Trying to figure out a way to make an effect in Flash...

[MikeTheVike]

I got the idea from watching this animation years ago....

http://www.koreus.com/animation/radiohead_creep.html

What I want to do is a little bit different. Basically I just want an outline to be drawn, doesn't have to be filled.

Is this done with one image of the outline, then mask out a little bit of the line on each keyframe, then reverse the sequence? is it a different image for each frame of the animation? Thanks for any ideas or links to a tutorial.

[SurfPark]

I was looking at it closely and noticed the edge of each transformation had an outline to it. This leads me to believe it was traditionally animated, frame-by-frame. If it was masking, it wouldn't have such a defined edge.

The end part, where things are disappearing, could be a masking effect since that seems to just disappear without an outline.

I would suggest you attempt some animation using the onion skinning method and see what you can come up with. I'm sure you could attempt to use masking to create this effect, but it will be more obvious than in the first half of the example.