- Working with Tablets
- Working with Scanned Artwork
- Working with the Mouse
- Flash's Drawing Tools
- Design Tricks with the Pencil and Brush
Working with Scanned Artwork
If you are uncomfortable with the idea of drawing straight into the program, there are a few other programs and techniques you can use to get your ink-on-paper illustrations into Flash. Todd Gallina is an independent Flash animator who uses a scanning and vectorizing process. A step-by-step tutorial of the process he uses can be seen on his web site (http://www.toddgallina.com).
The basic idea is to scan your black-and-white inked illustration at 300400 DPI and save it as a .tif file. Next convert the .tif into vector art. This can be done using Adobe Streamline or by using the Auto Trace tool in Macromedia Freehand or Adobe Illustrator. Once your art is vectorized, simply import it into Flash.
To clean up the drawings, go to the Modify menu and select Optimize Curves. This will reduce your file size by flattening any unnecessary bumps. Once you're happy with the optimized version of your black-and-white artwork, use the Paint Bucket tool to fill it with color. Todd's artwork displays this conversion process from pencil artwork to vector format.
You can also bring your scanned artwork into Flash by importing bitmapped files. Simply select a layer to bring in your pencil artwork and import the drawings. Then add a layer above your imported artwork and trace over your work. When you have finished tracing over the bitmapped artwork, delete the layer.