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Subject:	Re: FLASH: Creating in Flash vs creating in Illustrator (long msg)
From:	Jim Hatlo
Date:	Fri, 2 Jul 1999 04:46:22 +0100

At 4:24 PM -0700 7/1/99, John Olson wrote:
>John,
>Thanks for the info. To be honest, I dont like the drawing tools in
>Flash. I find them very awkward.
>But if it means keeping my Flash animations as efficient as possible,
>I can suffer a little.
>
>Is there a general rule of thumb or guidelines to determine when I
>should use the Flash design tools versus Illustrator ( or any outside
>2d package).

As a longtime Illustrator user, I've never cared much for the idiosyncratic
drawing tools in Flash, either -- even though over time, you get used to
them. Or used to working around them.

After seeing some of the workshops at UCON '99 that featured developing
content in FreeHand, then moving it into Flash (per Macromedia's "Design In
Motion" product link), our team has gotten serious about using FreeHand as
a development app for Flash content. This is after having rejected it
outright a year ago.

Some background: Last year, in the middle of our first Flash project, we
bought FreeHand on the strength of Macromedia's Design in Motion pitch.
What I expected was to be able to bring a FreeHand file into Flash, layers
and all, with a simple Export command or even a drag-and-drop. In other
words, I wanted to set up a layers structure in FreeHand (which I'd been
doing in Illustrator), create art and type for the various layers, then
have it all come into Flash on greased skids.

When I found out you had to first export FreeHand to Illustrator format
before you could get layers from one app to the other, I was thoroughly
ticked off. What was the point of starting in FreeHand, in that case? And
when I found that exporting from FreeHand as .swf format still didn't give
you something you could pop into Flash automatically -- you had to open a
Flash file, then do an Import command to get the .swf into Flash, and you
still couldn't preserve your FH layers structure -- I felt ripped off, and
we went back to Illustrator.

(Side note, in case you're not aware of the distinction: Illustrator works
in PostScript, naturally, since that's Adobe's language. As I understand
it, there's not a huge difference between an AI file and an equivalent EPS
file. FreeHand, however, has always had its own propietary format, since
its origins at Aldus. That's given it some advantages, historically, in
adding native functions -- like transparency -- that could only be done in
Illustrator by means of plug-ins. I think that's also how it gets its
special .swf export abilities.)

At the UCON '99 workshops I saw Hillman Curtis and Todd Purgason
demonstrating their techniques for developing extensive comps in FreeHand,
then porting them to Flash, with very impressive results. I also discovered
that my assumptions about the Design in Motion hand-off from FreeHand to
Flash were incorrect. I had been looking for oranges on an apple tree.

I had been expecting multi-layer transfers from FreeHand to Flash. In
particular, I gave up on FreeHand's .swf export function because it wasn't
giving me the layers I thought I wanted. Wrong mindset. If I'd had more
time a year ago, I might have found out _then_ that it's not meant to work
that way at all. When you get in sync with the system, it's actually very
powerful.

I learned at UCON that if you go from FreeHand to Flash using .swfs, rather
than from Illustrator to Flash using EPS files, you gain in several areas:

== The .swf content comes into Flash from FreeHand already compressed.
(Theoreticallly, at least; I haven't done size comparisons. But it seems to
work.)

== Any gradients you create in FreeHand are preserved when they come into
Flash. (This works for me most of the time, and the cases where it doesn't
may have more to do with my getting up to speed in FreeHand than with any
shortcoming in the apps.) Also, as John Croteau indicated, you get reliable
color transfer from FreeHand to Flash if you use the Web-safe Color
Palette. Even in RGB mode, I've seen color shifts between Illustrator and
Flash.

== FreeHand supports multi-page files, so you have two options for
exporting .swf material for Flash animations. You can export _layers_ as
animations, which means that when you import the .swf into Flash, each FH
layer comes up in its own keyframe. OR, you can export pages as animations,
which means that instead, each _page_ of a mutli-page FreeHand document
comes up in its own keyframe. Once you start getting the hang of this, it
opens up a lot of possibilities.

Hillman Curtis and Todd Purgason seem to prefer bringing most of their
FreeHand-derived .swf content into the Library of their Flash file(s)
first, as symbols, all commonly aligned to the center reference point. Then
they build their movie content from there.

At UCON, Purgason also explained how he creates detailed multiple comps for
clients in FreeHand, using its multi-page feature. He produces large
hardcopy proofs, and clients can see clearly how things are going to look
-- just not how they're going to move. Once he gets buy-in on the comps, he
brings it all to life in Flash. (And he does that _fast_. We saw him in
action at UCON's mini-marathon.)

We've started adopting his technique, and we find it makes a lot of sense.
If your Flash work involves getting approval or other input from somebody
else -- in other words, if you're likely to have to change text or layout,
or color schemes -- it's a heck of a lot easier to do those revisions in
the FreeHand environment, with its Search and Replace functions and its
Styles functions, than after you've got things scattered all over a Flash
timeline and distributed among multiple movies and movie clips.

Both Curtis and Purgason currently are featured in separate interviews
online at www.vectorzone.com., talking about the FreeHand/Flash connection.
I'd recommend checking those out.

As to what it's like to transition to FreeHand after years of using
Illustrator -- well, it's kind like learning the saxophone after playing
clarinet. Similar functions, but a lot of the keys are in different places
and you don't handle it quite the same way. I miss some of the familiar
Illustrator operations. On the other hand, I'm finding FreeHand seems a
little faster and more intuitive in certain areas. Add the Flash tie-in
and, in my opinion, the balance tips in favor of making the switch.

Jim

>
>>The choice should be based on how much time is saved in creating in
>>Illustrator compared to the time needed to optimize in Flash.
>>
>>Obviously some things do need to be created in more advanced graphics
>>programs, but for typical web creation this is the exception rather than
>>the rule since if it needs to be created outside of Flash it might be
>>too complex of an object for the Web.
>

Jim Hatlo
Web Products Project Manager
E.L.B. Documentation
Cisco Systems, Inc.
170 West Tasman Drive SJ-H/2
San Jose, CA 95134

Phone: 408-526-6328
Fax: 408-527-2545
Page: 408-308-4616

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