Flash 5 Cartoons and Games f/x and Design - Softcover

There was a time when making an animated film meant, at the very least, a huge investment in time and equipment. Flash 5 Cartoons and Games demonstrates how things have changed, teaching a new generation of animators that all you really need is an ordinary PC or Mac and Macromedia's Flash authoring program.

Diverse and powerful, Flash can be used to create Web sites and multimedia presentations. Animation is an art in itself, and the book approaches the use of Flash from an animator's and game designer's perspective. Eleven chapters describe a production workflow, from early story development to using Flash to create a storyboard, adding sound, creating elements and movement, and creating backgrounds.

There are a number of outstanding features to this book: for one, it doesn't focus on the technology. There is as much information on using Flash as there is in composing a scene, using color and sound to evoke a mood, and using quick sketches for storyboard timing. Also, there is a strong emphasis on character animation. Chapter 5 is, in fact, called "Character Animation," followed by chapter 6, "Lip Syncing and Facial Expressions." These sections and others throughout the book show how to use Flash features like reusable symbols and libraries to create believable characters.

A little more than half the book focuses on animation. The second half covers game design, programming, and animation, with an emphasis on trivia and adventure games. You'll need to know a bit about Web scripting and how Flash scripting works to get the most out of the material.

The CD-ROM includes a wide variety of examples, including runtime files (*.swf) and the authoring files used to create them. This provides the beginner with an opportunity to see the finished product as well as look behind the curtain to see what makes it tick.

Beyond the golden age of cartoons (1930s to mid-'40s), it's hard to think of a better time in history to be an animator than right now. Not only are the tools to create entire films easily accessible, but reaching a global audience is a breeze, thanks to the Web and technologies like QuickTime and Flash. Flash 5 Cartoons and Games can show you how to harness these tools and take advantage of the new medium. --Mike

Bill Turner, Turnertoons Productions, Inc., has created hundreds of cartoons and games for commercial use. He has worked with Shockwave.com and Atom.com in creating and converting desktop Flash games to versions that will play faithfully on the Pocket PC. Macromedia used one of his Pocket PC game creations in their keynote speech at UCON Net York in the spring of 2001. Bill is a member of the Apple Solutions Expert program and speaks at seminars concerning Flash character animation and video/DVD productions issues. Bill has coauthored several books including Flash 5 Cartoons and Games f/x & Design (Coriolis Group Books) and the Flash 4 Bible (IDG Books).

James Robertson has been using Flash since version 3 and helped take actionscript to a new level with games he helped develop. James' background includes coding and programming languages being well versed in HTML, JavaScript, VBScript, Java, and ASP. He also wrote a "Real3D" engine in Flash, followed by his first game "Pong" and has written the first Isometric 3D game to be written in Flash.

Richard Bazley has worked for the past decade as a Supervising Animator of three of the major animation studios including Disney and Warner Brothers. He has worked on such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Pocahontas, and the recently acclaimed Flash show, the Tales of Edwin Carp.