Tutorials

Drawing in Flash | Coloring in Flash

Here is a quick introduction to making Anime using Macromedia Flash. Before you begin, you must have a copy of Flash (download a free trial version at www.flash.com) I also highly recommend purchasing a Wacom Pen Tablet because it is much better then trying to draw with a mouse. If you are curious about why I chose Macromedia Flash to animate in, check out the section of the intro entitled: "Why Anime in Flash"

The Basic Toolset

To do general vector drawing with Flash, first select the pencil tool (y) . Flash has three modes for drawing vectors freehand: Straighten, Smooth, and Ink. Straighten is for drawing straight lines where Smooth is for drawing smooth curves where if you draw a line, it will "interperate" your drawing accordingly. But the most useful is Ink which just lays down your line exactly as you draw it.

pencil modes

Straight and Smooth are useful for drawing background buildings or mechanical objects, where Ink is good for organics like people or animals, but if you want a really stylized look, try just using Smooth.

A very cool and helpful feature of Flash is that it recognizes the intersection of two lines when using the arrow tool (v) . This feature is very useful for cleaning up drawings as explained below.

Using intersetion detection for clean-up

Because it is so easy to clean up these extra lines this way, I recommend over extending your lines as opposed to not drawing your lines far enough so that you have to go and connect them later, but thanks to the vector nature of Flash, even that is not to bad to do.

So with that in mind, practice drawing in Flash and when you are ready, move on to coloring using the Flash toolset. Was this helpful?