Getting Good Reference Images

Getting good reference images

For most recreation work you do not need to turn the SWF itself into an editable drawing file. You can use Ruffle to inspect the original and collect reference screenshots.

Useful things to capture

For characters, try to grab:

• full body
• face close-up
• different expressions
• front/side/3/4 views if they appear
• several animation frames
• clothes and accessories
• hands and feet
• colours
• outline thickness
• shading style
• anything that clearly shows proportions

For UI/buttons, capture normal, hover, pressed, disabled, and alternate states when they exist.

For locations/objects, capture the full object plus any close-up that makes the outline/shading easier to understand.

Take more than you think you need

It is much easier to ignore an extra screenshot later than to get halfway through a drawing and realize the only reference you saved cuts off the feet.

Before redrawing something exactly

If the SWF clearly contains the exact original graphic we need, ask first whether it can be extracted directly.

Ruffle is mainly a player. Tools such as JPEXS can inspect images, vector shapes, sprites, and timelines inside SWFs:

https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler

Artists are not expected to learn JPEXS. Post the SWF link/filename and the recovery team can try to extract the original art for you.

A clean original recovery is always better than spending hours redrawing something that still survives inside a Flash file.