Reducing file size or how to get back the red dot

[slowtiger]

I'm working on a project in true cutout animation style and was desparately trying to reduce the file size of my Flash output files. Especially the little red dot in the layer menu which indicates that this layer can be handled as a Flash symbol was driving me crazy because it somehow vanished again and again.

Since I didn't want to rebuild the whole character from scratch I searched for a simpler solution and voila! - there is one.

How to make a layer without a red dot into one with a red dot

1. Duplicate that layer.
2. Select all points.
3. Ctrl-X = cut everything. At this moment the red dot should appear. If not, erase this duplicated layer and start again from 1.
4. Ctrl-V = paste everything. Moho faithfully pastes everything exactly where you cut it from. The little red dot should be visible, if not, start again with 1.
5. Erase the original layer.
6. Rename the duplicated layer.
7. Layer-bind that layer to its appropriate bone.
8. Repeat with every vector layer which has no red dot.

As long as you only perform bone animation, Flash will be able to treat every vector layer as symbol.

With this procedure I was able to reduce my Flash output file size from 156 k to a mere 28 k. Importing into Flash and exporting it again with the "compress movie" option checked gave me a final .swf of only 20 k.

(You can see the result here: www.slowtiger.de/ani/7_1a.swf)

Thanks to Myles for dipping my nose into the right puddle ...