Animating “Bones”

Animating “Bones” is a piece of cake which I have already shown you.

I have a movie clip of a spider placed on the “Stage”. When I double-click it, I get to see the spider symbol in the edit window.

This symbol is composed of two layers, a layer called “legs” and another called “body”.

Each leg has the same “Movie clip symbol” called “leg animation.”

This leg is composed of two symbols, an upper and a lower part of a leg on the same layer.

Now we add some animation to this leg.

Double-click any symbol or the “leg animation” symbol, no matter what, they’re all the same.

This brings you into the edit window of the “leg animation” symbol(1).

The first thing you do is add a “Bone” structure to the leg.

This places the two parts of the leg into a new layer, namely the “Armature_3” layer.

The layer of the legs which have become empty will need to be removed. We had all already seen how to do this in the previous lesson.

Next, add a number of frames to the “Armature_3” layer, in this case 20.

Now we have to have a frame for each position of the leg.

Place the play button in frame 5, and change the position of the leg (2). I’d call it a “Pose”.

Repeat this procedure for frame 10, 15 and 20 (3).

To remove a “Pose” from the “Timeline”, right-click it and choose “Delete Pose” from the pop-up menu.

You can change the the attitude of a “Pose” at any moment, by selecting the frame and the position of the pose.

To change a certain part of the “Bone” structure, drag the part with the “Selection” tool (4) while holding down the Ctrl button on your keyboard.

 

Apply “Gear” to “Poses”

We can also apply animation between two “Poses” with the “Gear” set.

Select above the first “Pose” in the “Armature_3” layer in which you want to insert a “Gear”, and open the “Properties window”

Here also, you will find the same options. “Strength” and “Type” which we saw in a previous lesson that I had already explained, so it is unnecessary to repeat this.You can set “Gears” for each individual “Pose”.

 

 

Test your “Flash” movie by clicking the ” Ctrl+ Enter” on your keyboard.
It seems that the spider is ready to swim. In the next lesson , we consider moving those legs separately.

 

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