Problems with animating

Today, I finished re shooting all of the boat scenes and decided to film an extreme close up of the boat just to focus on the skittle characters. I also tried animating the skittles men using Flash, adding arms, however after several attempts I felt it would look better if the skittle characters had no arms and only legs. This is also because we have placed the skittle characters too close together in the boat and therefore the arms don't look realistic. Although, I think the characters will look just as good without arms as they look more cute and childlike in the boat. I found using Flash difficult as it was my first time using this programme, however I was determined to complete the clip including key frames, and moving each individual arm each frame.