... is creating the graphics for your application.

Well, not exactly, especially if you are developing a complex Flash Lite application as the coding can get tricky too. And definitely not, if you are familiar with drawing tools in general. (Of course, if you get someone else to draw the graphics for you, you are golden :-)

After scrapping the networked Flash Lite application for my Flash Lite article, I decided to create a simple game as my example application. This time coding was not the issue, but getting the needed graphics in place cause some sweating. If I can use pen and paper, I can draw some things, which other people can even recognize. With mouse, this is much more challenging (note, I do not have a pen-controlled graphics tablet at my disposal, unfortunately).

Additional challenge was that I wanted to use vector graphics instead of bitmap graphics. Luckily Fireworks allows one to draw vector graphics and store in such formats which are understandable for the Flash Authoring tool (I used .ai format, which is the Adobe Illustrator file format). However getting used to the click-on-one-point-and-drag-the-handle type drawing took some time.

After few hours of experimenting and tinkering (and swearing), I got the game graphics ready. The results were not horrible, but no-one can say that the tree, apple, plate, and exploding apple I managed to create for the game are great pieces of art. I think most of the people can recognize them though :-)

Any good tips on how to become a great vector graphics artist?