In all seriousness, though, sorry for the sarcasm, but something you missed was the idea that this thread was a tutorial on using the gradient features and brush settings in Illustrator CS2. If I was aiming for originality, I wouldn't be showing people how to do the exact same thing.

Regardless, I feel like from a sociological perspective your comment does bear its own value, as your views represent a fraction of society - possibly just you, possibly everyone but me . Something I have noted in a lot of eastern cartooning is that the lines tend to have very clean, uniform thickness, varying only between subject (such as using a thinner pen for background objects, hatched shading, or facial details). Is that what you mean by "in" and "outs"? That bit confused me. Presuming the above is correct, I'm rather curious if it's a cultural preference. In western cartooning, uniformity in line thickness is generally looked down upon. If differs elsewhere, it would be very valuable to know.

I'm also not entirely sure on what grounds you are comparing the linework to "cheap flash animations". From my experience, the amateur flash animations tend to use the pencil tool for lines, while the professionally produced ones usually favor the paintbrush. Again, perhaps it is cultural; a sickeningly Asian flash animation I've always liked, Nightmare City, uses solely the pencil tool for lines. I'd really appreciate if you explained further.

Alternatively, if the comment about cheap flash CGs was directed towards the apple... I feel for you.