Illustrator-based Flash - wise or folly?

I am about to embark on a major Flash-based e-learning
project, and have been deliberating over the ideal workflow for
such a task. Principally: would there be any significant advantage
to using Illustrator for all the technical illustrations and
textual material in this project, and to subsequently export all
this into Flash to be enhanced with animation and interactivity?
Clearly, Illustrator is far more capable a tool for illustration,
and as such would allow be to create more sophisticated
illustrations and (arguably) work faster. But will this additional
capability outweigh the additional workflow complexity, and the
inevitable problems inherent to this export/import process?
Many thanks for any advice!

True - AI has more capable tools - but what's the point of
those features won't be supported by the
flash player (unless they were rasterized).
It depends on your needs - file size an issue?
Personally - I would do all drawing in Flash - I have no
problem with the Flash drawing engine
(except for a few wish-list items). But overall, if the end
result is flash, i like to draw in flash
- thayt way i know everything i am drawing is not going to
pose a problem with the player once compiled.
Will these images need to be setup for animation?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--> Adobe Certified Expert
--> www.mudbubble.com
--> www.keyframer.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AV8| wrote:
> I am about to embark on a major Flash-based e-learning
project, and have been
> deliberating over the ideal workflow for such a task.
Principally: would there
> be any significant advantage to using Illustrator for
all the technical
> illustrations and textual material in this project, and
to subsequently export
> all this into Flash to be enhanced with animation and
interactivity? Clearly,
> Illustrator is far more capable a tool for illustration,
and as such would
> allow be to create more sophisticated illustrations and
(arguably) work faster.
> But will this additional capability outweigh the
additional workflow
> complexity, and the inevitable problems that would
occasionally rise by this
> export/import process?
>
> Many thanks for any advice!
>
>

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What is the best practices workflow from illustrator to flash in cs 6?

Hello- question from an illustrator to flash workflow n00b.
I'm creating a flash experience with animated characters.
I'm building my art assets in illustrator.
I've found it relatively easy & straightforward to import assets from illustrator into flash.
I can conveniently import my layers and symbols from illustrator as separate layers and symbols in flash and manipulate them.
However, let's say after import I want to change something with an asset using illustrator. For example, I have a character with facial features, including eyes. I want to change the eyes in illustrator and have those changes then be propogated in some way- automagically or manually- in flash.
What is the right way to do this? Are there best practices for being able to go back and forth between flash and illustrator?
Thank you!
~ sae

Thanks for the reply Suhas.
I guess the answer to my question is that there is no good way. In the photoshop/illustrator workflow, I can paste a document from illustrator into photoshop and then double-click it in photoshop to open it back up in illustrator and edit the original. I have seen posts on people doing this between Flash and Illustrator with the now-discontinued Flash Catalyst- a process that was apparently called round-tripping. Ideally, this is the functionality I'd like to have between Flash and Illustrator but I take it from your reply that the answer is 'Does not exist.'
~ sae

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Thanks for all of your replies. _E_ , what I was referring to
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(Note: I'm using Adobe CS4)
In Illustrator CS4 Adobe has greatly improved what you can do
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for sure.
quote:
I've had numerous instances if gradients exporting to SWFs
poorly.
Me too, but it seems that Illustrator has really improved in
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You could always create your gradients in actionscript:
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That's really cool, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for
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Personally, I always use as much as Flash can provide for
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I do a lot of illustration - more illustration than
animation. Illustrator, for me, is a superior tool for creating
some of the highly complex, precision illustration work that I do.
There are a lot of specific tools that I absolutely need that
Illustrator offers, plus, much of my stuff also goes to print, and
Flash is not designed for what Illustrator can do. But like you
said, to each his own, we all have different types of workflow and
it's great that there are so many tools we can use exclusively or
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get into Flash! Thank you all for your help and insights!

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Adobe Illustrator CS2, Flash 8, Mac. (Png attached)

This never happened to me.
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Don't use .png (too heavy files).
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Hi,
I have difficulties with the color management between Illustrator and Flash.
I have the original vector files in Illustrator and would like to use the color groups, I have in Illustrator, also in Flash.
One way doing it is using the Kuler.
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Many thanks in advance!

