Greetings all:
This is a semi-rhetorical post, more to get people's thoughts on the subject of type treatment in Flash than anything else. Just so you know...I'm an old Director guy who's clawed his way to an intermediate understanding of Flash, so my limited knowledge of said dev tool is likely lurking 'neath the surface. In advance, I beg your forgiveness of my naivte. Please be gentle. I bruise easily.
That said, I'm very disappointed with Flash's handling of type treatment. My business partner is the After Effects guy in our small shop, and he has a plethora of type treatment tools at his fingertips. In fact, he, in his non-Flash world, doesn't understand why the type treatment is so weak in Flash, given it's power in other areas. To that end, I'm hoping that After Effects and Flash will meld into a super-animation behemoth that will allow me to quickly and easily lay an effect on a text element.
Yes, I'm aware of third-party standalone programs such as Swish (which is PC-based and pretty much out of the running) and TextOsterone, and I've played around with a couple of third-party "plugins", but they all seem, frankly, clunky and more trouble than they're worth. Well, that's not really fair, they generally are worth the trouble, 'cause I love a good text effect. I guess I just think it should be easier.
So there lies the food for discussion: what are your thoughts? Am I just whining about what everyone else knows to be the cold, hard truth about Flash? What do *you* use for cool text effects? Anything at all? Can we expect Adobe to save the day? Or will the Third Party Plugin People survive? Will Kimberly realize Brad is really the father of her child before she marries Chase?
Thanks in advance. Hope to hear from you soon...
--Ant.
www.1060creative.com
