Cleeeeeeeean art.

You're right about the filesize, but the interactivity can probably be covered by importing the videos into flash anyway.

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If you need a hand just whisk me a note

Admittingly I haven't used AE in years, but the last time I tried to use it in conjunction with Flash, the encoding process was absolutely horrifying to get decent results.

I think what I ended up doing was exporting a png sequence, then re-assemblying it into Flash (There's a certain feature in Flash that allows for auto-sequencing of png sequences in timelines, but fuck if I can remember what it is right now).

I'm not sure what versions of either programs you're using, but I hear Flash CS5 is much like AE CS3 and probably has 3d cameras. So if you can manage to navigate through Flash's interface well enough, you should be able to achieve the same results as you would with AE.

That being said, it sounds like your laptop isn't the best. I'd suggest just ponying up the cash and buying a new one with at least an i5 processor for CS3 and probably an i7 for CS5. AE renders frames a bit differently than Flash does, and it rides your processor pretty hard.
If you have a dual core processor right now, there's a really good add-in for AE CS3 that allows AE to take advantage of the power during encoding, but again I can't remember the name of it right now. =(

I don't have any video examples on my FA page at all, but I've been editing crap since about 2002ish, and went to college briefly for video production. So I know a bit. =3
Though the knowledge is admittingly very dated now. The last time I really played with AE was in 2008.

Hope this info helps you out either way.

I'm finding out that Flash natively only supports FLV and MOV, so importing any other video files just turn them into an image sequence. Image sequences are bad news, though, since adding up the individual file sizes seem to make the flash easily go over 1mb, even at really small resolutions and number of frames.

Puppet tool is primarily the 'magic' I'm referring to about AE. I haven't dealt with the 3D features introduced in CS5 (CS4?) yet and I have no clue why they're there. Using Google, all I see is that they're primarily used for banner effects and other graphic design shenanigans, and I don't see how it can help me.

I have a feeling the puppet tool feature might be in Flash one day (closest thing is the bone tool, but it's still too different) which then I'll just go right back to using Flash.

I didn't play too much with the puppet tool, but wouldn't turning whatever piece of the flash you're animating into a movie clip, then just changing where the anchor point is and skewing it through tweens effectively accomplish the same thing?

As far as the 3d camera goes, I had looked at your AE sample, which had the zooming in and out. I figured that'd be much easier to accomplish with a 3d camera in AE.

As for filesize, how many frames are your animations, typically? I'd think that if you exported as small pngs (less than 720x480) and maybe have 10 of them, it wouldn't be that high. Plus, converting all the images to bitmaps, while time-consuming, I thought dealt with the issue. I can't remember for sure.

You could try exporting to FLV from AE. Then importing that FLV to Flash. But IIRC, AE encodes some very shitty FLVs. Perhaps there's a 3rd party encoder you could use?

The puppet tool feature is a lot more like the warp tool of Photoshop, in that you're grabbing a certain point on an image, and dragging it around so that the rest of the image gets pulled along with it. It doesn't have much to do with skew, perspectives, and other transformation tools, though the puppet tool can certainly accomplish that, too.

Here's a (NSFW) example: http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=741707
There are a lot of elements in that GIF that tweening in Flash alone can't cover; see the hand, head, butt, and the ribs area on the torso.

My flash animations have been a minimum of 200 frames, for anything with a 'speed' button. Each loop segment tends to be a minimum of 30 frames (for the speediest loops) while the lengthy climax scenes can take up the 100 frames alone. This is because I tend to work at 25FPS or 30FPS.

I guess then at this point, maybe you could try exporting from AE in a lossless video format, then using some sort of third party plug-in to convert that to FLV. Then import that into Flash and kind of hope.

If you have Flash Encoder (comes with CS bundle when you buy the whole thing, not sure about single programs or pirated versions), you could work through that, but I don't remember how good the results were.

You could also try working at 20 or 24 fps but I'm sure you've already tried and didn't like it.
Well, sorry I wasn't that much help. But good luck figuring stuff out. =3

Nucleo is the plug-in I was talking about for dual cores.
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepag.....e_douglas.html