Creating reusable animations using the Actions panel

You already know a little bit about actions from what was explained about the Smart Bone actions in Chapter 5, Bringing a Cartoon Character to Life. We will now be approaching the Actions panel from a point of view of creating character actions that can be reused throughout a project. These can range from simple motions such as moving an arm to more complex actions such as walking cycles.

For this demonstration, let's open our character file CharacterActionsStart.anme. If at any time you want to see the end result of this exercise, open the file CharacterActionsEnd.anme. Of course, if you have your own file, feel free to use it. However, be sure to make a copy of this file before you start (by going to File | Save As) in the event something doesn't go right and it alters your original file. We don't want to lose anything important. All said, let's try creating a simple walking motion that we can reuse using the Actions panel, using the...