This is dreadful news. 'Expression Suite' was built on Microsoft's acquisition of Creature House in 2003, and their fabulous Expression vector graphics software

This is dreadful news. 'Expression Suite' was built on Microsoft's acquisition of Creature House in 2003, and their fabulous Expression vector graphics software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_House_Expression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_House_Expression). At the time, Expression was the closest competitor to Adobe Illustrator: it had unique features ('skeletal strokes', based on the co-founders' PhD research), and a superb UI (yes, imagine a streamlined, friendly interface that was different to Adobe's!). The animation version of Expression, LivingCels, offered similarly innovative animation technology, which was seriously being looked upon as a competitor to Flash. More significantly, though, it was on course to disrupt the (cel-based) animation industry. There's an informational site at: http://livingcels.com http://livingcels.com That's why Microsoft bought the company. So, the little things: Creature House bought back the rights to Expression after MetaCreations went down. (I wish they'd do so now, once more!) The wonderfully whimsical website with beautiful, funny illustrations (by Patrick Lee) was replaced fairly rapidly by Microsoft's soulless corporate rendition. There was a Mac version of Expression - abandoned. Then the Windows version was re-coded to fit into WPF (dropping lots of essential features along the way). LivingCels has vanished. I still use Expression almost daily. It runs perfectly in WINE (especially important now, since the Mac version isn't Intel-compatible). The user manual is a brilliant example of how manuals should be written, and the sample illustrations demonstrate how painterly effects can be achieved through vector gfx. There's still nothing quite like Creature House Expression, so it's fortunate that Microsoft are still offering these original versions (Windows & Mac) as free downloads (check the links at the end of the Wikipedia article).