Adobe® Flash® CS3 Professional Bible

Chapter 5. Drawing in Flash

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using shape and drawing tools

• Working with Drawing Objects and Shape Primitive tools

• 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 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.

Note

The Tools panel has been updated in Flash 9 to include a submenu of controls for the Pen tool. These controls were available ...