Customer Reviews

Flash Math Creativity

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is honestly one of the best books that I've picked up in a long time. There are so many books lately, that appear to be nothing more than a ploy at being the first book on the latest release of such and such software application. Flash Math Creativity avoids using interface clips from the Flash authoring environment, in order to concentrate on the content and not on something that has a much more limited shelf life. This book has so much to offer beyond getting acquainted with Flash 5 or MX or whatever. Becuase of the choice of displaying only raw code, it's probably not the best choice for a beginning Flash user. The examples, although excellent, aren't always well annotated, and often leaves you scratching your head -- but that's part of the fun.

I really appreciate the fluid examples, and the challenge of using the provided content for further investigation. These experiments should keep me busy for some time.

The graphics are quite beautiful and it would be hard to look at them and ignore the value of these creations on the basis that it doesn't have a practical application in the area of web design, as one reviewer stated. Plus, when did I start reading books and enjoying Flash only to do corporate stuff.

I always knew somewhere in the back of my head that Math and physics could be creative. I remember getting through Calculus and Intro to Physic course back in college by trying to understand the concepts visually. Mind you, I failed Intro to physics once and got a D in Calculus3 by doing it that way. Fast-forward 4 years. I've been using flash on and off for about a year but started doing actionscripting, about 2 months ago. I picked up this book when I bought ActionScript: The Definitive Guide, I think this book is a great companion. I found that I was using this book as a springboard to learn creative visual Actionscripting techniques. Though I found the explanations hard at time, definitely not a book for beginners, its a great source to get your hands dirty. I've coded examples and found myself going off in my own creative direction afterwards. I think the most satisfying moment I had was relearning Trig but seeing it on a screen. It definitely gave me a deeper understanding to some math concepts and proving my thoughts way back, that math can be visually creative.

While this book can encourage you to explore the creative aspects of Flash, it will not be much use to the practical designer/developer.
There are plenty of pretty pictures, and the source code in printed in the book (but not included on a CD). However, I found it lacking descriptions of the underlying mathematical principles and concepts.
This makes a great coffee table book for geeks.

This book doesn't explicitly teach mathematics. It shows how various maths are applied to movie clips, and how the various proximities of layers and code work. It also falls a bit flat in the "instructional" department with certain phrases like "at the end of the FOR loop"... is that inside it? is that outside it?

Also, all of the code is presented piecemeal. "Here is the code" is often said, with only one or two lines talking about exactly where to do it or what to do with it. Someone who is straining to learn the point of the code and how it works and to *visualize* the maths will easily skip over this & create code with error.

Why isn't that a problem? Why does this book deserve 5 stars? Because that error is the spirit of experimentation.

This /could/ have been a step by step walktrough with big type and captions like "this is what SINE does" and diagrams, but that would have allowed less code.

After fiddling with a few of the experiments and not being able to duplicate the code I gave up on trying to duplicate the code and began playing with "what ifs" and came up with my own solutions.

There are 2 separate tree examples that work similarly, but allow you to see nuances and possibilities, for instance.

Essentially, you will want to do every example this book has to offer.

As far as the "this book offers nothing new" argument that is peppered throughout the reviews... since when was math new?

Most of those amazing Flash films share have the very same secret: mathematics, especially geometry. Many basic and advanced techniques in this area need to be taught. A review of some basic concepts would also be helpful. It's true that a lot is done by trial and error, but those who grasp the basics are the ones who know what can be done with what is available.
This book has beautiful, colorful pages and many contributors, some with great ideas - learned from some imagination and from some trial and error.
Yet this one book fails considerably. Great opportunity, great idea. But no math is really taught, no basic technique is really given. What can be found is only a mixed bag of ad-hoc math solutions to produce some nice effects and little meat.
What is wonderful about this book is its potential. What is tragic about this book is its end result.

The most valuable part of this book is the link to all of the sources files which you can play around with and try and fix the Actionscript or Graphics to your liking.

You'll find yourself flipping through the pages of this book trying to understand the code and while they do explain each line of code in a couple of sentences, they don't explain the foundations for the logic of what's going on. To add to the confusion, this book is written by 15 different people who each have different coding styles and naming conventions. So, the book lacks consistency.

