How to setup comic strip in Flash

[Artful Dodger]

Hi, my question may seem easy but I think I'm making it harder so here it is.
All I would like to do is setup my cartoons in a format like you would see in the
Sunday comics, the four to five window box layout. I can't seem to set my cartoons up to do this with Flash as I would like to print them out in that manner as well. Would someone be kind to point me in the right direction as how to due such a setup (layout). Thank you for any and all help

[MacFan25863]

Can you clarify your problem a bit? Are you having problems making the physical boxes?

[rugonnaeatthat]

Flash makes everything complicated - so don't get frustrated with yourself! I'd start from the beginning if I were you and head to www.vtc.com to do some Flash tutorials.

[Artful Dodger]

MacFan25863 Can you clarify your problem a bit? Are you having problems making the physical boxes?

Hi, yes the physical boxes. I have downloaded some great info but none to explain this, only one person I asked said to just mask it but that really didn't work for me. I have my cartoon person on the stage and I want to make the boxes for each clip (like this--- [1], [2], [3] and so on). I've tried to use the stroke to "box" it into a storyboard type setting but what a mess. Okay here is an example of what I'm trying to achive.
http://www.mows.com/
That layout with the ability to print it up also if that's not to much to ask Up till now everything has work fine for me just this part I'm lost, thanks for the help, peace.

[decksnap]

Is your comic strip animated? I'm trying to understand why you are using Flash in the first place....

In any case, when you draw a box on your page with the square tool, it puts a box on your screen with a fill and a stroke- click off of it, then click in the middle of it, and hit delete- now you just have a stroke- now hit apple+G (group). From here you can just select it and set it's exact width and height, and x and Y position in your properties panel. (Double click it to get inside of the group to edit the stroke color or width)

To mask, draw a box on one layer, delete it's border, and make it a movie clip. Now put your content on a layer just below it. Select the layer with the box on it and control+click and there is an option there to 'mask previous layer' or some such. Now you could do a third layer above those layers to just draw a border frame on top- Note that when you mask something, it locks the layers, so you have to unmask it to go in and make edits and then remask it again afterwards.

[Artful Dodger]

decksnap Is your comic strip animated? I'm trying to understand why you are using Flash in the first place....

Thank you very much I will try this today. No my strip is not animated as of now and I'm using Flash since this guy at school had used it to do some nice drawings and neither of us had a tablet at the time. He just made a square and pulled the corners and so on from there to make his art (looked easy so I gave it a try). I know most would use Illustrator (I don't have it) but Flash was a B-day gift so I'm trying to use it to do some simple cartoons (illustrations as well) with the option of animation at a later point in time. Also I just got a 6x8 tablet with Corel Painter so I might try to do my cartoons with that but for now it's Flash. Again thank you for the help