Animating a tree growing

[womball]

I'm currently trying to animate a tree growing in Flash CS3. I drew the tree at its final form and would like to be able to delete it in following keyframes so that when the animation is reversed its growing. However I can't seem to figure out how to get tweens to work consistantly. The original drawing was not one continuously drawn so shape tweens seem to cause the lines to rotate and move all over the place.

How would I draw a mask that woudl gradually reveal the whole tree? Or is there any techniques that are better for animating a growing tree picture?

[J6Studios]

You can make a circular mask by cutting a circle out of a larger square, then tween it to get larger.

I used this to make lines appear to grow. I'll post an example when I get back to work.

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[womball]

THere are multiple branches too. Ideally it woudl be nice to have them grow at different times, like they are sprouting out.

[womball]

Is it possible to have different layers of animated masks for one drawing? The problem when you have multiple shapes masks on one layer is that they morph into each other strangely when tweened.

[flashcartoons]

i wanted to show this cartoon i saw a week ago it was about trees and growing

very nice animation

http://raw.channelfrederator.com/video/video/show?id=890404%3AVideo%3A58100