I Use Flash for Drawing (but apparently am in a l'il minority)

Yes, I use Flash for drawing still images--specifically, I'm using it to do the Arms and Ether comic. Apparently few others use Flash in this way, because Adobe's support for using Flash as a still-image illustration tool is pretty dang close to zero. This is sad because Flash is a splendid illustration/drawing tool in spite of itself, and it could have Ayurvedic healing properties if Adobe started to pay it some proper mind. There's nothing like it that I've seen for free-hand vector drawing. Here's a wish-list of features that Adobe will never add because I will never tell them, and even if I did, they wouldn't listen to me anyway.

1. Export layered .fla files to layered .psd files (with transparency!)
2. Thumbnail previews of .fla files in freaking Adobe Bridge. Maybe CS4 will do this? (har har)
3. Better support for high-res .png export. Flash tends to freak out when I export a complex hi-res file. I usually have to export pieces of it into Illustrator and reassemble it there.
4. A personal service robot that would leap out of the screen and cater to all of my physical and emotional needs.

Robot Love: Charles Burns n' Scott Raedeke

If I ever get a tattoo, it will be on my face and it will be of this Charles Burns comic page from El Borbah's Hard Boiled Defective Stories. I read this when I was 22 or 23 and it changed my life. I mean, this thing electrified me. Reading this is what trying heroin for the first time must feel like. I was on the subway in New York, laughing to keep from crying. Damn. I could talk about this page for days, but I won't, because I need to get back to making my own second-rate stuff. BUT, If you or anyone you know might even vaguely appreciate Charles Burns, you should buy El Borbah for them immediately. They will love you forever.

I had a similar experience about 12 years ago picking up Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library No. 7 for the first time. Good God. . . more on that later, I suppose.

And on the subject of Robot Love, check out the 8-bit Ghost's inspired Christmas Robot. That man is not right, but in all the proper ways.