Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 358 pages
- Published by: O'Reilly Media, Inc. March 28, 2006
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0596102232
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0596102234
-
Book Dimensions:
9.7 x 8 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 1.6 pounds
Product Description
Macromedia Flash is fast becoming the Web's most widely used platform for creating rich media with animation and motion graphics, but mastering Flash isn't easy. Most entry-level books teach through simple examples that concentrate on either animation or scripting, but rarely both together. To get the most from Flash 8, you not only need to be proficient in programming/interface design, you need the creativity for story telling and the artistic insights to design fluid animation.
Flash 8: Projects for Learning Animation and Interactivity teaches Flash design rather than simply Flash itself. With a standalone series of walkthroughs and tutorials for Flash beginners coming from a graphics field, this book teaches Flash in the context of real-world projects. Rather than learn a Flash tool for the sake of it, you learn which areas of Flash are important, and which are less used, simply by seeing how typical content is actually created. And rather than a text-heavy approach, this graphically rich book leads you through hands-on examples by illustration.
Each project in the book starts with goals and broad sketches before moving to design and scripting. This helps you understand design intent-the why of the process-rather than just learning the interfaces and the how of it all. Along the way, you'll create Flash content that includes traditional animation techniques (as seen in full-length animated features), and ActionScript-based interactive animation, such as custom web site interface designs. You also learn how to combine both traditional animation techniques and ActionScript to create feature-rich Flash assets from the ground up.
Co-authored by educational developers with years of experience creating compelling content, interfaces, and applications,
Flash 8: Projects for Learning Animation and Interactivity offers a content-driven approach that is also inspiration-driven. You learn because you're accomplishing something tangible, not because you think you need to know how a tool works.
If you want to understand how various features of Flash come together to create a final end design, this book provides you with both the insight and the know-how.
About The Author
Robert Hoekman, Jr, is a Certified Macromedia Flash MX Designer and has worked with Flash since version 3. He is also the founder and manager of the Flash and Multimedia User Group of Arizona, an official Macromedia User Group (MMUG) with approximately 150 members. In the past several years, Robert has worked in corporate environments as a Multimedia designer, web designer and webmaster, and has designed for audiences ranging from music-memorabilia collectors to executives at Fortune 100 companies.
Reader ReviewsThis book is a unique one on Flash 8 because it tears down the wall between artistic design books and technical manuals and succeeds at being both. It starts out simple by showing you how to draw elementary figures. It then moves on to customizing your properties and automating your workflow so that you can design quickly. Next, animation is presented along with all of the techniques you will need to be efficient plus how to perform various effects. This book is particularly good at showing the reader how to import sound, graphics, and video, and how to use scripting via AppleScript to control it all. The lessons are done via unique and creative projects. By the end of the book you won't be an expert on Flash, design techniques, or AppleScript, but you will be pretty good at putting the 3 together to perform interesting tasks in Flash and doing so efficiently. A good companion book to this one is "Flash 8: The Missing Manual". It explains all of the technical nuts and bolts of Flash that there is not room to accommodate in this book. I notice that Amazon does not show the table of contents, so I do that next: 1. Getting Started, Right Out of the Box Drawing Your First Box 1 Coloring Fills and Strokes 7 Merging and Stacking Shapes 16 Creating Reusable Graphics 22 2. Creating Quickly: Customizing Your Workspace Designing Your Own Panel Layout 27 Customizing Movie Properties 32 Aligning Objects on the Stage 33 Behind Every Good Symbol Is a Good Editor 37 Automate Your Workflow 39 3. Your First Animation 45 Layers and the Timeline 46 Keyframes and Tweening 50 Preparing Text for Animation 52 Staggering Animation 57 Alpha Effect 58 Motion Effects 58 Your First Script 63 Publishing Your Movie 65 4. Buttons and Interactivity Buttons as Symbols 69 Scripting Your Button 73 Components and Behaviors 79 Navigation 83 More Fun with Buttons ninety vi Contents 5. Working with Graphics Importing Pixels 95 Working with Pixels 101 Importing Vectors 106 Using Scenes 109 Working with the Library 110 6. Movie Clips and Interactivity Drawing a Cartoon Character 115 Controlling the Character with ActionScript 128 More Movie Clip Control 131 7. More Animation Techniques Morphing with Shape Tweens 135 Frame-by-Frame Animation 139 Using Masks 143 Timeline Versus ActionScript Animation 155 8. Using Sound Importing Sounds 161 Controlling External Sounds 169 Scripting Your Own Sound Control 172 9. Using Video Importing Video 181 Controlling External Videos 184 Scripting Your Own Video Control 190 10. Compositing and Bitmap Effects Runtime Bitmap Caching 197 Bitmap Filter Effects 199 Blend Modes 210 11. Working with Text Text Types 217 Using Fonts 221 Loading and Styling Text 223 FlashType 230 12. Loading Assets on the Fly Using ActionScript to Modularize Content 235 Preloading 240 13. e-Learning with Flash Creating a Quiz: Getting Started with Templates 249 Sending Results with a Form 254 Saving and Retrieving Local Data 260 14. Flash for CD-ROM and Handhelds Flash on CD-ROM 271 Flash on the Run 277 vii Contents 15. Think Outside the Box Exporting to Video 291 The Drawing API 299 Extending Flash 303 The Rest Is Up to You 311 A. Tips and Resources Index
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