Subtitles of the Movie

Continuing my review of the Pen Tool from the previous movie, we use the Pen Tool, as I mentioned previously, to draw precise paths around straight lines or smooth flowing curves. You can also use the Pen Tool to display points on lines that you've created with other Flash Drawing Tools, such as the Pencil Tool, the Brush Tool, the Line, Oval, or Rectangle Tool. You can also use the Pen Tool to adjust those lines. The Pen Tool provides feedback about its current drawing state by displaying different pointers. One of the things that makes this tool a little bit harder to learn is that there are a variety of drawing states. To help you with these drawing states Flash will change the cursor of the Pen Tool. The first pointer you'll see when you select the Pen Tool is this one, with an x next to the Pen Icon. This indicates that the next mouse click on the Stage will create an initial anchor point. This is the beginning of a new path. All new paths begin with this initial anchor point. Any existing drawing paths you have will be terminated, so if I click once Ð I don't know if you can see it, but there's a little. there. That indicates an initial anchor point. The mouse cursor now reveals just the Pen Icon, nothing else. This represents a sequential anchor point. This indicates that the next mouse click will create an anchor point with a line connecting it like that to the previous anchor point, and I'll continue to add anchor points to the existing line, connecting it to the previous anchor point. This pointer is displayed during the creation of all user-defined anchor points except the initial anchor point of a path. And you can also add anchor points to a path and you're going to get a different Icon for that. Notice that right now I don't see any Icon so what I need to do is, I need to select the Selection Tool. That will deselect my path. Then click on the Pen Tool again, click on the path there to get the anchor points, and then if I mov my cursor in between two anchor points I get that plus sign. That indicates that I can add an anchor point between those two plus signs. Be careful, that's a little bit tricky because notice if I move my cursor in between these two points I don't get that little plus sign. What's going to happen now is I'm just going to add an extension from that other anchor point like that, see? So, let's deselect the Pen Tool, click on the Pen Tool again, click on the line. That'll give me my line segment with my anchor points and now I can add an additional anchor point by moving my cursor in between two anchor points. There's the plus sign. A little bit tricky. It takes some practice. Notice that when you add an anchor point, the existing path is redrawn based on this additional anchor point. Only one anchor point can also be added at a time, so I can't add another anchor point unless I reselect the Pen Tool, re-click on the line, and then click in between the two anchor points there. And also notice that I can only get that anchor point added if I see that plus sign there.