Animation/Symbol problem

Question

Hi,
Im new so please forgive me, Im having a problem with
creating a cyclic animation for a comedy horse. I want to create
the animation, with its own timeline and import that to the stage,
where i can then animate the self contained clip across the stage.
So, ive got a blank stage, inserted an empty symbol (movie
clip), then in symbol editing mode ive created my animation
completely from movie clip symbols... breath...
So when i return to the empty stage, i import my animated
symbol and if i double click it, i can see my animated frames. Back
to stage, insert frames on my timeline and motion tween between
them, and...... nothing. My animation simply '' tweens'' across the
stage, but without the original moving body parts.
Ive also tried another method, where I created the animation
using lyers of symbols for the seperate elements, and then tried to
create an animated symbol from those layers and prserve the
animated features when i put it onto a new stage.
Im obviously going about this the wrong way, can anyone help?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The animation of the horse moving its legs should be a
movieclip symbol. This symbol can contain a series of frames where
each frame shows the body parts slightly different from the next
frame, like a film strip or a book where you doodle in the corner
of each page and then flip thru them to see movement. The pieces
within each frame can be symbols or simply drawn elements. You
should be able to place this on the stage, select Control ->
Test Movie and see it animating in place.
The animation of that movieclip symbol moving across the
stage could be a tweened animation, where you place the symbol at
one end of the stage in the first frame, and then another instance
of it at the other end of the stage for a frame somewhere down the
timeline and add a motion tween to the first frame.
As long as you are then selecting Control -> Test Movie,
you should see the horse galloping across the stage.
If that's what you think you have, then something got missed,
so what you might try is to make something much simpler and get
that working first, such as a square spinning. You don't need to
use a symbol for the individual frames, you can just draw a square
and for each frame have it rotated 45 degrees.