I use Macromedia Flash. I've got an old version 5 that works just fine for me. The funny thing is that I've used it for illustration, web design, and even video animation, but never to make a .swf for a web animation. Heh. Everything but the designed purpose.japanimationfist wrote:Out of curiousity, what do you use to draw Jason?
Flash started out as a simple art program called SmartSketch before its company got bought out by Macromedia. The cool thing about that underlying technology is that it lets you "paint" and erase with your pressure-sensitive stylus and tablet, and it saves it as vector art. (I'm sure this is a feature in other programs, but I just really like the way that it's implemented in Flash.) Which means--yes, Vince--that you never have to worry about dpi. The gif/jpeg/png export features in Flash are excellent from my experience, as good, if not better than the whole Adobe-Save-For-Web feature in photoshop.
Like any other drawing program, Flash works with an unlimited number of layers, but it puts these layers up in the timeline (remember, it's an animation program). I usually drag the timeline from the top of the window and make it a floating palette, and then stretch/shrink it so that it's in the position of a typical photoshop-layers palette. I'll create layers for pencils, inks, colors, words, etc., and then lock the others when I'm working on one layer.
(See this screen shot (88KB, 1024x768 pixels) to see what I'm talking about.)
While it's not immediately obvious, you can make layers invisible when they're exported, but it's not as simple as just making them invisible like photoshop layers (by clicking on the eye icon). You have to turn the layer into a "guide" layer (right click on it and choose from the pop-up menu), and then it won't show up in the final exported graphic.
Flash can also auto-trace/vectorize any bitmap you want to put in there (1), and you can tweak the tolerance levels to make it a very very tight fit (pixelly when zoomed) or a loose fit (very geometric and not always even close to what you drew) or anywhere in between. Flat colors would be ?ber-easy (2) because of the whole vectorpaint thing...you just use the paint bucket like any other paint program. And the whole process is naturally anti-aliased (if you choose for it to be) upon export, so (3) you don't have to worry about dpi at all.gazorenzoku wrote:I am interested in doing the following:
1) Scanning in line work and changing it to a vector based graphic without changing the line variation in any way
2) Coloring the line work with flat colors
3) Being able to print or post a graphic on the web without worrying about dpi
(Sorry if I'm coming across as a salesman for Flash. It's just what works, and works well, for me.)
Wikkit, that sounds like a bum deal that Beez won't even SAVE. Sheesh. You can always try the 30-day, fully functional demo of Flash. ;)
(Sorry, couldn't resist that one!)
And I also found this, if any of y'all are teachers or students--SchoolWorld educational software discounts--they have the latest version of Flash here for only $99(!!!!!!!). Of course, you might have to be a full-time teacher/student to be eligible. More eligibility info is here. It looks like you might not have to be full-time to get the Adobe discount.
Looking forward to this week's 1HC. I may even try out Adobe Illustrator instead...
jason
