Tail Animation Help!

[GoatKid]

So I'm trying to make a smooth tail animation and I'm not having much luck. is there anyway to make it move fluidly without the labor of frame-by-frame? I'm using AS2, so so shape tweens or bone tool

Here's a demo of it, it's supper rough, all of the 'buttons' are just for testing (changing from day to night etc.) the tan button controls a crude talk animation and all the red buttons are different expressions. for the tail I did a simple classic tween, but it looks really stiff, if you hit the last purple round button at the bottom she will transition to angry and her tail will twitch, this was my bad attempt at frame-by-frame (one with no delay followed by the same animation with 5 frames between each key frame)

Any help would be awesome, or any other feed back about stuff looking bad is great too (this is my first time animating)

http://www.mediafire.com/download/g6vvfcq9z32me6r/Spike+Talk +Model.fla

[Sub-vibe]

I can't open the .fla file. Might as well export it as .swf on sites like filetube etc.
And, how would you want your tail to "swing"?

[GoatKid]

At 5/31/13 03:28 AM, Sub-vibe wrote: I can't open the .fla file. Might as well export it as .swf on sites like filetube etc.
And, how would you want your tail to "swing"?

sorry, here's the .swf
http://www.mediafire.com/download/51qlrddwliolivm/Spike_Talk _Model.swf

I want it to move more like a whip, so the base of the tail moves, then a riple or wave swings through the shape, more fluid. Right now it's like a stick that just move back and forth like a metronome

[Jomillex]

Try using some fbf?
It's just a tween atm. If you want it to move fluid like, you've got to do some frame by frame.

[GoatKid]

At 5/31/13 07:07 PM, Jomillex wrote: Try using some fbf?
It's just a tween atm. If you want it to move fluid like, you've got to do some frame by frame.

I tried some d some fbf, but it looked really jerky, maybe I'm just not putting in enough frames per second, but I'm a little worried about file size. there are going to be lots of scenes like this with many characters and if i do too much fbf that's a lot of extra unique symbols. Maybe if i cut the tail into sections?

[Sub-vibe]

Hard work. It would take you time to master it. It's better with a lot of frames - though it's confusing to arrange. Put layers into folders when a scene is done = less confusing.

[Jomillex]

Are your symbols graphic symbols, or movieclips?

[GoatKid]

At 6/2/13 12:52 PM, Jomillex wrote: Are your symbols graphic symbols, or movieclips?

movie clips but i guess it doesn't matter for this really. I start in illustrator, so I start from shapes so i could take it back to that. I've made some progress using the skew transform, but it's not great.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/2fwu537l3tjasve/SpikeQuest -B1.swf