I'm fairly new to this having only recently started using these tools again after six years, but will try to help! Go to "Explore", find a theme you like and click the "Edit" selection when you mouse over it. From there you can edit it or save a copy of it as is as whatever name you wish. In Photoshop or Illustrator, they will now show up in Adobe Color Themes (Window > Extensions > Adobe Color Themes) under "All Themes" in the drop menu. In these apps (and others that are Adobe Color Theme aware), any themes that you favorite on the site will show up under "My Favorites".
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Illustrator or Flash or Toon boom or.......

Hi everybody!
I am a newbie in digital illustration and animation. I believe my question has been asked million times before, but I ask it because I don know what to do anymore.
Could someone advice me on what software would be the best for making some illustrations (that could be used for children books and similar) and also for using this illustrations step further to make some simple cut out or frame to frame animations/cartoons.
Another thing- can Toon boom (studio or animate or some other version) be used for illustration, maybe instead of Adobe illustrator? Is it posssible that Adobe Flash, Illustrator and After Effects at some basic level do the same thing as Toon Boom ? Are the differences felt mostly bey professionals who do some hi-polished animations or illustrations?
For the last 7 days I have been reading numerous articles and reviews but I am still confused and beginning to be half crazy.
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I'm late to the discussion - but maybe this will be useful to others looking for software to produce animation. I believe any good program which allows you a lot of creative ability is going to have a steep learning curve. The comments below are based on my experience; yours may be different.
I couldn't agree more about Toon Boom. I downloaded the trial, went to the tutorials, and was astonished at the amount of time required by these videos to get any idea how the program worked. Be prepared to invest a couple of days. Also, the tutorials are for the more expensive versions of the program, and so if you're interested in Toon Boom Studio you might might find them somewhat confusing, as not all the options they talk about are available on the cheaper version. Looking at the on-line documentation is MUCH more helpful than the tutorials they offer. It walks you through so you can actually get a taste for the program. Toon Boom will also import Illustrator files which look like the originals (unlike the next program I talk about).
I've used Anime Studio Pro (by Smith Micro) for several months and found the interface unintuitive and, at times, very frustrating. It can produce a great final product, and if you can get past the drawing interface, which, to me, is very quirky (I'm used to Adobe Illustrator), it's a nice program. The manual is helpful, but not great - which means you're stuck with surfing the web for tutorials and the forums (not necessarily a bad thing - just be aware). It's built in physics capability is really nice - clothes, hair, and other things can be made to react to a character's movement automatically, but it takes a lot of experimentation to get it to to work correctly. If you want to import files, it will, but only rasterized and limited vector (You have to save down to Illustrator 8 to import from Illustrator, and the vectors don't look as clean as the original). It's better to build vector art in the program, but, again, this can be frustrating until you learn the oddities of the program. The bone system allows you to connect bones to individual or a group vector points, or can be made to manipulate raster images. Many people produce great stuff with this program and love it, but I found it too frustrating and starting looking for something else.
After seeing some of Daniel Gies's work produced in After Effects I decided to try it out. Right away I was happier because I could import Illustrator and Photoshop files (programs I've used for a long time) directly into AE and they looked exactly like the originals (as well as layers retaining their names and locations). The vector files are rasterized, but if you rescale them the program automatically updates the images to adjust to their new size. There is also a way to paste a vector path directly into the program. Although AE is not a true animation program, it does give you a lot of control. After a month I can see I still have a lot to learn, as the many special effects options in AE can be used to good use in animated projects. I feel as if I have more control over what I am producing, and correcting mistakes seems easier in AE than Anime Studio Pro. I do miss the auto-phyiscs, as well as some of the other features, so in the end it's all about personal taste and what you're comfortable with, and more importantly, your style of animation.
As a final note: I might have been more enthusiastic about Toon Boom if my budget wasn't limited. Toon Boon comes in three flavors ($249, $699, $1,199), where as I already owned AE (CS 5.5) - so your budget, of course, is another factor in choosing. Anime Studio has two flavors; $50 and $300.

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