This is the type of movie you can make in FreeHand without too much trouble. Basically, type is set and extruded with the Extrude tool. A bevel profile is used to extend the gold extrusion in front of the actual text. Then the text is modified to fit "inside" the extrusion. The reflection from a spotlight is created and blended in as many steps as necessary for the effect (there are less than ten blend steps in this animation, but 37 layers overall). Then the blend is converted into an animation: Xtras > Animate > Release to Layers. The letters are then cloned as a compound path and a clone is placed on each new layers. Each layer will be a frame in the movie. Hide all the layers, then one layer at a time, make it visible; cut the reflection, and choose Edit > Paste Inside (Paste Contents on a PC). When you're done, you can add more layers with clones of the text objects alone to add a time factor to the animation. The extrusion was released (Modify > Extrude > Release Extrusion), and the various planes were combined and given a gradient fill. The rendered extrusion was then placed on the Background layer above a black rectangle. Anything beneath the separator bar in the Layers panel will be on every frame of the final movie. The extrusion is pretty intense for Flash to draw and redraw, so placing anything that doesn't have to move on the Background layer simplifies the movie greatly and increases speed. Test the movie (Window > Movie > Test) and return to FreeHand to tweak and fine-tune the movie. Then export the file as a SWF file, in the Settings panel, choose Single for Pages, and Animate for Layers. Adjust the frame rate as you see fit. This movie uses 8 frames per second. There are other tips and tricks that were used that you can read about in MXDJ magazine.
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