How in the world can people make their lines so incredibly smooth in Flash? It takes me absolutely ages to just draw a figure with even close to that smoothness. I don't have a graphics tablet, and I have no intention of buying one any time soon; so don't tell me to get one. If that's the case, I'll just use Stykz.

don't need a graphics tablet to use pivot

join us

Honestly, I've used a mouse and a tablet, and a tablet seems like a better option.

I've always used Stykz (which is similar in style to pivot) but I wanted to switch to Flash; I have access to it so I might as well try. But it's insanely frustrating.

You gotta use tablet for it. But sometimes you can't make smooth lines with tablet. (Because of how flash make the lines look "smooth") So, try using the line tool.

It would help if you showed us what your attempts look like so we can see what you're doing wrong. Otherwise I have no idea what the problem is.

I googled your title word-for-word, "smooth lines in flash" and I'm seeing videos, forum topics and tutorials all on the first page, were these not helpful or did you not even try to search for an answer before making this thread?

The absolute best I could do, by very very slowly and carefully drawing out the figures:



The tutorials, videos, and forum posts do not pertain to my situation. So no, they were not very helpful. They are all one of the following: Meant for tablets (inapplicable for the most part with mouse/touchpad), meant for drawing (mostly inapplicable for animating), or simply not what I was actually looking for.

The smoothing feature, if set relatively high, makes the lines look far too cartoony for stick figures and very uneven in thickness, and does nothing if set low enough for that not to happen.

30-40 is a happy medium between the two, that's what most people use as far as I know.

It's something you'll get better at with practice, if you're willing to do that. Those don't look too bad, especially if your smoothing was set to 0. Try 30 or 35 and try again, or just use the line tool, that's what I preferred when I used to animate.

The head part, use the circle tool. Be sure that you put it on another layer so you can reuse it many times on different frames. (It's also useful so you won't get any resizing head)

The body part. Again, it's not recommended to use the brush tool if you're using a mouse. Use the line tool instead. (But I met a guy in this forum uses the pencil tool even though he use a mouse. The pencil tool is better than brush tool in my opinion because you won't get this wobbly lines. But still, for a mouse user, I recommend you to use the line tool)

Quote from AdamMZ

You gotta use tablet for it. But sometimes you can't make smooth lines with tablet. (Because of how flash make the lines look "smooth") So, try using the line tool.

God, you DO NOT need a tablet to draw figures on flash. Yes, it is better and more efficient but stop drilling the mentality that "You use a tablet", "You gotta need a tablet", because it is not a necessity to get a tablet just to draw stick figures.

Poison, Exilement is correct. The only way to get better in drawing and animating generally is to keep doing it. Animation is weird. The more you do it, the better you get. It's a practical skill so you will need to practice drawing the figure, in this case a stick figure, countless of times until you get the hang of it. Again, you do not need a tablet to get outstanding quality.

If you can draw well on paper, it will be just a matter of stabilizing your hand with the mouse.

Do you guys think line tool will be better, especially because I use a mouse. I used to be under the impression that mostly people use brush but I'm now starting to see a lot of people that use line tool.

I just absolutely cannot do that, at least with a mouse. And I can draw well on paper. But my hand doesn't work well at all on a mouse, at least with drawing. Maybe it's because my drawing style in real life is that kind of feathery style of multiple short lines. That doesn't work in flash.

To get that result that I posted early takes maybe 20 times as long as with pivot or flash line tool.

Just use the line tool then, why force yourself to use brush

I'm currently working on using the line tool; it works much better. I'm animating just a simple walk now (which I actually never perfected even in pivot) so I'll post it into the beginner's thread when it's done.