Flash Assignment 2: The Interactive Tools Panel

Photo credit: Gordon Ross, uploaded via Flickr, Creative Commons License

2.1 Interactive Tools Panel

The Flash Tools

Tools:

• Selection Tool – This is the tool that does most of the heavy lifting. With it, you select objects, or portions of objects, upon witch you can perform myriad graphical editing tasks.  Having not had any experience with other Adobe graphical applications (such as Illustrator or Photoshop), I’ll have to admit that I’m not up-to-speed on most of the editing tricks and terminology used in this portion of the tutorial.  Still, the capabilities are impressive.

• Subselection Tool – Similar to the selection tool.  Used primarily for modifying edges, points and contours of objects.

• Free Transform/Gradient Tool – The free transform tool is a powerful tool for scaling, translating and rotating objects about any axis.  Especially cool is the feature that allows one to set the stationary reference point from which to scale an object.  By default, objects are pinned at the center, meaning that they scale radially outward without translating across the stage.  Nifty.

The gradient tool creates color gradients, both linear and radial.  These too can be rotated and/or aligned as needed, and the slope (or rate of change) of gradiation altered in more ways that one can imagine. 

• 3D Rotation/Translation Tool – This tool is somewhat similar to the free transform tool, but with the time dimension thrown into the mix.  Thus, when working with objects in this venue, we must first select modify => convert to symbol from the menu bar, and select the movie clip option.  These symbols can now be animated in translation/rotation over the span of a timeline.

• Lasso Tool – This works as a specialized selection tool.  Irregular closed curves or polygons can be bound with the lasso tool for editing.  Another feature of this tool is magic wand mode, which directs the program to select areas of an object based on edges or color differentials that it detects.  This can be useful for items that can’t be broken down to constituent elements, such as photographs.  For example, we all have one of those flattering photos of ourselves that we’d love to display, but can’t because we’re standing arm-in-arm with our ex-significant-other.  The lasso and magic wand tools can help us finally achieve that clean break, and really move-on.

• Pen/Anchor Point Tools – This little gadget is somewhat counter-intuitive if thought of as analogous to a pen or brush in some other graphics applications.  In fact, the pen works not as a click-and-drag free-form drawing tool, but rather as a tool for creating lines and complex curves by defining a series of points, then warping the segments connecting them.  The functions of creating and adding contours are not unlike those of the subselect tool, though with the pen tool, you can create and modify lines and curves as you go, rather than switching back and forth between creation and modification tools, making it a big timesaver if you find yourself frequently doing that sort of thing.  You might say that this doohickey lets you draw and then modify before the ink is even dry.

• Text Tool – The text tool is used to insert text boxes on the stage.  A single click with the text tool creates a dynamically sized text box, meaning that it will continue to grow as insert more text.  Alternatively, you can click and drag to draw a text box of fixed size.  In either case, the size of the text box can be resized. 

An interesting feature is that of text box threading, meaning that you can make text flow out of one textbox in into another. 

When working with text boxes, note that the properties panel contains all of the options for selecting font, font size, leading (space between lines), and so forth.  Flash has a great number of formatting options available for text.

• Line Tool – The Line tool is a simple click and drag tool for freehand line drawing.  Note that holding the shift key while drawing lines ensures perfectly horizontal, vertical or 45 degree diagonal lines.  Options are available to adjust line styles, appearance of end caps, join properties, and a number of other line-oriented miscellanea.

• Shape Tool – When using the shape tools, as well as some other drawing implements, it is important to note that drawing can be done in either object mode or merge mode.  The applicability of this option is evidenced by the appearance of the object drawing button in the tool options area when a tool is selected.  Clicking this button toggles object drawing on and off.  The button is on when it is darker grey, and off (merge mode) when it turns light grey.

When one draws in object drawing mode, individual elements maintain their identity.  For example, if a circle is drawn within a previously drawn square, one can later move the circle to a new position on the stage, outside of the square, and still retain both as complete objects.  Conversely, if the same process were done in merge mode, the circle would replace the portion of the square upon which it was drawn.  The circle could still be selected and moved, but moving it would result in a “hole” being left inside the square where the circle had been, since that portion of the square was erased by the circle being drawn overtop of it.

