Flash can help you do just that!

First off there is a link to a 30-day trial of Flash in the link below. Go to Macromedia Flash. On the Adobe site search and download Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. It is one version newer than the one that I use in this tutorial, but the features that I use should be about the same.

Art Programs

Why use Flash you wonder when you have fancy programs like Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop and the likes? I use these programs too and have great experiences with them. However, not everyone have a tablet to establish those smooth looking line arts. Even I who have a tablet can't manage to get the line art to look exactly what I want it to look like in those programs! The great advantage with Flash when you want smooth, clean line art is the level of control you have over manipulating the lines. And it is actually preferably that you only use a mouse!

However, Flash like most graphics programs is costy and if you already have Photoshop I urge you to check out Destiny's Photoshop Tutorial for a smart way to create smooth lineart!

There are probably as many ways to work Flash as there are people using it. I will present the way I work with it. It might not be the fastest or the most comfortable way for all people, but it is an introduction to the program. Once you get the hang of it you will develop your own working style.

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Familiarizing yourself with the program

When you start a new document it should look something like this.

You have the white canvas in the centre, the timeline in the top and the toolbar to the left. Eventually there will be a properties toolbars on the bottom and to the right but I usually keep these hidden as default as it gives me more space to work on the canvas. You hide and unhide them by clicking the small arrows (see more below).

1. The timeline with the layers. You will start out with one layer. Above the two white dots you see an eye and a padlock. Crossing the dot with the eye makes the layer invisible, and crossing the dot with the padlock locks the layer from any changes.
   
2. This is the zoom option and you will be using it a lot when focusing on details.
   
3. The tools that I mainly use are the ones marked in the picture (not much different than from MS Paint! XD):
   a. Selection Tool (quick button V on keyboard)
   b. Line Tool (quick button N)
   c. Pencil Tool (quick button Y) I don't use this one that much myself but some people prefer using it over the line tool
   d. Paint Bucket Tool (quick button K)
   
4. The colors: Here you choose your stroke and fill color. If you have chosen both a stroke and fill color and you decide to make a circle with the Oval Tool (quick button O) you will get a circle with both outlines and fill. If you just want the fill and no outline you can mark the stroke color and hit the white square with a red line through it.
   

5. The options: When the magnet is marked that means that you are in the "Snap to objects" mode. This is important to have chosen so that there will be no gaps between the lines you draw. If there are gaps in the lines it will cause troubles later on in the coloring process. There are however times when you don't want this option selected as you'll see when you start working on your line art.
   
6. Bottom properties: Here you can choose to change the size and background color of your canvas. If you click the size properties the following window will pop up:
   

   Here you can write in the width and height of the canvas or just select content for the canvas to extend to all your contents.
   

7. Right side tools: Color mixer. I'll describe this in more detail when the line art is complete and we start the coloring process.

You also save your Flash files in .fla format. To make the image into a .jpg, .gif or .png or whatever you can use "File", "Export" and "Export Image". Remember however, that Flash exports all layers as visible, so go ahead and temporarily delete layers you don't want to show up in the jpg, gif etc file.

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Let's get started!

There are two ways to get started. Either you have a hand drawn sketch that you have scanned in and that you are going to work with or you draw the character directly in the program. When I first started to use Flash I based it on an already existing sketch so that is what I'll show you here.

Putting your sketch in as a separate layer:

You can either go to "File" and "Import to stage" or if you have the sketch up in another program, copy it and simply paste it onto the canvas.

My sketch happened to be larger than the canvas.

1. I go to the zoom options first and choose "show all".
   
2. Then I go to the Size options hidden at the bottom and choose for the canvas size to include "Contents".
   
3. After that I lock this layer. Right click on Layer 1 and choose to "Insert Layer".

Tracing the line art:

1. Highlight "Layer 2" by clicking on it
   
2. Zoom in as much as you need to. (If you want to zoom more than 200% but less than the preset 400% it works to write in 250, or 300 and hit enter.)
   
