Creating attackmation

So I started working on one of the attack moves, I didn't really plan this out, I was experimenting with random sketches when I stumbled upon to this idea of making it a beam attack. I let you see for yourself.

This is how the end result is, it took a lot of time because I had to mess with a lot of different settings, change formats and import the frames 1 by 1 into photoshop, just so I could enhance the visuals.

The different stages of the animations;
I first started this in flash CS3, where I basically had drawn a rough sketch of all the frames, just to get a good idea of where everything will go when I'm done. Then I went over the sketch frame by frame till all the lines were right, I had some limbs that would not move and so I change the whole character into a symbol so I could move it more smoothly, I used motion tween (this is way of making an object move from point a to b smoothly) on the hands for part of the way, so it looks way smoother.

here is what it looked like when I was done in flash, so the next step was to add colour and remove the floor.

So all the colours are flat at this moment, and when I say colours I really do mean colours because the hands and feet are supposed to be white so they actually show up on the backgrounds. Then I had to spend time on finding out how to export it to photoshop, after some time I got it to work in photoshop where I went and added the finer details such as the shadow that shows up when the beam starts, that's because the beam does emit light, also I added a red glow to the back of the beam so it's easily visible and gives it more of an aggressive feel.