sorry for the late reply.
there are three easy ways to make a actor 'appear'.
1. create actor
This can be done using events or directly in the script
eg: CreateActor("test", "icon", "(none)", "(none)", 0, 0, false);
see the script reference for more info
http://game-editor.com/docs/script_reference.htm2. have the actor suddenly 'move' from off screen to onscreen
that is have your actor somewhere off the game screen and simply change its x and y coordinates to make it 'appear' on screen
3. have the actor in place already but have its transparency set to 1.0 ( fully transparent)
then to suddenly appear set transparency to 0.
this can be done using the changetransparency events or in the script
eg: ChangeTransparency("Event Actor", 1.000000);
again see script reference for more info.
To attach to a key press
The easiest way is to use the keydown event.
next: to make the character disappear.
essentially reverse the method of appearing
eg: destroy actor
or move back off screen
or change transparency to 1.0
if this should happen immediately after the key is released you can use the key up event
to have this occur over a few frames you will need to create a variable, then add 1 to it each frame
then use something like
if (i>10)
{
DestroyActor("Event Actor");
}
you can also use timers there is a good built in tutorial with GE that shoes how to use these..
select Help->Events and Actions->Timers
hope that helps