We are going to introduce you to an effect that's a lot of fun to use. Items on the Flash stage are rarely static. Things move around, menus pull down, and so on. The line between what is Flash and what is video on the Flash stage has, for all intents and purposes, been erased. It makes sense, therefore, that when planning a Flash/After Effects project, that the stuff that moves, in either app, should be indistinguishable as to its source.

In this exercise, we're going to explore this concept. There is going to be motion on the Flash stage, and there is going to be text in motion in After Effects. The Flash movie will be prepared in such a way that the user can't tell which is video and which is a Flash object.
Best of all, the resulting SWF file will be less than 5K in size, meaning it should play rather quickly.

Before you start, you'll have some fun and learn how to use the Wiggler.

Text has certain properties in the timeline. What the Wiggler does is to add a degree of randomness to those properties. What you can do with this feature is have text bend, move, blur, shake, spin, and so on by changing the parameters for the effect. Where the randomness enters the picture is in how the effect is applied.

The parameters are the outer limit. This means the effect can be applied to text, and it will change using any value up to the limit you set. For example, you can enter your name to a text layer and use the Wiggler to set the maximum distance between the letters in your name to 50% of the start position. When the movie plays, each letter in your name will move any distance from 1% to 50%. This means the first letter in your name may move only a short distance while the third letter moves to the top of the Comp.
OK, let's have some fun:

1.  Launch After Effects and create a new Comp named MyName that is 320x240 pixels in size, uses Square Pixels, has a frame rate of 30 fps, and has a duration of 0:00:10:00.
2.  Set the background color to #FFFFFF (white).
3.  Select the Text tool, click the Comp once, and enter your name. Use a font, size, and font color of your choosing.
4.  Twirl down the Text layer on the timeline and click the Animate button on the layer strip. A pull-down menu will appear and show you all of the properties than can be animated. Select All Transform Properties. When you release the mouse, a new animator named Animator 1 will appear on the timeline.
5.  On the Animator 1 strip is a button named Add. When you click this button, you will see a pull-down menu asking you to choose between a Property or a Selector. Click Selector and choose Wiggly as shown in Figure 1. When you make your selection, all of the properties that can be "wiggled" will be listed in the Wiggly Selector that appears on the timeline.

If you drag the playback head across the timeline, you're in for a bit of a disappointment. Nothing happens because all of the default properties for the Wiggly Selector are set to 0.

Let's fix that and figure out what you can do with this effect.

Click each of the Position values once and drag the mouse. The value on the left moves the letters on the X axis, and the value on the right moves them on the Y axis.

What you are seeing is the start position for the effect, and the values you have in the Position area are the maximum values the letters can move. Drag the playback head across the timeline, and the letters in your name will bounce around the Comp. Reset the Position values to 0.

Click-drag the Scale value. If you scrub across the timeline, the letters in your name will appear to pulsate. When you drag the mouse across the values, notice both values remained equal. This is due to the lock icon — it looks like a chain link — beside them. If you click the lock, you can change the scale values so they are independent of each other. When you've finished playing with this, click the lock and reset the values to 100%.

Click-drag the Skew value. When you scrub across the timeline, your name jiggles as though it were made of jelly. Reset the value to 0.

The Rotate and Skew Axis properties have two values: a number and a rotation degree value. The number determines how many rotations will occur, and the degree value determines how the text will rotate. Set the Rotation number value to 2 and the degree value to 45. If you scrub across the timeline, the letters in your name will, for want of a better description, appear to jitter. Reset the Rotation values to 0.

Now that you've played with the properties, let's take a look at the selections under the Wiggly Selector. Twirl it down, as shown in Figure 2, and you will see the following:
• Mode: This pull-down determines how the selector should be combined with the objects above it in the timeline. This one is rather complex, so we will leave it alone.
• Max Amount, Min Amount: These two options specify the range for the selector. For example, assume you change the Position property values to 40, 45. If you scrub the timeline, the letters in your name will bounce around the screen. Some letters will move up and down, while others move right and left. The Min Amount and Max Amount properties will move things down and to the right. The Min Amount will move them up and to the left and are the range for the movement.
• Based On: This pull-down applies the wiggle based on a variety of choices ranging from individual letters to text blocks.
• Wiggles/Second: High values speed things up. Low values slow them down.
• Correlation: In many respects, this control applies kerning to the letters in motion. A value of 0 applies different values to each letter, and a value of 100% applies the same amount to each letter. Smaller percentages will pull the letters closer to each other.
• Temporal Phase: The key word here is temporal. The value you set here changes the timing of the wiggles in the effect. The first number determines the number of revolutions per second that will be applied, and the second number is the degrees through which the selection will rotate.
• Spatial Phase: Functions in a manner similar to the temporal phase but moves each character. In many respects, it's similar to running a wave through the text.
• Lock Dimensions: Scales the wiggled selection's dimensions by the same value. This is useful when wiggling the Scale property and the values need to be uniform.
• Random Seed: Enter a value to change the starting time for the animation by that value. When the seed is left at 0, a default value is derived based on the layer index and stream path.

6.  Now that you understand what the controls can do, apply these Wiggly Selector values to your name:

• Max Amount: 100%
• Min Amount: -100%
• Based On: Characters
• Wiggles/Second: 2.5
• Position: 45, 45
• Scale: 50, 50%
• Rotation: 0 x +30 degrees