First, if you're at all unclear about Flash, what it is or how it works, you should probably take Michael Kay's absolutely fantastic Flash tutorial. OK. Ready?
The first thing to consider before you convert a movie to Flash is whether or not it's worth it. Flash uses vectors rather than bitmaps, so certain forms of animation are just not going to work terribly well in this medium. As a rule, the less detailed your animation is, the better it is for Flash. Think Hanna-Barbera versus Bill Plympton. So if your animation has any degree of photo-realism, or even if it has highly textured scenes and characters, then you're probably out of luck.
The next thing to assess is the degree of motion in your source animation. Flash can move elements very smoothly along a motion path without adding to the file size dramatically, but it doesn't do as well when it comes to more complex forms of motion, such as a change in perspective or complex character movements. Since each small shift in perspective must be logged as its own separate element in Flash, you're looking at some unmanageable file sizes, not to mention a good bit of blood, sweat, and tears on your part. The average still from a Disney movie translates wonderfully into vectors, but the 360 degree camera fly-by's that Disney is known for are too much for Flash. The more two-dimensional your animation, the easier it will be to convert it.
The last thing you should consider before moving on to the production phase is just how faithful you want to be to the original animation. As in real life, the more corners you cut, the easier your task will be, but the quality will suffer. I tried to be as faithful to the original "No Neck Joe" animation as possible, but I had to do some economizing with the soundtrack to keep the file size down. In this case, the reduced sound quality didn't detract much from the animation as a whole, but your animation may rely heavily on sound, so you may have to find other fat to trim. You'll discover that the conversion process is a series of compromises, and it all boils down to how much time you're willing to invest to make your animation as true to the source as possible. Make sure you know what you're getting yourself into before you begin.
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