Flash CS4 Professional Advanced for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide

Chapter 1. Building Complexity

The key to creating complex animations in Flash is to build them from simpler parts. You should think of your Flash project as being a collection of simpler motions, just as the movement of a runner is essentially a collection of rotating limbs. Isolating individual components of a much larger, complicated motion allows you to treat each component with the most appropriate technique, simplifies the tweening, and gives you better control with more refined results.

To animate a runner, for example, you would first consider how to simplify the animation into separate motions. Animating the entire sequence at the same time would be impossible, because the many elements making up the motion change in different ways as ...