Realistic Characters

Hey guys. Well, what I’m wanting to do is have realistic characters in my animations. As in, not stick figures. I’m pretty experienced in flash (including stickfigures) and I can draw good character art – stationary character art. I’m not sure how to go about moving these realistic characters… I’ve seen animations where it looks like all the limbs of a character are “attached”, just as they would be with stick figures, but I’m not sure how to do this. I would greatly appreciate any insight on this.

Oh yeah, another question… is there a way to tell movie clips to play inside the main timeline? You know, you place a movie clip onto the stage, and throughout it’s existance there, it shows as a stationary image (the first frame of the movie clip) until you take it out. Is there a way to see the animation within the main timeline?