On the other hand, it's amazing to see what other people come up with using Flash. I've hardly thought about applying the trigonometry I learned back in high school to make my websites dance around like these guys do. You'll just have to get even more creative on ways to implement these math tricks into a website (and don't forget to watch the CPU usage because many of the complex math methods and constantly attaching MovieClips can really bog a computer down).

In conclusion, this book is fun and you will enjoy how colorful the pages are and picking up neat tips and tricks from guys who've been doing this stuff for years. It's a wonderful addition to a Flash hobbyist's library, but not so important for the developers or designers.

-John Lindquist

The Flash Math books are great. But not if you want an O'Reilly cookbook of answers to your design problems. It's all about inspiration. Being able to look at something and say "wow, that's so beautiful" and either need to make it yourself just on principal, or see that maybe one day you can use the idea yourself on all those practical things you're so worried about. If you get all juiced up creatively from the things you see around you, this is a perfect book. It's 4 instead of 5 because it doesn't come with a CD. But you can go to the website for the book and see things in action.

That probably appealed to the left brain folks.

For the right brain ones among you. No, this will not teach math. No it won't explain much in the math department at all. It does give the code, it allows you to experiment with what Flash will do, it might renew your interest in Flash. Kind of like watching one of the a-lister Flash kids talk at a Flash Forward conference, it might do that more than looking at a Hockney photo collage (both work for me). If you don't work that way, buy it and give it to one of your left brain Flash friends.

It will be great fun for them, they will get to feel like they remember their math and are much better at it now. And it will make pretty things.

The mark of a great Flash book is its capacity to be used far after the current version of Flash is not longer extant. With Flash 8, I still use this book as a reference as ivaluable as it was the first time I read it. It's a sad comment that a number of these reviewers lack the spirit of imagination where these materials can be used. Fractal geometry has been used in everything from game creation to modeling in medicine. It's not a Math for Morons book, and if that's what you're looking for, you'll be sadly disappointed. Rather it's a Math for the Imagination book, and if that's what you want to use with Flash, you'll love it.

This book is one of the few that assumes some background in or appreciation of math as a tool for developing algorithms. It's not a book for everyone, and one reader rightly pointed out that it's not a primer in math. So if you don't have math savvy, this book may not be your cup of tea. However, from what I saw, one need not be a math whiz to work through the different kinds of interesting algorithms contained in this book, and you will learning something about both Flash and math.

One of the best lessons this book can offer (besides the sheer joy of experimentation even though you're not sure what you'll create) is how to use different elements of geometry and a little algebra with Flash to do some very interesting things. After beginning by following instructions to make a snail spiral, I quickly found myself doing my own experiments by changing different vectors, values, colors and whatnot just to see what would happen. I was surprised by my own results, and then I took elements from different chapters, mixed them together for even more new discoveries.

This book is not a paint-by-the-numbers book, and unless you like to explore for the sheer joy of the exploration and learn something for no particular reason other than it's sort of cool, the book is not for you. It is not a "practical" book in the sense that if you learn how to create a Flash site for some suit, but it is very practical if you'd like an invitation to discover concepts in their own right.

Finally, I found it ironic that such a book using Flash 5 would be published almost exactly at the time Flash MX was unveiled. Well, the algorithms are even more appropriate for Flash MX because you can do so much with movie clip drawing methods with MX that were not available in Flash 5. It's probably not even going to have to be revised for Flash MX because the kinds of people who would buy this book would have little problem in taking its wisdom and doing even more with it in the new Flash.

The book is great. I find the negative reviews puzzling because this book is like a $30 kit for a working spaceship, but you have to weld the wings on yourself. Big deal. What's wanting in so many Flash books are examples of the astonishing things you can do with Flash. This book shows what can be done, then hands you the code on a platter. I guess if you're more the designer type and you want to do great stuff using the math functions in Flash, you, um, er -- need to learn some math. But don't complain that every author hasn't lined up to correct your particular brand of ignorance. Read a book.

Though it's in ActionScript 2.0, this book is very good if you're into creating visualizations via programming (not only ActionScript). It shows the creative and logical process behind the code (I think that's much more important that the code itself). And it's also a beautiful book to add to your collection :-)

And you can also download all the .fla used in the examples.