The spot light effect you see here is consist of the use of Layers, and Masking features of Flash.

What is that?
Masking is a special layer in Flash that creates a ‘hole’ through which one or more layers grouped under it are visible. Mask layers and the layers grouped under them can be treated in the same way as any other layer, in the sense that you can put whatever content you like on them, and manipulate that content with tweens that you had learned from the previously tutorial!

Let’s Practice how to Mask objects:

Create a new Flash movie with two layers, Click the Added layer button in the bottom of the timeline to add a new layer. Just to bail anyone from confusion, we will name the top layer mask and the bottom layer masked so that we won’t mix them up.

Draw a square (in silver) on the mask layer and a circle (in blue)on the masked layer like this:

Tip: Lock the layers that you are not currently working on. That way it would keep the work much cleaner and separated rather than mixing up objects and placing them in the wrong layer.

Select the mask layer and make it into a mask. (right click the layer name, and click on mask)

Flash MX or later users, from this point you are finish, since the new version of flash will automatically do the following process for you! Move on to the spotlight effect below.

Now select the masked layer and right click the layer name, then click on properties. Check the box that said Masked in the Type category.

The icons next to the layer names should have changed to indicate that these layers are mask and masked. But you won’t be able to activate the masking feature until you have locked all the masking layers, so click on the lock sign to lock all layers.

Create a new movie; adjust the background and the object so that the object would stand out. Here, we had created a text with a black background.

Name the layer with the text and background masked, then create another layer and name it mask. Be sure to move the layer mask to the top in the layer list.

In the mask layer, create a motion tween of an object. In this example, we have created a circle that will move through the text.

Let’s say we’ll end the circle animation at frame 15, drag both layers to frame 15, so that all the contents show up.

Finally, turn the mask layer into mask (right click>mask) and turn the masked layer into masked (right click> properties> check masked box). Lock both layers, and you are all set!