Flash Drawing Approaches

It is funny. Sometimes working in Photoshop feels like you can get it done quicker. With a recent Photoshop painting, it is taking a while. Initially, it feels like you are making great progress, but once you get down into the details things slow down.

Flash illustration is more graphic (usually). While vectors can be slower to work with, a graphic illustration will take less time than a more realistic Photoshop painting. I suppose I could do a graphic illustration in Photoshop and see how quick that goes, but the thought of being stuck at one resolution for something that looks like vectors would pain me.

One thing I'm doing in Flash is trying different tecniques for rendering, such as:

• Starting with a rectangle and control-clicking to add points
  
• Drawing with the line tool, then filling, and finally removing the lines
  
• Drawing lines, converting to fills, then reshaping the lines (where necessary)
  
• Painting with the brush with maximum smoothing

The last technique, I am least sold on. You have the least amount of control and the most opportunity to add unnecessary points.

One approach in Flash I haven't really spent time with is creating with the pen tool. After 19 years of Illustrator's pen, it looks similar but doesn't have the same functionality. Plus, using the above techniques has a more natural feel. I do use the pen for certain specific tasks that I'll cover another day.