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Retracing Detailed Artwork in Flash

By Adrien-Luc Sanders, About.com

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I’d suggest starting off with a thicker line weight for your main outlines; it’s a common trick in cartoon artwork to use thicker lines for the main outlines of shapes, while using thinner outlines for the inner details. Even when you’re using fixed-width lines instead of variable width, the change from thick lines on the outlines to thin lines on the details will lend the illusion of weight and also make it easier for the eye to look at the image as distinct shapes/areas rather than a jumble of bold lines.

Using the Pen Tool, start to retrace your image on a new layer above the sketch template; click from one key point to the next to create your lines in Flash’s own version of connect-the-dots. Try to use as few vector points as possible--mainly for the sake of your own sanity when making adjustments.

Remember, click to create a sharp corner; click-and-drag to pull out handles that you can use to edit the curves connected to the points later. We’ve done something similar to this in the lesson on retracing for frame-by-frame animation; this time, however, we can afford a bit more detail, since we’re not redrawing each frame to the point of exhaustion.

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