Create a Simple Butterfly Animation using Flash

This flash tutorial has 3 parts:

Part 1: How to draw a butterfly for flash animation

Part 2: How to animate butterflies wings

Part 3: How to create the flight pattern for butterfly animations, as well as troubleshooting and animating tips

A couple of pointers before we begin animating:

The trickiest part of making butterfly animations is getting the erratic and stylish flight pattern right. Your butterfly can be a stylish fantasy or a cute animation for a toddler show - either way, they fly like crazy!

As an animator, think about 3 things:

Butterflies are very light weight, and every little air current sets them off.
They have huge wings compared to their body size.
They flutter those wings very quickly.

Got butterflies in your stomach? :-)
OK, let's get on the runway:

PART 1 - How to Draw a Butterfly

For this tutorial we'll design a simple butterfly, just to show the principles of animating it in Flash.

Step 1: Make one wing

Most flash animations start the same way:

Draw a rectangle :)
Using the black arrow tool, push and pull at the edges to create a roundish trapeze.
Add a circle of different color.

Turn your creation into a Graphic Symbol. To do this- press F8, select graphic, name it "wing".

Select the wing on the Stage with the Free Transform Tool(Q on your key board (KB for short)). Place the pivot at the narrow end.

Step 2: Make the second wing

Select the object on Stage.
Hold down ALT on KB (Key Board).
Drag, and drop.
Select the bottom wing and in the properties window select – Brightness -15%, to make it slightly darker.

Step 3: Draw the body

Now, this used to be a caterpillar:

Draw an ellipse using the ellipse tool. A shade darker than the wings would look nice.
Nudge its edges with the black arrow to make a sausage shape.
Add circle for head.
Add feelers – two circles and two lines.
Select the whole body drawing and convert it to a Graphic Symbol (F8).
Leave the pivot in the middle.
Place the body between the wings, using CTRL + the KB arrows.