The more schematic the drawing of your character, the fewer requirements there are for the naturalness of its movements. For example, a character of the “sticks and circles” type can move by lifting and lowering its sticks in two frames – and this will be justified However, a character painted in high detail and shown moving in this way will be poorly received. You will need at least 6-8 phases to illustrate the character’s movement.
An animated film is not merely a sequence of pictures. It is a story made up and played out by the director for grateful viewers. For the story to be told in an interesting way and so that the viewer does have any questions for the teller (which the viewer will not be able to ask in the first place), the director must be well-prepared for the story. This process starts with composing the screenplay for the future film, inventing characters and their personalities. The dramatic plot of the film is devised. At this stage the main plotline of the entire story is singled out. After this the director creates the film story boards. The story boards present the entire story, scene by scene, in a breakdown by episodes, scenes, and filming aspects. At this stage the director comes up with ways to bring the concept of his story to life. At this point the artist draws sketches for the film with detailed characters, color gamma, and general artistic style.
Then animation proper is created. Once all animation is ready, final editing and voiceover are done – noise synchronization: steps, thuds, explosions, etc. Background music is added. Music can be composed by the composer especially for the film, or the film can be pained and adjusted to music already composed.
At this point the film is ready and the story has been told. This flowchart, which is normally used for creating offline animation, also applies to Flash videos: for both major works and tiny works.
This process is rather lengthy and laborious. But, after all, nobody is stopping you from ignoring everything written here and painting in Flash the way you see fit.