- Ready, Set, Draw!
- Throw Me a Curve
- Stepping Out of the Box
- When Shapes and Lines Intersect
When Shapes and Lines Intersect
In Flash, when shapes or lines intersect, new objects are created. In most drawing programs, a line stays one line even if it is intersected by another line. With Flash, an intersected line becomes two lines. Shapes work the same way.
Once you get the hang of working with intersecting lines and shapes, you'll use intersection as a cool drawing technique.
Figure 3.16 Moving one filled object over another and then moving the object away leaves a cut in the original. To make the separations in the arms and legs of the character, simply highlight the forearm section and drag it away.
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Looking Ahead to Layers
Don't want intersecting objects to cut each other up? The way around this is to place intersecting objects in different Layers. Check out Chapter 8, "Working with Layers," for the lowdown on layers.
The Least You Need to Know
- You can apply formatting to change the size, font, color, and paragraph properties of text.
- The Line, Oval, Rectangle, Pen, and Pencil tools are used to draw lines, curves, and shapes.
- Each line and shape tool has its option buttons in the Toolbox that allow you to set the line (and fill) color before you start drawing.
- The Pencil tool is the most flexible way to create drawings in Flash. The Pencil Mode option let's you either straighten or smooth curves.
- When you drag a shape or line on top of another shape or line, you cut the second shape. Sometimes this produces two dissected lines; sometimes it produces a shape with a piece "cut out."