Animate characters in Flash

How-to
By published

Character animator Tom Baker takes you through the basics on how to import, set up and animate simple 2D characters in

Life is about progression. For those artistic types out there, your first dalliances into creativity might have been scribbling on a piece of paper with a pencil or crayon. Over the years, you may have progressed from pencil to pen, from pen to paint, and finally from paint to the graphics tablet. You can now produce images that would have dazzled your crayon-wielding former self, but why stop here? It's now time for you to take the next step: to make your characters move.

This project is ideal if you can create characters in either Illustrator or Photoshop, but have limited experience with Flash. Over the following steps, I demonstrate how simple it is to set up character files and simple animations in Flash, with minimal need for redraws using character 'setup' files created in Illustrator.

Latest Videos From Creative BloqCreative Bloq

Thank you for reading 5 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access

Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1

*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription

Join now for unlimited access

Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1

Creative Bloq Staff
Creative Bloq Staff
All things Creative Bloq

The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of art and design enthusiasts, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson, Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The ImagineFX magazine team also pitch in, ensuring that content from leading digital art publication ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.