Well at least you understand where I'm coming from...heyvern wrote:I just have to laugh a little when I have these conversations. When I first started I felt EXACTLY the same as you... all those steps... the silly tools etc etc...
I've never used Illustrator but do have Freehand which is mind-bogglingly difficult to use, yes.heyvern wrote:You mentioned that you have to close a shape to fill it? And this is terrible? What about the fact that in Illustrator you can't connect the end of a stroke to the middle of another stroke? You have to have doubled lines for adjacent shapes that share the same stroke in AI.
The thing is, I guess my drawing style is different. For instance, when drawing a person's head I typically draw the face and then the hair on top of it, not the entire head. Using Flash I can fill those two shapes because they're "joined" in the fact that the drawn lines touch (or not even completely touching since Flash can "close gaps" when filling - a wonderful feature). In AS I would have to draw the whole head, weld the points, then the hairline, weld the points... ugh, so many &$^$*(@ steps!!!
Another thing - and this is again my inexperience I'm sure since I've only been tinkering with the program a month now - but in Flash I can use the paintbrush tool and select "paint inside" to create shading, like a subtle shadow on the jawline or other edges of the character. Can't for the life of me figure out how to do this in AS without using a gradient or halo fill, neither seems to quite look right as the shadow shouldn't go all the way around the character. I'm sure once again I'm doing something wrong here?
It's got to be me. This program is awesome and the animation end of it is so simple that I look forward to creating my first cartoon on it. But the thought of drawing the characters has me cringing. I must be making it more difficult that need be perhaps?
Heyvern, on an unrelated note, thanks so much for all your contributions to the forum and to the software itself. You are a true asset to this community