How to Make a Bee Fly in Flash CS3 or CS4 – Part 2

Recently we posted the first part of this tutorial, on how to make a Bee fly.
In this post (part 2) we will add a motion guide to the Bee, and by that really make the Bee fly from spot to spot.

A recap, at the end of the first part we left out Bee flapping it’s wings in place. Here is how this looked:

Now, lets continue:

In this tutorial we will do 3 things:

1. Create a guide layer
2. Add the guide using the Pen Tool
3. Hock the Bee symbol to both ends of the guide
4. Connect the two keyframes we create with a motion tween in order to make the Bee fly from spot to spot.

Step 1

So here we go, we now need to create the Guide Layer as well as the path on which the Bee will move as it goes from point A to point B.

We start by right-clicking on the layer that contains the Bee Movie Clip and choose Add MotionGuide. Flash responses by creating a layer above the Bee layer. In this layer we are going to draw the guide using the Pen Tool.

This is how the layers stack up once we create a Motion Guide layer:

Step 2

In the New layer we created, we draw a path using the Pen Tool. We can curve the path however way we want and as many times as we deem right as long as at the end of the process we have a path on which our Bee will be flying from spot to spot.

This is how our stage will look once we drew the path that would serve as our motion guide (keep in mind, at this stage the Bee is not connected to the Motion Guide it will use to fly:

Step 3

Now we need connect or “hock” the Bee to both ends of the Guide.

We’ll grab the Bee and drag The Bee object (which sits in the lower of the two layer), to the beginning point of the guide (which for us will be at the top left corner. You’ll notice that as soon as the Bee is close to the guide line it snaps into place. That snapping is how you know you’re doing this right.

Once the origin point is snapped, we do the same to the end point. It is important to remember to have two separate KeyFrames on the Bee layer, one representing the point of origin and one the destination. Only if you have two separate KeyFrames will you be able to proceed.

Now that the Bee is “hocked all we need to do is create a Motion tween between the first and last Key Frames. Once that is done we can export the movie and see that it works.

Step 4

All that is left now are some minor refinements. We need to make the head of the Bee turn each time it reaches a curve, we do that by inserting a KeyFrame each time the be needs to turn it’s head. Once we insert a KeyFrame we can turn the Bee towards the direction it is moving in. We do not need to add extra Motion Tween, Flash does that for us, since we already have a Motion Tween set.

Troubleshooting:

If your Bee flies from in a straight line, it means that you have not “hocked” it to the Motion Guide and both it ends.

If your Bee starts the point of origin and then jumps to the end point, you may have forgotten to add a motion tween.

If your Bee seems to be stuck in one point, you may have forgotten to add a 2nd KeyFrame.

That’s it, your Bee can fly now. We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you did we encourage you to write to us as well as bookmark and tween this.