SO FAR WE’VE LOOKED at how to add a Drop Shadow filter to an animated character using a movie clip and the Filters feature. But the drop shadow can be a little limiting in some situations. To place a character in an environment that has more depth and perspective to it, the drop shadow will not work very well since it tends to flatten the perspective. You may need a shadow that provides the illusion of perspective and depth.
1 Select your Movie Clip instance and copy it using 
. Create a new layer below it and paste it in place using 
.
2 Lock the top layer to avoid editing it. Select the instance in the layer below it and, using the Free Transform tool 
, edit its center point so that it is positioned on the bottom edge.
3 Scale the symbol downward by dragging the handle in the top center. Notice that the center point positioned on the bottom edge limits that edge from scaling.
4 Next, skew the symbol by dragging in between the handles outside the top edge.
5 With the symbol still selected, apply a Drop Shadow filter to it.
6 The “cheat” to this technique is to select the Hide object feature. Now all you’ll see is the Shadow filter itself.
7 Play around with the options provided. You can adjust the amount of blur, opacity, quality, angle and distance. You can even change the overall color of the filter itself.
Hot Tip
Filters were introduced in Flash 8. Therefore the oldest player version to support filters is Flash Player version 8. You cannot publish to Flash Player version 7 or older and expect any filter effects to be included. Flash will warn you if your publish settings are set to a player that does not support filters. Plan ahead as much as you can. If your client requires an older player, then avoid filters.
