Chapter 5: Drawing in Flash

Overview

In This Chapter

Using shape and drawing tools

Working with Drawing Objects

Setting Brush and Eraser modes

Creating optimized lines and curves

Choosing fill and stroke styles

Using selection tools and options

Controlling snapping behavior

Aligning, scaling, and rotating artwork

Knowing the Edit menu commands

This chapter introduces the primary tools for creating and manipulating vector graphics in Flash, as well as some features of the Flash environment that affect how elements behave. The primary drawing tools have self-explanatory names: the Line, Oval, Rectangle, PolyStar, Pencil, Brush, and Eraser. However, these tools all have a variety of options and modifiers that make them more sophisticated than they may at first appear. In this chapter, you learn to apply the primary options of these tools to create shapes and line art.

The selection tools — Selection (arrow), Lasso, and Subselection — are found in the top section of the Tools panel and these work as your "hands" within the drawing space of Flash, enabling you to select elements or grab and adjust specific parts of a shape or line.

The Pen is a powerful tool that draws lines by laying down editable points. You use both the Pen and Subselection tools to manipulate the points; you can also use them to select and edit all lines and shapes to manually optimize artwork.

The built-in shape-creation tools of Flash and the adjustable shape-recognition settings make it easy even for people who "can't draw a straight line" to create usable elements for Flash interfaces.

In addition to drawing, in this chapter, you also learn to apply some of the terrific tools Flash provides to help you organize and align elements as you create layouts.

Cross-Reference 

If you're comfortable using the core Flash drawing tools and design panels, you can skip to Chapter 9, "Modifying Graphics" for a deeper look into the options available for editing artwork, including the Free Transform tool, the Envelope modifier, and the Commands feature that you can use to record and repeat authoring steps.

The primary drawing tools — Line, Oval, Rectangle, PolyStar, Pencil, Brush, and Eraser — can be divided into two groups: geometric shapes and freehand lines and strokes. Line, Oval, Rectangle, and PolyStar fall into the first category; Pencil, Brush, and Eraser fall into the second. The PolyStar tool was a valuable Flash MX 2004 addition to the default Tools panel. You can find it in the Rectangle tool submenu and use it to create a variety of shapes, from triangles to fancy starbursts.

Note 

The default fill and stroke settings that Flash launches with are sufficient to get started with any of the drawing tools, but we introduce many more inspiring choices in the "Using Fill and Stroke Controls" section, later in this chapter.

New Feature 

The new Object Drawing option in the Tools panel provides a workaround to the standard overlap and merge behavior of raw graphics. If you prefer shapes or lines on the same layer to behave more like groups and not interfere with each other as you are drawing, you can enable the Object Drawing mode and work with any of the standard drawing and shape tools to create well-behaved, autonomous Drawing Objects.