3. Choose a bright "Stroke Color".
   
4. Then choose the "Line Tool" in the toolbar or by hitting "N" on the keyboard.

   Now you are ready to place your very first line! XD

   Place the beginning of your line wherever you feel it is most easy to begin at, hold the left mouse button as you drag out the line and release. When you have placed your line, toggle to the "Selection Tool" in the toolbar (or hit quick button "V" on keyboard – I strongly recommend using the quick buttons as there will be a lot of toggling!). When you hover over the line that you drew your pointer should look like something in the picture below with a bent curve at the lower right side:

   

   If you press and hold down the mouse you will be able to bend the line to match your sketch:

   

   In the image above I placed the pointer tool at the edge of the line. You will then see a half square at the bottom right of the pointer. If you press and hold at this point it will move that end of the line.

   When you place your next line next to your previous line with the "Snap to Objects" magnet marked under options, the program will automatically connect the two lines.

   

   In the example above, I'm not completely satisfied with how the two lines are connected. They form a too sharp angle. What I would do now is mark with the pointer tool the connection between the two lines and delete it. I would make a new line between them and bend that until I'm satisfied. When you hover over the new connection between the two lines you will see the square instead of the curve on your pointer. Clicking and holding at the connection you can smooth out the connection by dragging it into position. See image sequence below.

   

   Continue to do this until you have the line art for the whole character ready. When the "Snap to Object" option gives you problem, for example it snaps into a position you don't want it, you can unmark it temporarily. There will arise problems where there is a "triple junction" or more lines that connect. Try and keep the lines separate for as long as possible and only connect more than two lines when you are sure that is where you want them to connect. If you don't understand what I mean I'll give you the following as an example:

   

   Here I made the line for the collar bone first, and then I tried to make the outline of the cloak. The lines cross however, so when I try to manipulate the cloak line it will drag the whole junction along with it creating a not so good result. So keep the lines separate until you're finished manipulating them, then connect them!

   A good practise is also to draw the body first. Then you lock that layer and add hair and clothing on separate layers. If you have the clothes and hair ready in your sketch though you can go ahead and draw them all in the same layer.

   When you have traced all the lines from the sketch, or the ones you want to anyway, you can hide Layer 1 with the sketch and zoom out so that you see the whole character. I usually leave some lines un-drawn so that I can play around with the anatomy and proportions in the next step. There's no need to put too much detail into the line art just yet unless you feel completely happy with the pose and proportions.

   You can click in the first "Frame" beside Layer 2 (marked out in the image below). Marking the frame of an unlocked layer is a quick way to mark all the objects in that layer..

   

   When you have the lines marked you can go ahead and change the "Stroke Color" to black. You don't need to start adding a lot of detail just yet. Adding details is very time consuming and you want to make sure that the major parts of the character like proportions and anatomy look good.

   

   A good way to see if your character has good proportions and anatomy is mirroring the image. Your eyes have gotten so used to seeing the character in its current position and it actually helps to look at it from a different perspective. It helps to notify you of any oddities. Mark all the lines, go to "Modify", "Transform" and "Flip Horizontal". The result of my example image can be seen below.

   

   In my image I think that the character is leaning forwards a little bit. I mark the lines and use the "Free Transform Tool" (quick button Q) in the toolbar to the left. A black frame should appear around the character. Hover over the edge of this frame and hold down and rotate. If you want to you can also skew the marked lines by hovering over one of the sides of the frame.

   

   Flip the image back and confirm that you like the pose.

   

   The difference might not be so big in this example, but for some images it makes for a great improvement. I have used the skew and rotate option in both the first pose for Lengsael and in the Snowboarding Xwee picture, and it helped a lot! It is the small details that add up to build a great final result!

   However, I'm still not quite satisfied with the proportions; the lower part of the body appears too bulky in comparison with the upper body. I mark the lower half of the body and choose the "Free Transform Tool" (Q) and resize it with the "Scale" option selected.

   

   Then I see that the arms are a bit too long so I select these and shorten them with the "Free Transform Tool" without the "Scale" option.

   

   I go ahead and increase the size of the head a tiny bit too. Below is the final result of all my resizing.

   

   Now I feel quite satisfied with the proportions and will commence with the touching up of the broken lines from my resizing and add the additional details that are missing. Below is the result of the added details and clean-up. He is now ready to get some garment.

