Flash Advice: Is My Teacher Correct?

My teacher says this about flash when he saw me trying to do some cool sketches-on-crinkled-paper animation effect in Photoshop: Just use vector art in Flash. I explained my idea, he repeated himself as if he thought I outright ignored him.

Then, I find a tutorial for exactly what I want to do in my Flash site from a professional designer. What did he use to create his graphics? PHOTOSHOP. No vector.

So, my question is thus: if I restrict the size of my SWF, is using raster graphics in a Flash site THAT bad of an idea? I understand why just using vector graphics is the better idea, but I wonder about half of the things he says...

Huh?

It would help a bit if you posted maybe a visual of what you're trying to accomplish.

Flash has a very specific "look" to it, which you're going to be fighting with a lot if you're going straight from drawing traditionally. It's good at doing very smooth stylized lines. You can animate really rough in it, but it'll fight you every step of the way.

Say you wanted a nice "pencil-y" line, for instance? You'd have to import it from Illustrator, "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends" style.

Are you talking about just doing rough-looking frame-by-frame cel animation? There are better ways to do it. I animated one of my first pieces in college by onion-skinning Photoshop layers and sequencing 'em in After Effects (which was a bit backwards, but you can do it).

It sounds like your prof is talking out of his ass about Flash, which is pretty typical. I didn't know what a nested symbol was until I got a job.

I'd say, take a look at various "bitmap-based" 2D programs like Mirage and see if they can do what you're trying to do.

example:

http://www.bauhaussoftware.com/ -makers of Mirage, one of my 2D buddies was trying to get our old studio to switch to this

http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pe...ex.php?id=Home -open-source 2D program called "Pencil", haven't tried it yet, sounds promising

I actually don't have a visual. It was the beginning of the semester and I did switch to vector just to get him off my damn back.

I was going to scan crumpled paper in with individual frames of simple, stickmans animation drawn on it. I'd do it frame by frame, but have the texture dominant over everything else.

Now, I've got some simple, vector art. I'm still having a ton of trouble with Flash, but I guess I'll find my way through. I'm just wondering how much truth is in his statement of it being an awful idea to use raster in Flash at all. He really doesn't... teach and half of the things he says are completely false. It's getting rather aggravating.

That pencil program looks rather interesting, by the way...

Well, you can embed any damn thing you want into a Flash interface, if what you're ultimately doing is building a site.

The "Pencil" program apparently switch-hits between Flash and Vector stuff. I might mess around with it this weekend to see if it's any good.

Honestly, if all you're wanting to do is animate, get a scanner, some paper, and a pencil. Maybe drop two bucks for a standard three-hole punch style pegbar (Lightfoot LTD Round standard, I think?), and rock out.

I'm definitely giving it a shot after I graduate. I really wanted to use Flash as a medium for animation for my last project, but he just wasn't having it.

Whatever.

Learn to walk before you start running, etc etc.

I suppose, but this is also the second flash class and my senior project.

Ah, well. I guess I'll do that experimentation and learning when I'm not dealing with this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

It sounds like your prof is talking out of his ass about Flash

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DING DING DING DING! (that's the sound of Yellerdog being dead on).

Your professor is just very set in his ways, he was taught to use Flash in a specific manner and feels using it in any other way isn't the way to do it. In nearly every Flash project I do I am using both vector graphics and bitmap based graphics, but it all is dependent on the requirements of the project and what you want to accomplish. Hell, when I was in school a kid in one of my classes did a 3 min animation by hand, scanned in every drawing, and added them to the .fla frame by frame. Stupid, yes, a very inefficient way of doing it, yes, but was it wrong? No, because in the end it looked great and he got done what he wanted to accomplish.

I personally say don't listen to your teacher, he is obviously bias, and my favorite thing about using Flash as a medium is the ability to experiment with it. But that's just my opinion.

I mean, shit, you could integrate stop motion frames into Flash if you really wanted to.

It seems like your professor is probably concerned about file size for download over 56k modems or something.