Customer Reviews

How to Cheat in Flash CS3: The art of design and animation in Adobe Flash CS3

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't care how many years anyone works in digital art, there are always new things to learn. This book is like looking over Chris' shoulder and having a peek at how he streamlines his work flow. I've been using Flash for about 10 years and I was surprised to find many tricks I've never known about. Usually experts never share too many of their secrets and I can't believe how much Chris gives away! And he writes so clearly, explaining each step, why and how, all along the way. I'm also enjoying the interludes... parts of the book where Chris shares some life-changing moments from his professional and personal life as an artist. Not too often do you find a "How To" book that almost feels like having a mentor take you by the hand and walk you through the steps. I sure wish I had this book when I first started flash...

I'm going to keep an eye out for other titles from this author in the future! He has already saved me tons of time.

This book has everything, I mean everything about drawing and animating cartoons. It covers walk cycles, lip sync, bitmap animation, you name it, it's in this book. This book has just the right number of pages and is a great bargain! Much cheaper than going to animation school, flash cartoon workshops, buying flash cartoon tutorials online or buying flash cartoon tutorials on cdrom. Best investment I've made for learning about cartoons. I have other how to flash cartooning books and this one is the best!

I love this book. I bought it mainly because I loved the style of art on the author's website www.mudbubble.com, and I was glad to see the book is full of the same clean, shape-based illustrations. The author discusses how to draw using Flash's (which is also a very popular drawing tool, as well as a 2d animation tool) Select tool, the Brush, the Pen and also how to construct characters using basic shapes like rectangles and ovals.

The tips are organized well, one per 1-2 pages, and the book seems to flow logically from beginning to end. I feel I got a lot out of it.

It's not really an art book, but I would characterize it as one more than I would call it a Flash animation book. If you're looking for in-depth coverage, this is not the book for you, but if you're looking for ways to take your Flash drawings and animations to the next level, this is the best book for that I've ever seen.

great book, well printed, well illustrated,
good ideas to follow,
beautiful examples,

but sometimes it lacks precise instructions, maybe that it is related to the "two pages design" wich restrain the scope of each subject.
for example, I'm trying for hours to "distribute to layers" two groups of strokes on two keyframe (like as said on page 127 , step 3) and I can't because the author don't explain exactly how to do this uncommon task.

I give 3 stars because I don't like this restictive "two pages design",
then it's a book I recommand otherwise, but not for the beginner.

I first come across Chris' work by accident while searching for some tutorials on flash cartoon animation. I grew to love his tutorials featured in the Adobe(previously Macromedia) site and his personal keyframer.com site. He has this straight forward practical approach to building an animation. As the saying goes, "There are many ways to kill a cat". Chris, shows you the most efficient approach to working with Flash. I was therefore simply overjoyed to learn he was publishing a book.

Well, I finally got my copy, and this was worth the wait. Chris takes a tutorial based approach to everything you need to animate cartoons in Flash. This along with "Flash Cartoon Animation: Learn from the Pros" prove to be an invaluable resource(believe me, they are very few books out there that do the topic justice) on the topic in my opinion.

Chris, avoids getting into the nitty grity stuff on how to work with Flash and dives straight into the topic of how to animate cartoons in Flash. I was surprised by the rich color in the pages given the price of the book!

Perhaps my favorite part of the book is the tons of resources on the CD, everything from the sample source files which will help drive the lessons home and the free/trial softwares and Flash extensions that will help save time.

So two thumbs way up on this one!!

I was rather disappointed by this book. As a complete beginner, I was hoping that it would provide some assistance with Flash's nonsensical user interface, but unfortunately it assumes that I've already mastered that. If you already know Flash, this book might be useful, it mostly covers various time-saving methods and tricks, but (typically) nothing that an advanced user couldn't figure out on her own.

Also it is an example of what I call an "over-illustrated" book, it has lots of artwork on each page, often far more than necessary, and is printed in full color on glossy paper. Again, some people may like this sort of thing, I found it annoying.

Finally, its tutorials tend to be extremely short. Most fill a single two-page spread, and few carry on longer than that. I would have preferred a little more depth.

That said, the book does seem to include some useful tips, and I will probably get back to it when I've mastered Flash a bit more--but I still wish I'd bought a more-detailed volume.

The cheats in this book are wonderful. I love his teaching style. Found a tut online from him and I have been hooked every since. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants several ways to use flash. You do need some working knowledge of the software but newbies are still welcome.

If you are looking for a book that explains how to use the basic tools on the simple levels then this book is not for you.

The author assumes that you already have experience working with flash and doesn't want to waste your time including anything that can be found by pressing F1 (Help docs)

I did not return the book because I am reading another book which teaches more basics of Flash and then I will come back to this book later.

I'm a beginner in flash. In fact I had never touched it until I bought this book out of a random decision to make my own cartoons. This book has taught me tons. And from the get go he let's you know it's more for those who are familiar with the environment. But by reading some of his discussions of how he got to where he is, I figured out to use the help in flash to close the gap of what I need to know to what I do know. This book doesn't just give you amazing tips about flash, but helps you learn how to discover on your own things about flash.

I've had been a fan of Chris style and work since a couple of years ago, and I always get impressed with every new animation of Chris over the time. In this time Chris presents a book that covers many of his best works in all his career, and shows you, using clear explanations and lot of pictures how to achieve this impressive animations.

Personally speaking, I liked so much this book, because contains a lot of best practices and outstanding tricks in Flash animation, tricks that will help you to get impressive results in your animations by using subtle Flash techniques.