Flash 101 - Part 1: The Hammer and The Chisel

You can keep drawing lines until you have the polygon of your dreams.

As you can see, my dreams are a little... odd.

If you take a look at the Options section of the toolbar, you'll notice that the Pencil tool also has a couple of modifiers - in fact, three different drawing modes which affect the behavior of the Pencil tool. The "Straighten" modifier attempts to automatically convert your drawing into a geometric shape; the "Smooth" modifier allows you to draw smooth curves; and the "Ink" modifier is used when you would prefer not to apply any automatic correction to your drawing.

A variant of the Pencil tool is the Line tool, used specifically to draw lines. You can activate it with the keyboard shortcut N.

As with the Pencil tool, using it is a simple click-and-drag operation.

If you specifically want to draw circles and rectangles, Flash offers the Oval and Rectangle tools, which work in much the same manner.

Note that if you already have a fill colour selected, Flash will automatically fill the circle or rectangle with that colour.

There are a couple of interesting things you should know about the Oval and Rectangle tools. For example, the "Round Rectangle" modifier allows you to give your rectangles rounded corners (can you say corner radius?), and you can draw perfect circles or squares by holding down the Shift key while using the tool.

Want to see the Rectangle tool turn into the Circle tool? Set a high corner radius - 50 - and watch as your rectangles begin to resemble circles!

Curves In All The Right Places

If you like curves, Flash has a new - and powerful - Pen tool which lets you draw curves with a tremendous degree of control. You can activate it with the keyboard shortcut P.

The Pen tool can be used to draw both straight and curved paths. Both types of paths are drawn by first setting anchor points on the Stage, and then connecting them with straight or curved lines.

Drawing straight lines with the Pen tool is simplicity itself - simply click to set the first anchor point, then click again to set the next anchor point, and Flash will automatically connect the two points with a straight line.

You can continue setting anchor points by clicking at different positions on the Stage. When you're done, you can close the object by double-clicking the last point.

Note how Flash automatically fills closed objects with the currently selected fill colour.

Drawing curved paths is a little more complicated - you need to first position the mouse pointer at the curve's starting point and then click-drag the pointer in the direction of the curve. The mouse pointer will change to display a tangent to the curve.

Once you have the first segment of the curve drawn to your satisfaction, position the cursor at the point where the curve should end, hold down the mouse button, and click-drag the pointer in the opposite direction. Flash will complete the curved path for you.

You can alter the curve (or line) at any time by clicking on it and modifying anchor points and tangents.

Copyright Melonfire, 2000. All rights reserved.