Menorah for Hanukkah

[WolfMoonHP]

I decided to try to make a Flash-animated Menorah for my Jewish friends, so I started by Googling Menorah Images. I found one I liked, then started to make a vector image in XtremePro. Got everything done, used bevels, shading, fades, etc. Then remembered I can't do that in Flash, so I made a bitmap copy.

Next, I made the candle flames with Alien Skin's Plug-in, but couldn't use Live Effects in Flash. So I made eight slightly different flames, made bitmap copies of them, named them, and alightly altered them between frames. (elongated, shortened, widened, thinned, rotated, etc., to create the illusion of movement.

So far so good. Then I went to Google to find the order in which the candles were to be lit.

This is when I had a panic attack!

The first site I found said a Menorah had nine candles. Mine had only seven!

Then I found other sites saying that some have seven, some have nine and there is a difference in symbolism.

I am SO confused. Anyway, I'm posting my seven-candle Menorah in Flash, along with the .xar file, if anyone is interested.

And I'd really love to know the difference between the two.
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Will

[WolfMoonHP]

And I don't know what the heck happened there...I did enter the actual dimensions of the XAR file in the text section, and I promise the Menorah was not miniature in my flash preview!

If anyone can tell me where I screwed up, I'd appreciate it!
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Will

[GeoBen]

A standard menorah has either six or seven branches. Those in the original Jerusalem temple had seven. when it was destroyed, they changed to six so that they would not seem to be defiling the original (no, i don't get that either, but...). Most today again have seven.

a channukah menorah has nine, to celebrate the 8 days of the 'miracle of the lamp' and one to hold the 'lighter' which symolizes the 'one days oil' that lit 'eight days lamps'.

cant comment on Flash. Perhaps Sally will sally by.

geo.

[WolfMoonHP]

Bill (Soquili) suggested that I try ClipView on all frames of the animation and re-post. Here we go!
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Will

[WolfMoonHP]

GeoBen...

Thanks for the information. I still don't know what went wrong with the animation. My page size shows in Xtreme Pro as HUGE. And it won't let me reduce the size.

Back to the drawing board!
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Will

[Egg Bramhill]

Will,

I think it's got something to do with Live Effects. I've pulled your xar apart and there's no rougue elements that I can find. Even in Xtreme if you make all layers visible & eitable and select all, zoom to selection you don't just zoom in to the shapes.

[Availor]

Hey thanks for the consideration Will

[Egg Bramhill]

Will,

I coulnn't find the error in that xar file and I didn't have the plug-in. What I've managed to do is rebuild another xar file and export your animation from new. Whatever was creating the odd page size has gone. I do get AVE errors with this xar file but it exports okay.

[WolfMoonHP]

Will,

I coulnn't find the error in that xar file and I didn't have the plug-in. What I've managed to do is rebuild another xar file and export your animation from new. Whatever was creating the odd page size has gone. I do get AVE errors with this xar file but it exports okay.

Egg...You're my hero.

I have spent hours trying to figure out what went wrong with my posting. I was really proud of my animation (I'm strictly a beginner, but very enthusiastic about learning!

When I've done other animagions (all four of them, so far, when I converted it to Flash, it was the actual size of my design, fut for some reason, this one went crazy!

Thanks again for fixing my problem!
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Will

[Egg Bramhill]

Will,

I don't think I fixed the problem. I think you used tweens in yours but mine doesn't tween, just runs rapidly through a sequence of still bitmaps as per an animated gif.

I thought the Menorah was a good idea and wanted to see if I could rebuild it so your work could be embedded on the forum.