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If you are anything like me, you hear graphic artists around the net talking about using Flash for their digital art… but you have no clue what all the fuss is about. Afterall, Flash is used for long-loading webpage design, movies and little animations… right?

It’s not good for only that!

Flash is also a fantastic tool for artists who own tablets to produce some great digitally “inked” linework. This is due to the fact that the brush tool in Flash has built-in auto-smoothing. I’ve never been more impressed with a program’s ability to make my inking look so steady and solid. Though I rarely, if ever, use Flash to color, I now use ONLY Flash to ink my linework.

Now if you want to ink directly into flash from scratch, you just select your brush settings and run with it. But if you’re like me, I still have to do all my rough art with traditional pencil and paper. This guide details how to take a hand-drawn picture on paper and turn it into a Flash-Inked masterpiece! ^_~

Setting the Stage to Ink in Flash

Let’s get everything ready to start your new piece of linework.

1. Scan in your drawing. I usually rotate, crop and fix minor things on my drawing in Photoshop before I take it to Flash.
2. Open up Flash. The version I have is Flash MX, so all screenshots will be taken from that version of the program.
3. Click on the File Menu and select Import (Ctrl + R) as shown in the image below.
   

   
   

4. Browse until you find the image you want to import and select it. Your imported picture will now be placed on the screen as Layer 1.
5. We will now create a new layer. This will be the layer that we will do our inking on. You can create as many layers as you need to – based on how complex your inking is. I tend to only need one. To create a new layer, click on the Insert Layer icon as shown below.

Brush Settings in Flash

Now that your picture is imported and you have a new inking layer, we need to make sure your brush settings are good to go.

1. Select the brush tool from the menu. This will open up all the brush settings in the menu below.
   
   
2. Since most tablets do have pressure sensitivity, we want to take full advantage of that. Make sure that the pressure sensitivity icon is activated.
3. Below the pressure sensitivity icon you will see your brush sizes. You may have to play around with it a little bit, but you’ll find a size that works best for you. I tend to use the smallest setting for my art.
4. Use the stroke color icon to choose the color of ink you’d like to use.

Now that your brush and your drawing area are set up, it’s time for you to ink!

Tips for Inking In Flash

• Use the zoom control to focus in on smaller areas in your linework. For fine details, I zoom in 100%. For basic linework, I tend to keep my zoom at 75%. Again, this is going to be something you may have to experiment with until you find a setting you like.
• Drawing with quick strokes seems to make the cleanest lines. Though Flash has an automatic line smoother, it still can pick up all the little wiggles of a long, slow line. For examples of the line smoother at work, see below:

Saving Your Linework

Once you’ve completed inking your linework, you probably want to save it to a format you can use in other paint programs.

1. If you need to put the project down for a little while before you’ve completely finished inking and want to keep your progress, click the File Menu and choose Save (Ctrl+S). This will save your picture as a Flash file that you can later Open (Ctrl+O) from the File Menu.
2. Once you have completed your inking, you will need to remove the sketchy layer underneath the inks. To do this, select Layer 1 from the layers menu. Then click the Delete Layer icon – it looks like a little trash can. Layer 1 will disappear and you will be left with the nice, clean inked layer!

After you have removed Layer 1, open the File Menu and choose Export Image. This will allow you to save your inked layer as a JPG file. From here, you can open up your newly inked artwork in other programs, such as Photoshop, for coloring, alterations and touch ups.

Once you get the hang of these steps, you’ll find that it’s not all that difficult to do for the quality of art you can make. Feel free to drop a line if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to clarify anything on your mind!

Watch Flash in Action Here:

You Tube Video created by thebit07.