Properly import a Flash illustration

Blade_Rain · Post by **Blade_Rain** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 12:16 am

I like to draw most of my characters in Flash, since drawing in AS has always been a bit hectic for me.

When importing a flash-drawn character, Chances are that the lines will be completely screwed up. For example, the end of a single brush stroke will look like an ink splotch, some lines will scramble, etc.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Also, is there a way to make it so that importing a drawing from flash doesn't make an unnecessary amount of points? A single line will be a shape. Can't it be a single line with modified width instead?

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:16 am

I work with Flash a lot myself. I too dislike the unintuitive drawing tools in AS. Unfortunately, the only sane way to proceed is to draw your characters etc in AS itself. I have spent more man-hours than I care to remember tidying up .ai imports from Flash, and in the end, it's just quicker to export a png file from Flash and trace around it in AS. Not what you want to hear, I know...

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:35 am

Also, is there a way to make it so that importing a drawing from flash doesn't make an unnecessary amount of points? A single line will be a shape. Can't it be a single line with modified width instead?

No chance. Flash as well as Illustrator export their outlines as shapes. AS has no way to guess which of the shapes was intended to be an outline and which not.

The multiplication of points stems from the use of different brands of Beziér curves in AS and Flash/Illustrator. In order to truthfully reproduce an Illustrator curve, AS needs to add points.

I got finally used to draw directly in AS which is always the best for animation.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 12:25 pm

While I've never used Flash I was quite an Illustrator maven and used to think the AS tools were the pits until I gave them a decent trial. Now I think they are about the best ever (at least for creating animation art).

Make sure you've tried the Fazek tool mods and *really* given it a chance (say a month or so of solid drawing). The odds are you might be a convert someday as well.

Blade_Rain · Post by **Blade_Rain** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:34 pm

Well, thanks to the three of you for the replies. You all seem very understanding of this problem. I guess it's either trace over an image, or draw in AS. I'll try both of them. The only problem is that using a tablet, the lines can be shaky in terms of constantly varying and random widths.

Off to do a few tests!!