Frame-by-frame animation is a lot about experimentation and trial-and-error. There are many different ways to achieve animation by using the frame-by-frame technique. You might want to try freehand drawing for your animation. Draw a character on frame 1, and then press F6 to insert a new keyframe at frame 2. Modify your drawing on frame 2, and then select frame 3 and press F6 (and so on). Use the Onion Skin feature to see the changes between each frame to help you animate along the Timeline.
As for the project you just created, you might want to add details to the background. Create a new layer and then add your frame-by-frame animation to the background. In the following example, music notes have been added on several frames. The Onion Skin feature was used to view earlier frames, which were modified in subsequent frames using earlier frames as a reference. Additional notes are added, and some are removed from keyframes.
You might make the eye blink, too. To do this, you need to make the eye its own symbol by copying it from the head symbol and inserting it into a new movie clip symbol. You need to modify the eye on the head symbol so it shows the blink state (Figure 4.31).
Then you need to place the new eye symbol so it overlaps the blink state on the head symbol. The new eye symbol needs to appear and disappear on subsequent frames. To create a blinking effect, refer to the sidebar called "Blinking Effect" in Exercise 4.