Hey flashers, question for ya..

If it's a Wacom and a recent version of Flash there are options for line
size/pressure/tilt for the paintbrush. What exactly do you mean by uniform and no variable stroke?

Also, if you've already gone ahead and made a picture, go ahead and select the marks you've made and want to clean up. Select them with the Selection tool (not Subselection or Free Transform) and look at the new buttons at the bottom of the toolbar. You can straight or more importantly smooth the mark to get an unadulterated pencil line or a less-bumpy (and even calligraphic) paint line.

Yah, you have to eye the smoothing thing. I never go with anything but the Ink toggle. I also make my marks as quickly as possible. Even if you have a perfect arc in your hand/wrist movement, going slow while dragging the pen (or even the mouse) tends to vary the line weight too much. It is making its marks with a certain frequency, and each "update" could be interpreted as so many speeds, and thus so many thicknesses, which when brought together looks like a shaky line. Like riding a bike fast to keep balance, I'd work on making the lines faster, so that each update is interpreted consistently as part of the same motion, same line, and thus has a smooth if not continuous gradation of line width. I'm on an intuos2 6x8, I think the Digitizers are the intuos3, the next line up, while I imagine it isn't a resolution problem, also consider downloading the latest drivers from the Wacom set as a double-check. You might have the pen equivalent of Parkinson's-style shakiness and have a technical problem be at fault.

Ahhh, do I know that dilemma...I remember first trying to create smooth attractive lines with the stylus pen for the first time. I was used to the ease of either using a pencil and paper, or at least using the stylus in photoshop, which is much easier to control. By the end of the day, I wanted to throw the bloody stylus acoss the room.

But there are a few cool tricks that'll get you the result that you want. I warn you though, they can be a little time consuming. It takes a while to clean up a drawing, and even more so, a series of drawings, but the results are good.

The first technique is using the line tool. You can control the thickness in the properties editor, either before, during or after you've drawn the line, by selecting the line and raising or lowering the line thickness. Using this technique, remember after to make sure that all of your lines are closed, so you can fill them easily. One trick for making that easier, is to click on the little colored box on the layer that you're working with, to the left of the timeline. This'll make your line wireframe, and you can easily see if your lines connect properly, and if there are extra lines sticking out too far.

If you want to take that technique a little further, and actually give your lines changes in thickness (thick to thin lines), then select the lines that you've created with the line tool, then under "modify", select, "convert lines to fills". Once you've done that, then you can take the black arrow tool, place it over the edge of the line, click and adjust the thickness of the line in the area that you want. This gets good clean results, and it's one of the quickest methods. If you look at my animated avatar, you'll see the result that I got using the regular line tool. All of that was done using the line tool. (without adjusting the thickness)

An added advantage with using the line tool, is that it's a click and drag, from point A to point B, as opposed to trying to redraw the line over and over and over, slowly going insane, when your lines readjust out of shape, as you'd get with the pencil tool.

There are things that do help when using the pencil tool however, that'll help you get the result you're after, and with a little practice and patience, you'll be able to get a semi-reasonable result, a little faster then with the line tool.
You'll notice that if you use the pencil tool, sometimes it readjusts itself, and sometimes it doesn't. These a few tips when using that tool...

- The line will react differently depending on how zoomed in you are. You'll notice that if you're zoomed out, the line will smooth itself out more, whereas, if you zoom in, it'll get unpredictable warped results. So find the zoom that suits your comfort level the best. You might have to use the black arrow tool to adjust the line a little, but it definitely helps.

- Check the settings in the toolbox. Make sure that the line type is set to "smooth", and not "edged". This is a simple thing that's often overlooked, even if you've used the tool alot, sometimes you just forget. You draw a line 50 times, not knowing why it keeps bending out of shape.

- Sometimes you get better results either drawing the line faster, or slower. Try to adjust the zoom, and the speed that you draw the line, so you can draw relatively slowly, and get the right result. The reason for this is, it's difficult to get the line to go in the right direction when you're drawing fast, with a stylus. When you draw slowly, you can carefully trace your template.

- Do'nt import small templates. (the reference drawing). If you do this, then the you'll be forced to draw zoomed in closely, which'll make it really hard to get a good result. Remember that drawing a clean up based on a larger image will automatically make your job easier.

Now, as far as using the pen tool to draw, forget about it, if you're looking for a nice result. Flash's pen tool is useless, and trust me, after hours of having to "optimize" and "smooth" your line, trying not only to get a smooth result, but something that's composed of fewer vector points, you'll lose the urge. I've tried in a thousand different ways, and it's a waste of time and calories.

So this should help, feel free to ask away if you aren't sure about something.

Adam

Hey Swankaman! I know the woes of using the wacom in Flash. And drawing with the mouse can be even more painful. When ever I do any work in Flash I use the line tool to draw out the image. I can bend the line anyway I want with the cursor tool. After I have the image shaped out I convert the lines to fill. Now you can use the white cursor to select the nodes on the line fill and taper them to get the nice thick to line line quality. I have a tutorial that I did that shows this process with pictures. If you want it just pm me and I'll send it your way. Cheers

I use a mouse, for me it's easier. My suggestion would be become familiar with the bezier tool, you can smooth a lot of stuff out with it.

That definitely reads as smoother. Congratulations!

Another thing to be aware of is that when you make a line with the pencil tool, the Ink Bottle, or any of the shape tools, the line will always be the same size no matter how much you adjust the size of the image. That means if you draw it big and shrink it down, your lines will get bigger.

Solution? Use Modify/Convert lines to fills before you adjust size.

This, of course, demands that you finish the drawing before adjusting its size.

ALot of great suggestions I didn't know. This is a print-out-and-keep-'er.

Thanks

Lots of good info!

Just as in Photoshop, there are many ways to skin a cat (who's the fiend that thought up that phrase anyhoo?!) :eek:

Myself, I use the brush tool 90% of the time, zooming in and out, hither and yon. Using no tilt, sometimes "Use Pressure" button, some times not...bopping between brush sizes as needed...(enter sadistic cat phrase again!)

None the less, it appears you've found your way Swank! Lookin' good!

Cheers!

Splatman :D

I found that when using the brush tool, if you draw slowly, then the lines come out with those bumpy edges you mentioned. So when I clean something up, I use quick big strokes since they always come out smooth. I draw strokes longer than I need and then go back and erase the portion that I don't need. If you were to watch me clean up something you'd notice that it's mostly quick flicking movements of the wrist to create my lines.

Stick with it, once you've mastered the tablet, you'll by far ahead of the game!