Drawing in Flash

I've heard of this a lot, and I like the results I've seen. So how does it work, and where can you get it (for free)?

Seconding this, especially the second part. :(

Line Art: lol im flash *is SMOOTHER THAN A BABY'S BOTTOM*

Yuval: flash I will have you for my wife

Flash: MY DOWRY IS APPROXIMATELY $73287439. (US.)

Yuval: avast! *GTFO*

That's how it went. Exactly how it went.

wut

Have you tried Totally Legal Means? I haven't myself, I am wondering if there's a safe, reliable source.

edited 3rd Jan '11 4:00:30 PM by melloncollie

I gave up and shelled out $65 for Paint SAI instead.

It's pretty good.

Paint SAI? How is that? Specifically, is it different from Photoshop?

I can't afford Photoshop, so I don't know.

It's better than Paint Shop Pro 7 (lol I've been using a program that my parents bought for me when I was ten years old) and it's better than Opencanvas, but I'm pretty sure, based on my limited experience, that it's not as good as Photoshop. Or probably Flash, for that matter.

I guess that's reflected by the fact that it costs ~$65 Aus dollars (more specifically, about 5500 yen) rather than, say, $600.

Wikipedia was pretty enlightening.

It has the basic tools Photoshop has, but missing some like text, gradients, and color editing because it's not really for photo editing (whereas Photoshop can be both). I've seen a lot of people use SAI+another program for editing afterwards, though.

It also has tools for vector drawing, which is what I think you're looking for. In that case, you also could try Inkscape, maybe? Most likely, it's not going to be quite as well-made as Flash might be, since it's open-source, but you could mess around with it just to see what it's like. I've tried it myself a little bit, but haven't had the patience to practice with Inkscape a lot. GIMP also has vector tools, but again it's open-source and has an annoying tendency to crash unexpectedly once in a while.

Here's how I do it: scan in your sketches or whatever. Then, draw over it with your pen tablet (use the pressure sensitivity tool). After every pen stroke, I select the stroke (note: the brush tool treats these as fills, not lines) and click the "smooth" button a few times, or until it looks the way I want. (smoothing, control-z-ing, and then smoothing again will often achieve a different effect than two smoothings, and you can use this to your advantage.) If any adjustments need to be made to the strokes after that, I use the anchor points of the fill to tweak them. To avoid selecting strokes that you've already drawn, I sectionalize the image into layers. I will have a layer specifically for the head, one for the hair, one for the right arm, and so on. In addition to this, every stroke I make is on a clean layer, so that a can still tweak and smooth that stroke without affecting the rest of the image, and then I cut and paste-in-place it onto the appropriate layer.

This is extremely time consuming and tedious, but I enjoy the look it gives my lineart, and my style relies on it. To see my work, look in that "writer seeks artist" thread, where I posted a few lineart examples to see if you like what this method achieves.

Also, I torrented flash CS 4 and used a keygen.

This involved process above is the exact reason why people just don't prefer to draw using the Brush Tool in Flash. That, and the lines are incredibly hard to get just right- a friend of mine described the experience as "drawing with an unsharpened, bleeding marker." The Pen Tool doesn't give you lively lines either. Flash gets a really bad rap in the animation industry for this, but I personally find it convenient. On my personal projects, I always try to use the Brush Tool for characters.

If you use the anchor points, you can get the strokes to be exactly how you want, which is more than what I can say for a bleeding marker.

I love the brush tool. It's a good 75% of the reasons I use flash.

Though, I miss the classic flash. The current ones are just to clunky and bulky.

I'm guessing the Totally Legal Means for Flash is similar to Photoshop — you get a keylogger (or whatever its called), download a trial version of the program from Adobe, follow the instructions, and bam— free program.

I should note, though, that if you're only going to draw in Flash — not animate stuff — it might just be better to get Illustrator. Same awesomely smooth vector graphics, but made for, well, illustrating things. I've also heard that it has really nice brush tools or something, but since I've never used the program, I can't really vouch for that.

ive used both illustrator and flash at my school, and illustrator is a little different. i would call it more technical than intuitive(if thats the word im looking for).