Home Flowers Butterflies Insects Bonus Effects

Desinging and Animating Ladybirds with Adobe Flash

In this page you will find everything you need to know about how to create a Ladybird in Flash, so open the program and prepare to do some drawing. When the shape is done, you can do a simple animation as we did. This is simple so read carefully.

As you can see in the animation above, there are few simple steps and remember that all the graphic shapes were build only with the oval tool, line tool and fill tool. After you read about one step, click the "next step" button in the animation.

Step by Step:

in step one, you have to draw, on a layer, an oval shape closer to a circle, and you have to change it's interior color into a radial gradient, as you can see in the Clip above;

step 2: create a small gap in the upper part of the oval, by using two lines over it, to determine the desired region; then by clicking inside that section, you should be able to delete it, and the lines also;

in step three you have to use the line tool to separate the body as you see in the animation, to give the impression of the wings; draw the lines and then curve them by dragging from their middle; do this on another upper layer;

in step four you have to fill the shape from step three with the same color as the lines; just press swap colors and use the fill tool;

in step five and six, create two oval shapes and place them as you see in the Animation; use a darker red as color; use different layers;

in step seven start drawing the head with the line tool, then curve the lines to surround the desired area; use another upper layer;

in step eight fill the region from step seven with a radial black to mach with the body;

in the last six steps you have to create the legs, using curved lines; each one on a different layer;

So the shape is finished and beautifully arranged on layers, so now we can start animating. We only made the legs to move, but you can do much more.

Ho we did it? Well each leg is a simple curved line. To move it, we had to convert it into a Movie Clip, and that one into another, because the motion has to be independent from the rest of the ensemble. So inside the first Movie Clip, we set the rotation center to the end of the line that's under the body and by using a simple Tween Motion we rotate it in one way and back. We recommend using an arrangement of legs, as you see in the Animation above. Download the zip file and you will also get this animation, so you can study it.

Now the rest is simple. If you put all we discussed into a Movie Clip and move it up slowly, you will get something as in our first animation. Hope you like our ladybird, enjoy the rest.

Donwload this sample

Download Flash file

FlashNatureEffects.WebArticles.Org is not affiliated with Adobe Systems Incorporated, USA. Adobe Flash is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc in the USA and/or other countries. The purpose of this website is to provide information about nature inspired Flash effects.