Teach Yourself Adobe LiveMotion in 24 Hours is an easy introduction to Adobe's exciting new graphics product that allows Web site designers to create fast-loading, vector-based animation while remaining in the familiar, integrated Adobe environment. The book was designed to serve as a Web designer's first introduction to LiveMotion, and to guide readers through the process of creating everything from simple animations to entire Web sites in LiveMotion. The book's author, Molly E. Holzschlag, has a unique perspective on LiveMotion. She has been watching the product's development since the earliest alpha stages, and with her extensive experience conducting her popular Web design and development training sessions, she knows exactly what kinds of techniques beginning users need to learn, and what types of questions they typically have about products like LiveMotion.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Adobe LiveMotion offers Web animators a tremendous number of features, so getting up the learning curve can be a challenge for a new user. Sams Teach Yourself Adobe LiveMotion in 24 Hours might not teach you everything about LiveMotion in a day, but it certainly will take you a ways up the slope.
Written with the beginning Web designer in mind, Part I focuses on introducing LiveMotion and its tool set while educating you on how Web graphics work. But, while the author appropriately details the differences between GIF, JPEG, and PNG graphic-image formats, LiveMotion is a tool for creating vector-based animation for the Web, and the chapter "Understanding Web Graphics" makes no mention of the Flash, QuickTime (which LiveMotion doesn't utilize), or even animated GIF formats.
Parts II (Working with LiveMotion Objects), III (Color, Shape, and Style), and IV (Creating Static and Dynamic Images for the Web) detail use of the application itself, and Parts V and VI wrap up the book with examples of animation and multimedia, and designing and optimizing advanced Web presentations.
Although LiveMotion is primarily an animator's tool, this book takes a different approach to it, looking at and using it as if it were a Web designer's tool. Interesting chapters about creating rollovers and using LiveMotion for page compositing illustrate this, as do 22 pages on setting type. Meanwhile, the whole section on creating animation in LiveMotion is just over 20 pages long.
An inexpensive book, Sams Teach Yourself Adobe LiveMotion in 24 Hours doesn't have an accompanying CD-ROM or any color illustrations, which makes chapter 10, "Getting Colorful," somewhat theoretical. The book as a whole reads more like a reference manual than a tutorial, but the detailed index will help you find what you need quickly.
For people who need to learn from structured tutorials, there are other books. For those who like to create things on their own and need only a reference book with examples, this one is a good choice. --Mike Caputo
From the Back Cover
Teach Yourself Adobe LiveMotion in 24 Hours is an easy introduction to Adobe's exciting new graphics product that allows Web site designers to create fast-loading, vector-based animation while remaining in the familiar, integrated Adobe environment. The book was designed to serve as a Web designer's first introduction to LiveMotion, and to guide readers through the process of creating everything from simple animations to entire Web sites in LiveMotion. The book's author, Molly E. Holzschlag, has a unique perspective on LiveMotion. She has been watching the product's development since the earliest alpha stages, and with her extensive experience conducting her popular Web design and development training sessions, she knows exactly what kinds of techniques beginning users need to learn, and what types of questions they typically have about products like LiveMotion.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great reference from Molly!,
By
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Adobe(R) LiveMotion(R) in 24 Hours (Paperback)
This is the second book by Ms. Holzschlag that I've purchased. The first was Mastering Adobe GoLive 4.0, which is one of the best computer reference books I've ever read. I'm happy to report that Molly has done it again!This time following a very different format, Molly's style nevertheless shines through. The writing is clear, intelligent, and permeated with a sense of fun and exploration. As a newbie to web design, I've been intimidated for months by Flash. When I heard that Adobe was coming out with LiveMotion, I thought, "Finally! Another alternative!" Well, that's right, but as Molly reminds us throughout this book, LiveMotion is far more than just an alternative to Flash. Like Fireworks, LiveMotion can be used to draw and manipulate images, to develop intricate web designs for export, and, of course, to create glorious web-optimized animations. LiveMotion also features tight integration with other mission critical Adobe web apps, like Photoshop 5.5 and GoLive. I usually read 2-3 computer books a month, and I often buy books about programs I am interested in, but do not yet own. I use the books to learn as much as I can about the program's features and ease-of-use, and a well-written book can sell me on a program. My two tests for rating computer books are: (1) can I sit down and read it from cover-to-cover, without falling asleep and without having to be in front of a computer to follow along?; and (2) when I'm through reading, is the program a "must-have" addition to my software wish list? On both counts, this book rates five stars. Thanks again, Molly, for being as good and thoughtful a writer as you are a teacher!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Won't take you far,
By Robert Peters (Salina, ks United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Adobe(R) LiveMotion(R) in 24 Hours (Paperback)
Holzschlag's book is a good introduction, but it won't take you far. If you're completely new to Adobe products and web design, this might be a good start, but you'll be needing to buy additional, better books within a few days if you don't want to stay at the surface of the program.I bought the Sams guide, as well as Elain Wienmann's Visual Quickstart Guide for Live Motion and Adobe's Classroom in a Book for LM. The last two are better books than the Sam's guide. Adobe's Classroom is all tutorial, with CD-rom lessons that will teach you to do very sophisticated animations (such as count-down clocks) within a few days work. You will have to concentrate on the lessons, and perhaps do them more than once to fully understand them, but they're well worth it. The value of seeing on the CD the final animations you're trying to make is invaluable -- you can look at the Timeline code and see exactly how the animations were done, and then compare and fix your own efforts. If you can master all the tutorials in Classroom in a Book, you will be able to say that you really know LM. The Visual Quickstart guide is very different -- it's a reference and tutorial in one. If you have questions about procedures in Adobe's Classroom tutorials, you can look up the answers in VQ. So my suggestion is if you have some knowledge of Adobe projects, just get Classroom in a book and VQ. If you're really new to this, you might want to buy the Sams book also as a start off, but don't think you can get away with just the Sams book
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Introduction from a First-Class Teacher,
By
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Adobe(R) LiveMotion(R) in 24 Hours (Paperback)
This is the second book I've bought by the same author (the first was Mastering Adobe GoLive 4), and I was not disappointed. I think some of the reviewers here forget what it was like to just start out with the complex tools from Adobe, and have no patience for a tutorial that assumes nothing about the reader's experience. This book was wonderful. The author is an experienced teacher who has found just the right blend of instruction and hand-holding, without ever talking down to all the novice readers (like me!) out there who are most likely to benefit from this book. True, LiveMotion is probably targeted to users of other Adobe products, but this book doesn't hold you to that. Instead, it provides an elementary tour of the product's many features, and shows you how, why, and when to use each one. Best yet, this tutorial is not only clear, but a pleasure to read. Computer books, expecially books about graphics programs, all too often lose the sense of adventure and fun that should accompany experimenting with the program. This book remembers that, and the resulting approach invites the reader to continue reading all the way to the end. LiveMotion, like most Adobe products, is far too sophisticated to learn every nuance in 24 hours -- the real aims of this book are to introduce the application, point out what it can do and how, encourage the reader to experiment and, if necessary and/or desireable, find a more advanced text for further study. On all levels, this book succeeds. I eagerly await the next book(s) from Ms. Holzschlag. Thanks!
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