When using the rectangle or oval shape tools, note that the shift key performs a function analogous to that with the line tool.  Just as shift draws perfectly horizontal or vertical lines, so too does it allow one to draw perfect circles or squares when used in conjunction with the shape tools.

·         Pencil Tool – This is a freehand drawing tool.  There are three modes in which one can draw with the pencil:

o        Straighten – In this mode, a rough line will be converted to perfectly straight, and a sloppy circle becomes uniform.

o        Smooth – Here, the resulting lines and curves more closely approximate what was actually drawn, but the roughness is sanded-down a bit.

o        Ink – This mode is supposed to remain the most true to the actual shape created by the freehand, but I find little difference between this setting and smooth.

·        Brush/Spray Brush Tool – Important to note here that while one may associate the word brush with stroke, and furthermore that one may select a stroke color for use with the brush tool, this tool nonetheless has no stroke associated with it. It is the fill color that determines the color of the brush tool.

Furthermore, when using the spray brush tool, one can select both the stroke and fill, but the spray brush has neither stroke nor fill.  To select the color of the spray, one must go to the properties panel and select there.

By default, the spray tool sprays blobs paint like a real sprayer.  However, Flash lets you spray any shape you choose.  You can create your own shape (such as a star, for instance), convert it to a graphic symbol with the Modify => Convert to Symbol menu command, and then select that symbol for your spray type in the properties panel.  So, your spray tool can spit out tiny stars rather than paint blobs, if you’re into that sort of thing.

• Deco Tool – This tool allows one to draw with many preset shapes and patterns.  Some of these deco items can also be inserted as animation, such as fire or lightning.  Working with animation items requires us to do some work with layers on the timeline, which hasn’t been covered in the tutorial yet, making this a bit difficult to follow.  Still, playing with this a bit gives one an insight into the design possibilities afforded one with this application.

• Bone/Bind Tool – Together, these are known as the inverse kinematic (IK) tools.  These are used to create articulation in objects, allowing them to change shape with respect to time.  This can be thought of as adding bones to an object (hence the name bone tool) connected at moveable joints.  A series of connected bones and joints is called an armature.

There are options for restricting or allowing the rotation and translation of individual joints.  Our tutorial instructor demonstrated these functions on an object with many members, but that’s a bit too busy, in my opinion.  I found it much easier to get a feel for how these setting work by starting with one member first.  This first bone automatically has a joint, but it really isn’t a true joint in this case, since it does not join two members.  At this point, the joint is really just a pivot/anchor point.  By adjusting the translation/rotation settings on this member, you can gain a good appreciation for how the settings work.  Adding a second member to the first, with a connecting joint between them, then gives you a grasp of how a series of members move together.

The bind tool is supposedly for modifying the deformations of an object as it deforms, but I honestly can’t get any sense of what it does based on the tutorial.

• Paint Bucket/Ink Bottle Tool – This tool floods strokes (ink bottle) or fill areas (paint bucket) with a selected color. 

• Eye Dropper Tool – The eye dropper tool samples colors, gradients or bitmaps from objects to be replicated in other objects.  This is useful for color matching, especially from imported objects, such as photographs.

• Eraser Tool - Someone once said “To err is human, but when you wear out the eraser before the pencil, you’re overdoing it”.  Well, no such trouble exists in Flash.  The eraser tool provides options for erasing fill areas, strokes, selection areas only, interior areas only, or just plain erase everything.  Err away, then erase to your heart’s content.

• Hand Tool – The hand tool is simply a means for pushing the stage around in your document window in order to navigate to different areas.  This is useful when you’re zoomed in to one area of the stage, and want to move to an area that’s off-screen.  It has the same effect as scrolling around with the scroll bars, but easier, since you can push the stage in any direction.  If you happen to be using another tool, you can temporarily convert that tool into a hand tool by holding the spacebar.

• Zoom Tool – As one might expect, the zoom tool sets the magnification level of the stage.  Clicking in the document window with the zoom tool doubles the current zoom level, while clicking with the Alt key held down cuts the zoom level in half.