sure you add keyframes where you want them to appear.  Do the graphics part first if you choose to do both and position the text at the end. Make a new layer for just the graphics, and put the graphic in frame 1, or if you don't want anything to appear in the first frame, bring it in frame 3. This one has alpha set to zero and starts in frame 1.

6. Add text the same way you did the graphics. Just make sure to make a new layer so you can adjust the postioning and edit either later if need be.

It's always best when learning to make symbols, you can finish many parts without symbols, but it makes it more confusing if you aren't used to it.  Keep it simple to begin with, then elaborate.  Think out what you want to appear before you try to make it appear.