This tutorial will walk you through how to make a movie clip follow your mouse cursor.

1. Open new movie.

2. In first keyframe type out text of your choice. For this example I have chosen to use text that says "FlashPlanet".

3. Now you want to turn this text into a graphic symbol. Select the text and press F8. By default Graphic Symbol will be selected so you need only name your symbol at this point. I chose to name it "text".

4. Once your graphic symbol is created, you want to create a movie clip with some subtle animation, so making sure your new symbol is selected, press F8 again. This time name your symbol "text clip" and select Movie Clip before pressing OK.

5. At this point we should take a moment to name our first layer that now contains the "text clip" Movie Clip. A simple layer name like text clip will be fine.

6. Now we want to edit our movie clip. Select the "text clip" symbol that is on stage and right click it. Choose Edit In Place from the popup menu choices. This will keep you working on the main stage but in the movie clip's timeline. Name Layer 1 "text", then click on keyframe 10 followed by pressing F6 to insert a keyframe. On keyframe 10 now, select your text symbol, right click, select Properties then Color Effects.  Now select Tint, choose a color and set Tint amount to 100%.
Now click on keyframe 20 then press F6 again to insert keyframe again. Right click "text" symbol again > Properties > Color Effects > None.

7. Next, create your Motion Tweens by right clicking on the timeline anywhere between keyframes 1 and 10, right click and select Create Motion Tween. Then repeat this process between keyframes 10 and 20. Now you should have a one layer timeline that has a simple color effect applied to the "text" symbol.

8. Now we need to add another layer to this movie clip's timeline. After you add a layer, name this new layer Action Script. Then in the first keyframe of the Action Script layer double click on keyframe 1, select Actions tab then Drag Movie Clip option. Make sure that Start Drag Operation is selected then in the Target field enter this: GetProperty (_x,_y) now make sure expression is selected to the right of the Target field and check Lock mouse to center option before pressing OK.

9. Now you can return to your main timeline and test your Follow Mouse movie (Ctrl+enter). If you have not already done so, now would also be a great time to save this movie for further reference. Remember that this is a very basic example and obviously can be built upon and or changed to create exactly what you need for your projects. 

This tutorial was created by Megan Stevens for FlashPlanet.com January 2000

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