   

   For clothing I suggest you lock the current layer and draw in a new layer approximately how you want the clothing to appear. I like to do this with a different color than black and I like to draw it with the "Pencil" (Y) or "Brush" (B) tool. This is just a quick way for you to get an idea of how the clothing will look like on your character. I usually make multiple layers and try out several different clothing styles before I decide which one to go for.

   

   So here I've gone for the clothing that comes with the original pet.

   When you have sketched out the clothing mark all the lines and go to "Modify" and "Convert to symbol…". Choose to convert it to a graphics. Lock this layer and create a new layer on top. Trace the clothing like you traced your first sketch. You can hide the layer with the body on as the new lines you are drawing will tend to snap to the lines even in a locked layer. Remember, just like the first trace of the sketch it doesn't have to be perfect. You can clean up the lines later. Folds can be tricky to learn but study a lot of reference pictures and you can experiment yourself to something that will work for your character.

   The result of the tracing of the clothing appears as follows:

   

   Copy this layer and paste it onto the layer with the body and clean up the lines and add any extra details you think are needed. The final result will look something like this:

   

   Congratulations! If you've gotten this far you have finished your line art! If you are happy with the line art for now you can skip forward to the coloring part. However, there is a trick that allows you to manipulate the thickness of the line art to make it look more interesting. The description on how to do this will follow.

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   Convert Lines to Fill

   First you need to mark all the lines and resize the character. This needs to be done since we'll increase the thickness of the lines and then convert these lines to fills. If we don't resize some lines tend to be lost and the result is not good. So mark your lines and use the "Free Transform Tool" and make sure you have it set to "Scale" in Options (below the magnet symbol). Should look like something in the image below:

   

   Unmark the lines by clicking on the background. Go to the Properties in the bottom and change the canvas size to include contents. Keep the Properties open and mark the lines again. Select the "Pointer Tool" by pressing "V" and it should look like the image below:

   

   Change the line thickness by clicking and dragging on the arrow next to where it says a number (should be "1" by default). In this case I change the line thickness to "4". Now go to "Modify", "Shape" and "Convert Lines to Fill".

   

   When I did this I saw that I lost some information, as you can see in the image below. It also happens that some areas get completely filled with black. If you didn't loose any information for this step and the details haven't merged into thick areas of black fill you can go ahead and skip to the part "Manipulating Fills". The next steps just deals with if you're having trouble with your image like I have with this one (and usually have with most images I work on XD). But let's not give up here.

   

   So I undo the last steps by hitting ctrl+z until I get my lines back. So that didn't work. Then I increase the thickness a little bit more, to say 5, and use the "Convert Lines to Fill" option again. Now I see that the details that were lost earlier are maintained, but when I zoom in on the head and the crown for example, I see that the lines for the details have kind of merged. This is going to make it difficult to work with these lines.

   

   Now I hit ctrl+z until I get my lines back again. I'll keep the line thickness at 5 and I'm going to resize the pic a little more. Try to convert the lines to fill again, if it doesn't work, resize some more or try different line thicknesses and try converting to fills again until it works. It's all about experimenting your way forward. Some pictures are really kind and let's you do this step immediately. Other pictures like to give you a really hard time! X3

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   Manipulating Fills

   Once you have converted your lines to fills you can start manipulating them to make them thinner or thicker wherever you want them. You will notice that this works a bit different than manipulating lines. Now you can hover over one side of the fill and it will only affect that side. Check the example below. Sometimes the "Snap to Object" is good to have on at this step, sometimes its not. I usually toggle between having it on or off as I work with making lines thinner or thicker.

   
   

   In this manner increase the thickness of the lines that you think are appropriate. Experiment your way forwards to see what works and what doesn't work.

   A good practice is to thin out lines that end out in the open; for example the corner of the mouth. See the image below on how this process is done most easily. It is preferably that you keep the "Snap to Objects" on.

   
   1. Mark the end of the line
      
   2. Delete the end part so you get sharp edges
      
   3. Grab and drag one of the sharp edges
      
   4. Grab the other edge and drag that one out to the end as well
      
   5. The result should be a pointy end of the line
      

   If you should accidentally move the entire fill while trying to manipulate the thickness just hit the ctrl+z to get it back where it used to be. I find myself doing this a lot! There are some things that will cause troubles for you when you're working on manipulating fills. One example is given below, where I try to increase the thickness of the fill but only part of the fill wants to follow when I pull on it.

