flash (macromedia): We don't have After Effects yet on our new computers, so I'm sort of stumped on
how to do this with Flash...

I animated a butterfly that flaps his wings without moving on a path or
changing size. I now have to insert this animated butterfly into another scene
where he'll fly into frame and land on a logo.

How do I do this?

(Flash Pro 8 on a Mac)

Flash doesn't really use SWFs in the same way After Effects has comps, you
typically would do the entire animation in one FLA and export to one SWF. The
closest thing to a comp might actually be a Graphic symbol. You can animate
stuff in a graphic symbol(butterfly loop, etc), then place the Graphic symbol
on the stage and the contents syncronize to the main timeline, and you can
move/transform the symbol around. For instance, you could animate the Graphic
Symbol along a simple motion guide, set the Graphic to "loop", and there you
have it.

MovieClips behave similarly, but can't be previewed in the Flash tool(sigh...)

I appreciate the quick reply.

Is there any way that you know of that I can convert the scene I've already
done to a graphic symbol sequence? Or do I have to reanimate it in a graphic
symbol?

thanks!

Coming from AfterEffects, be prepared to endure some pain ;-)

You can't exactly do anything like pre-compose in AE, but you can copy/paste
frames. So take your animated butterfly .fla, highlight all the frames in the
timeline, right click on it, choose "copy frames".

Go to your other FLA, insert a new Graphic Symbol, and right click the
timeline and choose "paste frames".

At this stage, if you want to re-align objects on all frames, you would use
Onion skin with "edit multiple frames". You can drag the handles to encompess
the entire timeline, make sure no layers are locked, hit Cmd+A for select all,
and then move them on the canvas.

HTH