Need Help With Duplicating Shapes!

[brain-twinge]

Flash Program Used: Adobe Flash Professional CS5
What I'm Trying To Accomplish: I'm trying to duplicate a shape that I can manipulate, without the original shape changing.
Steps I Am Presently Taking:
1. I have a single shape of a character.
a) Within this shape is a lot of other shapes, for his body parts.
b) Within each of those shapes, are -more- shapes. (ex. Body shape -- leg shape -- bottom of leg shape and top of leg shape)
2. I go into the library and duplicate the MAIN SHAPE that has all of the other shapes inside of it.
3. I create a new layer in the main scene.
4. I drag the DUPLICATE SHAPE onto the new layer.
5. I go into the main body shape of the duplicate shape.
6. I go into the head shape within the body shape of the duplicate shape.
7. I go into the eye shape within the head shape within the body shape of the duplicate shape.
8. I grab the pupil shape within the eye shape.
9. I drag the pupil shape to the right.
10. I go back out into THE MAIN SCENE where both the original body shape and duplicate body shape are.
11. The pupils of the original shape have moved also.
12. I pull out my hair.

I'm creating a comic strip and within instances where the same character is used in multiple panels (which in a comic strip occurs frequently), I would like very much to be able to manipulate the character's shapes and appearance to look different within each panel, without the character in all of the panels before it changing as well. How do I do this without having to duplicate and rename every single tiny little shape within every single tiny little shape? Because really that would take forever.

Just in case, I have created a visual representation of those steps I took that I mentioned before.

[Nig 13]

That won't work. The elements in your duplicated shape STILL consist of the same shapes from the original shape, making the sub shapes also be altered when you change on the duplicated shape. The only way around this, is to duplicate every single shape - yeah, EVERY single shape within the original shape!!

That's gonna be a pain, but it's the only solution, for what you want that is :/

[brain-twinge]

That.. really sucks. However, I'm willing to go that extra step. I figured out after you said that I can just take all of that character's shapes in the library and stuff them into a folder within the library. Then just copy all of the shapes I put into that folder, make a new folder, and paste them in there. And I don't have to do it one by one by one, I can just shift-click the whole lot of them. As long as I don't mess up the names of the shapes to where they won't be grouped together in that convenient way, I'm a little less frustrated.

By the way, is there any way I can export a file I'm working on in flash to be able to work on it in photoshop, without losing all of my layers?

[Nig 13]

By the way, is there any way I can export a file I'm working on in flash to be able to work on it in photoshop, without losing all of my layers?

Not sure. But what about vice versa? LINK TO TUTORIAL on how to import PSD files into Flash