Flash is a powerful tool not only for animations but also for illustrators. State-of-the-art vector algorithms let you create small-sized drawings - whether it be comic books or detailed illustrations. Few people know that Flash actually is even capable of producing realistic or photorealistic objects.
What are these? They are objects that can hardly be distinguished from real-life objects.
What tools and features are necessary to achieve some degree of photorealism? Well, first of all it should be stated here that Flash 8 or Flash CS3 is almost obligatory because only the latest Flash versions have the superb filters. If you're working in Flash below Flash 8, you can try your best using Soften Fill Edges (however it will probably be very hard).
Since our world is full of gradiations, another feature that we simply cannot do without is gradients.
Why would you create photorealistic objects?
Well, I always like to have a practical reason for doing something but in this case I must say it's mainly done for fun. I used the word mainly because there are a good reason why someone might want to draw photorealistic objects in Flash - if drawn correctly they often are many times smaller than their bitmap counterpart.
You can find a proof below.
Sorry, flash is not available.
These several eggs are only 510 bytes big!
I also took a screenshot of the eggs and guess what - the image is 16 times bigger. Of course, this example is not very practical (how many times in your life will you draw an egg?:)). So, let me give you another example: a cellphone. One drawn with gradient will probably be only half of the size of a normal bitmap.
To be continued
