Customer Reviews

Flash 5 Cartooning (with CD-ROM)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've bought just about every Flash tutorial there is, but this is the BEST one to get once you get the absolute basics down. It won't tell you how to arrange your workspace like some beginner books will (get 'Foundation Flash' for that - great place to start & get up to speed in a hurry), but if you've even spent a couple months messing around with Flash on your own, you're ready for this book.

If you want to cartoon with Flash & even do movies with it, this book is a must have. There are a ton of Flash books out there that can get you going in Actinscript, learning the basics like tweening, etc., but this is written in a very concise manner that takes you through the technical aspects of how Flash can be used to create cartoons & movies (like the ones you've probably already gotten from someone in your email or seen at places like AtomFilms), yet makes it so easy to understand that you'll wonder why no one wrote a book like this 2 years ago.

I only started with Flash a couple months ago, and I'm already cranking out cartoons like nobodies business because of this book.

Hats off to the author, Mark Clarkson! THANK YOU for writing this book!

You know a book is going to be an excellent experience for you when the list of reference books are books that you already own. That's my experience with Mark Clarkson's "Flash 5 Cartooning."

What Clarkson does is to provide clear and consise instructions and tutorials on how to create animations using the flash toolset. More than just a "how to use flash" book, Flash 5Cartooning, illuminates the "how" of animation productions that can be used from a one-person studio to a production studio of dozens of people.

I especially enjoyed and learned a lot from the "bobsey Model" chapter (chapt 9) and chapt 11 (layout, style and camera moves) that inspired me to try some of the things mentioned in those chapters. And there's gems scattered through out this entire book.

This is not a book to teach you cartooning (the list in the preface has many books for that), rather, this is a book to take your static cartoons and breathe some "12 frames per second" life to them. There are a few rare books that I will tell friends that if they buy it and don't like it, I'll buy it back. Flash 5 Cartooning joins the ranks of those books.

This book now occupies the space next to my copy of Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation book(ISBN # 1-56010-084-2). Higher praise, I don't know how to give!

There is much to learn from this book if you are a complete neophyte to Flash and would rather read a colorful cartoony book than grope through Macromedia's dry monofont manual. This book will have you making cartoons very quickly (maybe not ones to brag about, but good beginnings nonetheless). You will NOT get a solid foundation in Flash overall. This isn't a replacement for the manual or a thicker more in-depth book; think of it more as a colorful supplement. If you have any in-depth knowledge of Flash you should avoid it completely (this may be moot anyway with Flash MX now shining the shelves, which brings up another point: make sure that you have Flash 5 before buying this book: you'll be very frustrated if you have Flash 3, 4 or Flash MX; luckily the title spells it out).

The book introduces you to Flash's toolbox and stage area, and teaches you some tricks for putting together characters, saving memory to avoid jittery playback, symbols, buttons and very very introductory material on sound and action script. Each section is laid out for a beginner, and there are very few things that would be considered advanced.

Overall, the book shines most on the technical, how-to-use aspects of Flash. The sections on the theory of cartooning are less helpful and almost too perfunctory to provide much guidance or inspiration.

In short, if you're impatient and want to start making colorful blocks fly across the screen RIGHT NOW then this is the book for you. You will have to later obtain more advanced and in-depth books to fill in the gaps this book leaves. Nonetheless, it is a great place to start.

This is a must have book for Flash users, or those interested in cartooning. I waited with great anticipation for this book. You will not be disappointed, and neither was I. BUY IT NOW! Mr. Clarkson provides great info on cartooning technique, flash methods, and lots of resources to learn from. He is a great tech writer. But the CD-rom that comes with the book is the real treat. The whole book on CD, great demos, and example Flash cartoons!!! The book is easy to read, and the pictures/diagrams , (which there are lots of), are easy to follow and add to the points he makes. There are dozens of Flash books out there, but this one is the best.

Inevitably, in the complex process of putting a book like Flash 5 Cartooning together, a few bits and pieces get mislabled, misprinted or, far worse, left out altogether. As any mistakes, omissions and missing bits come to the attention of the author, they'll be posted at markclarkson.com

The file Mr. Carroll was missing "Labels and Buttons.FLA" is among those available. If any other readers have noticed missing files, please contact Mr. Clarkson at markclarkson.com

This book is great if you are familiar with the flash interface and can do basic things in it. For learning to write and animate cartoons in Flash it's a must. I think Mark covered just about everything you need to know for cartooning in this book and alot more. I've read just about every tutorial on Flash 5 on the web. I've been designing a website and was having trouble with "movie clips" and "tell target" (after all the tutorials) until I read this book. If you're new to flash >>> get it! Even if you aren't real interested in cartooning there is alot of good information for beginners here. I'll use it as a reference book for years to come. Thanks again Mark... you da' man!

The only reason I bought the Flash-5 program was to do some serious anination. The manual was as waste of time and did not help setting up an animatated script, so I ordered Mr. Clarksons book and cut through the mud and got to the pure water in a hurry. By following his well-written and humorus dialog, I have been able to complete several (My wife saids "wonderful and delightful...") very short cartoons. Anyone interested in animation will find this book very helpful. If not the bible of cartooning, then it is the sacred writ of animation. Clay Bramble Independence, Kansas

WOW!!
I had come to that strangest of life decisions, to become a Flash 5 Cartoonist. I looked up on Amazon for books related to this, and I found this book, just like you are doing right now!
Within a month I had not only learned Flash 5,
but had learned crucial lessons about cartooning itself!
It is so fulfilling making cartoons/movies using Flash.
Flash 5 gives you the power to make art, and Flash 5 Cartooning teaches you how!
I especially enjoyed the specific chapters in the book.

The chapters about watching and writing cartoons are very helpful for me. This book is more useful everyday!
Mark Clarkson is a wonderful teacher for all the young padawan Flashers out there. Mark clues you in to all the tricks of the Flash cartooning trade!
He even provides you with earnest advice about selling your art!
Mark Clarkson put heart into this book and it shows.
His genius will be proven by future generations of Flashing Americans. THANKYOU Mark Clarkson! You rock!

As someone who has quite a bit of experience with animation programs, but little exposure to Flash, I found this book to be very useful. It's written in a lively, entertaining manner and Mark Clarkson manages to describe difficult procedures in terms even those new to Flash can understand.

This is excellent book, I'm still working with it now, and it's going much smoother than I expected. I was a bit leery about buying the book at first, because I had bought a competitor's book first (Art of Cartooning in Flash). I was really disappointed with that one. This book however is great. I've only been working with it for two days and I already did my first bit of real character animation (Chapter 8's Stickman). I didn't expect to pick Flash up so quickly. Brilliant writing, Mark Clarkson.