Subtitles of the Movie

In this section of the tutorial, I review the techniques you'll need to learn to create simple graphics in Flash. Flash CS4 has a powerful set of drawing and color tools to help you create simple to complex artwork for your projects. Here I'll demonstrate the basic use of many of the tools that are introduced in the previous section of this course when I reviewed and introduced you to the Tools Panel. I'll also review Flash's two Drawing Models, the Object Drawing Model and the Merge Drawing Model. I introduced these to you when I selected several of the tools over here in the Tools Panel, and there's this little button right here in which you can turn the object Drawing Model on or off so that when it's off you're in the Merge Drawing Model. So I'll review how these two models differ and when each is most useful. Although many of Flash's graphic creation tools may be familiar to you from other graphics applications, such as the Eraser and the Eyedropper, the Pen Tool, the Pencil, the Line tool and so on, you'll find that some of these tools are unique and are applied a little bit differently. Often the first several sessions that my students use with Flash, those students that are familiar with Illustrator or Photoshop generally experience some disorientation and some confusion and maybe even a little frustration, because the tools seem to be mostly the same but there are some important differences. So I'll be reviewing those important differences in this section of the tutorial. Now, in addition to learning how each of the drawing tools behave, you'll need to understand the differences between fills, strokes, lines, and shapes. These differences can be confusing, because interface refers to both lines and strokes. I'll be using a lot of examples in this section and also the next section gives you a solid grounding of these fundamental Flash concepts. Create line drawings with the Pencil, Pen, and Line tools. You'll be creating strokes, outlines, and fills with the Rectangle and Oval tools. The terms lines and strokes are used interchangeably in the Flash documentation. This is a little bit confusing. They do this because you can modify both shapes and strokes using the same tools. Let me now mov on to the next movie, though, and go over some of these terms in more detail, such as lines and strokes and fills and shapes.