Flash CS4 Bone Tool Introduction

In this tutorial, we will draw four ovals and connect them together with the Flash^R Bone tool.

Set Stroke color to null and Fill color to black.
On the first layer, use the Oval tool to draw a small oval. This will be one section of the four ovals.
With the Selection too, right-click on the new oval and Convert to Symbol. Give the oval a name of "Segment", set Type to Movie Clip and Registration to the center.
In the Properties panel, give the oval an Instance Name of "Segment1".
Now you can find the Segment movie clip in the Library. Drag a second instance of the Segment movie clip onto the stage and place it end to end with the first movie clip. Give it an Instance Name of "Segment2".
Click on this second oval with the Free Transform tool, shrink this oval a little while keeping it end to end with the other. You may need to reposition them together.
Repeat this for two more segments, shrinking both a little more. Your end segment should be the smallest. Give these an Instance Name of "Segment3" and "Segment4".

Now we will connect these segments together with the Bone tool.
Click on the center of the first segment with the Bone tool and, while holding down the mouse button, drag to the center of the second segment. Stop and release the mouse button. Now these two segments are connected. Repeat this by connecting the center of the second segment to the center of the third and then the center of the third segment with the center of the fourth.
If you click and drag on the end with the Selection tool, you will see that the segments move together. Also, notice that we have a new layer in the Timeline called "Armature_1". Flash made this for us when we connected the segments with the Bone tool.

For an advanced animation, we would now constrain the movements of the joints in the Properties panel.

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