I'm back at the Wellstyled.com color scheme generator seeking something less retina-searing than what I have right now. They have a little pull-down menu to show how the color scheme looks to people with various color-perception disorders. For the most part, the results of each disorder is a dulled-down version of the original. I suddenly find myself wondering if I have one of these disorders, which means what I'm producing isn't just bright, it's insanely bright. I start thinking back to eye-doctor visits, to try and remember if they do any color-perception tests. I start to think that I'm screwed if I want to design things!

...of course this train of thought is ridiculous.

A few quick lessons I've learned while constructing my comic in Flash:

• The grid is your friend. Turn it on, and adjust it as needed.


• Leave conversation bubbles until the very end, when you're sure of how you'll lay things out. Otherwise, you'll be doing them over and over again, which is a waste of time and energy.


• Movie clips can be nested inside of graphics and still work ok.


• Groups and drawing objects will save your life. They prevent painted items from melding together unintentionally, and they allow you to order things on a z-axis without relying on a million layers.


• It doesn't really help to make your drawings super-big to begin with. Starting with almost the right size saves you from resizing later, and from frustrating jaggies from a bitmap nested in a resized graphic symbol.


• Flash does appear to get tired once in a while, preventing you from using keyboard commands. Give it a short (10 second) break when this happens.

Also, sometimes creating the work seems more fun than the final product, as evidenced by this screen capture: