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Expression 3.3:
Express Yourself a Whole New Way! (For FREE!)
~~ Sara Froehlich, Northlite Designs

With the acquisition of Creature House assets last summer by Microsoft, including the revolutionary vector application Expression and the long-promised animation package Living Cels, long time users like myself were concerned about the fate of the most innovative vector application on the market today. In what was a very quiet, even secretive, move, Creature House changed hands, with no notice and the only clue being the Microsoft copyright info appearing at the bottom of the Creature House web page. All sales and downloads of the program were halted, even update patches for registered users. We were told that downloads would resume in November, but that never materialized, and hopes for a future for Expression were fading. After a very long wait with no news, the download of Expression 3.3 for Macintosh was announced as a free download a few weeks ago.

This led to more speculation: was Microsoft releasing the Mac version for free because they would no longer be supporting the Mac? Was there ever going to be a PC version released? At the beginning of June, the second question was answered with the release of the free version of Expression for Windows.

Spokespersons from Microsoft have confirmed that Expression will continue to be developed, so don't miss this opportunity to get this innovative program for free!

Where did Expression come from?

This is not the first time Expression has been acquired by a company other than Creature House. It uses a technology called Skeletal Strokes, developed by Alex Hsu, who co-founded Creature House. Then it was acquired by Ray Dream, which merged with Fractal Design. Then Fractal Design and MetaTools merged to create MetaCreations. When MetaCreations sold some of their creative software, including Painter to Corel, Alex Hsu and Creature House were once again at the helm, regaining publishing rights for Expression, and the skeletal stroke technology. They released versions 2 and 3. In September 2003 it was learned that Microsoft had acquired the software, and it's animation companion Living Cels, which so far has not been released past the preview beta stage. Now it is in the hands of Microsoft, a company with the funding and marketing know-how to make it a real success story.

What makes Expression different?

Expression is without a doubt the most innovative vector software available. Skeletal strokes give endless possibilities. Strokes follow a path, which can be manipulated like any vector software, but they can mimic water colors, crayon, oils, inks, and other media. Expression comes with strokes or you can make your own custom strokes from scanned brush strokes, objects you draw in Expression, or even from brushstrokes from Painter, Illustrator, or Photoshop, among many others. Strokes can also be made from bitmaps, including scanned painted brushstrokes for added texture! Objects can even be combined to make single strokes.

Skeletal Strokes in Action

Users of other vector programs will be happy to see a freehand brush and bezier pen tool to use in your drawings, along with a rectangle, ellipse, star and line tool as well. Paths can be combined to create objects using path operations, or you can draw using the drawing tools alone.

Once you have a path, any stroke can be applied to it. A quick, simple line drawing can be transformed in seconds to a whole different style. The pear below was a quick doodle. Solid gradient shapes were drawn with the pen tool and sent to the back of the strokes for fill of the pear and leaves. The strokes were changed to make 4 different styles of illustration in a just a couple minutes.

Below on the left is a detail of a more complex drawing in path view. On the right, strokes have been applied to the paths at varying widths.

Each leaf and fern is a single brushstroke. The tabletop consists of 2 single overlapping strokes.

A larger better quality version of this image can be seen here. These are but two small samples of what Expression can do. With different brushstrokes, you can draw comic book art, flat color illustrations, line drawings...or even complex painterly looking images that no one will guess are vector! Because they are vector, they can be exported in any size and appear as perfect as your original.

Expression exports in a variety of popular vector formats: Adobe® Illustrator, Adobe® PDF, Macromedia Flash® or EPS, or various raster formats: Adobe® Photoshop psd, bitmap, tiff, jpg, png, tga, and gif. During the export process, you can choose the size and resolution of the rasterization, insuring the perfect size and resolution for the job.

Give Expression a try, and see what you think of this unique software.

Download Expression for Mac or Windows here:
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/

Resources:

Microsoft Expression page

Sara Froehlich's Expression Tutorials

Studio E3 by Annie Ford

Pixelparity.org Graphics Forums

Expression forum at Microsoft

Expression Strokes by Andrew Buckle at Graphicxtras.com

Expression Classes:

Eclectic Academy offers classes in Expression taught by Sara Froehlich

Annie Ford offers beginning classes in Expression at Studio E3

©2004 Sara Froehlich for ABC ~ All About Computers
All images are copyrighted to and are the property of Sara Froehlich and may not be reproduced without written permission with the exception that you may print one copy of this tutorial for personal use.

Sara Froehlich of Northlite Designs  is an instructor with Eclectic Academy, where her online courses include Expression: Beyond the Basics, 4 levels of Photoshop Elements classes, Photoshop Pizzazz!, a special effects Photoshop class, Fireworks, FreeHand, and various filters. Go to http://www.eclecticacademy.com to enroll in one of her classes.

She also is an instructor at LVS Online, where she teaches intermediate Adobe Illustrator classes, FreeHand, Fireworks and Intro to Dreamweaver. Go to http://www.lvsonline.com to enroll in one of her classes there.

For more information on all of the classes Sara teaches, go to http://www.northlite.net/classes.htm
Expression Tips and Tutorials: http://northlite.50megs.com/expr
Illustrator Tips and Tutorials: http://northlite.50megs,com/illus
All tutorials are listed at http://www.northlite.net/tutes.htm