From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V7 #39 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Sunday, February 24 2002 Volume 07 : Number 039 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Any Flash animators on the list? ["Crackers" Subject: Alloy: Any Flash animators on the list? I recently got a computer upgrade. My brother is a web designer and he gave me his old machine. Included was his old Flash 4 CD. I've been wanting to give Flash a try for sometime now so I sat down and doodled with it this afternoon. Nothing fancy, just playing with some of the features trying to syncronize things to sound. I really need to get a book on Flash so I can figure out how to animate better with it and use some of it's interactive functions. The problem is, all the books I find in my local bookstores are for Flash 5 and I have Flash 4 so I have two questions. 1) Is Flash 5 similar enough to FLash 4 that I should still be able to figure things out on 4 with a book for 5? 2) What would be a really good book for learning to program Flash 4? Something with easy to follow, illustrated lessons. Anyways, here's the experiment as it stands so far. I'm using a song from an old punk band I was in back in the 80s. It lets me get away with just using scribbles for art for now until I get the hang of vector artwork. http://ghastly.keenspace.com/flash.html Once I get this Flash software figured out I'd like to add a regular Flash animation segment to my webcomic. Crackers (Scribbling away from hell!!!) Ghastly's Ghastly Comic http://ghastly.keenspace.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 00:10:22 -0600 From: "Bill Krzysko" Subject: RE: Alloy: Any Flash animators on the list? Hey Crackers, your test is good, the sync with music works well. Flash 4 and Flash 5 are very similar and yet completely different. Using the timeline and doing simple animations is more or less the same for both programs. Flash 5 has a completely new scripting language, called ActionScript. (It's really just JavaScript) There should be a couple of tutorials that are available on the help menu. You should be able to get a good start with those. Go to www.flashkit.com and look at the samples and demos. You will find lots of cool stuff with the source files. One warning, this summer I had to make a big demo with Flash for Encyclopeadia Britannica. There were many times I was ready to go to Macromedia and kill whomever designed this program. Certain parts of it seem unfinished. For instance, in Director, (also made by Macromedia) you would make an animation by creating a starting keyframe and an ending keyframe, and the program would calculate the path automatically. If you moved the object in the ending keyframe, everything would adjust itself. In Flash you have to make something called a Tween. If you need to change an animation, you pretty much have to start over from the begining. You'll see what I mean when you try it. It's not really hard once you learn it, but it seems very counter-intuitive, to me, at least. Having said that, you can make some really cool stuff with it. Be sure to let us know about the next demo. Bill K - -----Original Message----- From: owner-alloy@smoe.org [mailto:owner-alloy@smoe.org]On Behalf Of Crackers Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2002 10:41 PM To: alloy@smoe.org Subject: Alloy: Any Flash animators on the list? I recently got a computer upgrade. My brother is a web designer and he gave me his old machine. Included was his old Flash 4 CD. I've been wanting to give Flash a try for sometime now so I sat down and doodled with it this afternoon. Nothing fancy, just playing with some of the features trying to syncronize things to sound. I really need to get a book on Flash so I can figure out how to animate better with it and use some of it's interactive functions. The problem is, all the books I find in my local bookstores are for Flash 5 and I have Flash 4 so I have two questions. 1) Is Flash 5 similar enough to FLash 4 that I should still be able to figure things out on 4 with a book for 5? 2) What would be a really good book for learning to program Flash 4? Something with easy to follow, illustrated lessons. Anyways, here's the experiment as it stands so far. I'm using a song from an old punk band I was in back in the 80s. It lets me get away with just using scribbles for art for now until I get the hang of vector artwork. http://ghastly.keenspace.com/flash.html Once I get this Flash software figured out I'd like to add a regular Flash animation segment to my webcomic. Crackers (Scribbling away from hell!!!) Ghastly's Ghastly Comic http://ghastly.keenspace.com ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V7 #39 **************************