how do I animate a man running?

[SuperGenius]

I am new to flash, and so i have a question. What I want to do is have a man run across the screen and then up the side, and flip over and land back in the middle of the screen. I understand about motion tweens and guides but what I am confused with is how to animate his legs, so that he has kneees... something like this.

[Paul]

you could always do the full action frame by frame, and then loop it
I have no idea what Im talking about lol

[SuperGenius]

the book that I have shows a similar situation, where you create a symbol (type: movie clip) of the legs and then use it in a symbol of the man, so you have a symbol within a symbol.

The trick is that it's confusing and I dont understand, though. Delta, could you help me with this?

[zylum]

if youre going to have a stick figure running then you dont need to have a seperater movie clip for each body part... if your person is going to be more complex then first draw each body part and convert it into a movie clip.

next you draw your man in his initial position (or arragne all the body parts if youre using MCs) and then make a new key frame.... then hit the onion skin button to show you what the previous fram looks like and then modifiy the current frame so that your man is in his next position of the running motion(make sure hes running in one place, you make him move later on)... the last fram should be one motion before the first frame, this way you will have a smoothe loop

after you are done the running loop, you can select and cut all the frames, make a new movie clip and then paste the loop in the new MC... this will allow you to easily duplicate the man and also it will allow you to move him across the screen while he goes throught the running motion...

[SuperGenius]

forgive my ignorance, but I'm stuck on this issue. Here is the file. I made a 4 frame symbol of him running, and then i dragged it onto the stage and made a simple motion tween but his legs don't move.

Edit: where is my attatchment... oh it says "extension .fla not allowed"
I realize that this file can have code in it which could be made into a malicious file, but I think it would be convenient to allow it in a flash forum.

[zylum]

zip it then post it

[Delta]

Ok try something similar to what Zylum said. But with minor changes.
Do this :

1 Create your stickman.
2 Make him a symbol, like Prince ( Movie Clip )
3 then double click on him.
4 make a new keyframe.
5 turn on onion skin.
6 then move his legs and arms.
7 repeat 4 + 6 until you have your running animation.
8 then create a motion tween up to the left side
9 create a another motion tween of him rotating onto the wall.
10 running up the wall
11 rotating onto the ceiling
12 flipping over whatever
13 then boom! your done.


I'm not sure if thats what you wanted but ya. lol. No file to work with yet so I'm out for now.

[SuperGenius]

i got it. the problem was that I didn't know I had to press Control > Test Movie to see the movie run properly.

[zylum]

lol, all you need to do to test is hit CTRL+ENTER

[SuperGenius]

zylum wrote:

lol, all you need to do to test is hit CTRL+ENTER

yep. This is one of those situations where I feel stupid...