   

   In this case I mark the troublesome area:

   

   And I choose to "Smooth" it:

   

   After this the fill should be more cooperative. If necessary choose to smooth it some more. Beware though, some parts really like to give you trouble. With these parts I have to mess around a lot before I get it to work the way I want. With persistence they will obey you! XD One little trick I have is to cut out a part of the fill like in the example below.

   
   1. Mark off some "trouble" area
      
   2. Delete it
      
   3. With the pointer tool set to "Snap to Objects" select the inner edge and drag it out to the outer edge.
      
   4. Grab and drag the other outter edge over to the first one.

   This should also work to make the fill be a little more cooperative to your wishes mwoaha!

   Below is the final result from manipulating the thickness of the line art. It looks a little more interesting than having all lines the same thickness, eh? ;D

   

   Once you have finished manipulating the thickness of your line art it's time to start coloring! Yay for colors! =D

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   Coloring your new, snazzy drawing

   I like to paint some pools of the colors that I'm going to use on the side of the character using the "Brush Tool". It will work like a quick palette for the character I'm working with. You can choose a different shade of color by going to the little circle in the upper right corner that appears when you press and hold the arrow next to the fill color (see image below). I also like to steal the skin colors from the original pet image ;D

   
   

   Fill in the different areas with the base colors using the "Paint Bucket Tool" (K). If you have used the "Snap to Objects" tool wisely while working on your line art there should be no gaps in your line art. If there are gaps the "Paint Bucket Tool" is not going to work. What you could do then is either zoom in and scan your line art for any gaps or use the option "Close Medium Gaps" or "Close Large Gaps". The options appear where the magnet usually is when you choose the "Paint Bucket Tool".

   The result of the filling in of base colors can be seen below.

   

   Once you have the base colors filled in it's time to choose a source of light. The source of light, for example the sun or an electric light will decide where your shades and highlights will be. It's easiest if you choose only one source. I have put the source in the upper right corner of my image. This places the shades on the opposite side; lower left corner or side, on all the parts of my character.

   To make a fill simply use the "Line Tool" and mark of an area where you want the shade to appear, see the examples below:

   
   1. Mark off an area with a bright colored line.
      
   2. Fill the area with a darker color
      
   3. Click on the line to mark it and delete it

   Even when you have removed the line you can hover over the border of the base and shade color, press and hold down and manipulate the shape of the shade. The same procedure can be used to make highlights.

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   Gradient Fill

   The border between the base and shade color will be sharp if you use the above mentioned method. This works most of the time, but there are instances when you want a more smooth transition between the two colors. An example could be over a gently curved body part. This is where "Gradient Fill" comes into play. Let's say I want the above shade to have a smooth transition.

   1. I mark the shaded area
      
   2. Bring out the "Color Mixer" panel that should be hiding on the right side. Choose "Linear" in the roll down menu that should be set to "Solid" as default (#1 in the image below). Then choose the "Paint Bucket Tool" and unlock the "Lock Fill" (#2 in the image below).
      
   

   You will get some new options in the "Color Mixer". There will be one bar with two arrows. Clicking on one arrow lets you choose a color for that side. Set one side of the color to the shade color, and the other side to the base color. See the image below:

   

   Then you click with the "Paint Bucket Tool" where you want the dark side of your shade to be and drag it across the shade area. See below:

   

   In this image I kind of went berserk with the gradient fill tool as you can see in the final result below XD

   

   Once you are happy with your image you can export it using the "File", "Export" and "Export Image". Remember though that Flash will export all layers as visible. So if you still have hidden layers with the original sketch and so on go ahead and delete these layers before you export the image.

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   That is all I have to teach you at this point.

   Hope you got something out of it! If you have questions or any suggestions of change to this tutorial to increase the clarity feel free to neomail me: razieel

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   Counter Started: 02/18/07
   

   Please link back to this page if you found it useful, thanks! ^__^
   
   
   
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