Flash 5 Cartooning (with CD-ROM) (Paperback)

by Mark Clarkson (Author) "This chapter discusses cartooning on TV, in the movies, and on the Web, and highlights elements that are applicable to Flash..." (more)
Key Phrases: recoil position, shape bytes, animated symbol, Basic Actions, Tell Target, Test Movie (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Finally someone has written a book on animating in Flash. It's a wonder there aren't more like it. Flash 5 Cartooning covers the cartoon production cycle from a Flash artist's standpoint--drawing, writing, storyboarding, animating, and keyframes. Sounds like a book on traditional animation, doesn't it? But everything is examined from a Flash perspective. When the book talks about drawing, it means drawing with a tablet. When it talks on keyframes and in-betweens, it is within Flash and not on paper that these issues are covered.

The book has two outstanding features: first, it's about making cartoons, not Flash. It just so happens that the tool of choice is Flash and the mode of distribution is the Web. Topics like scripting (writing a cartoon story, not computer scripting), storyboarding, layout, camera moves, and basic animation technique are well covered, as well as the Flash interface, how Flash works, how to compress media for faster downloading, basic HTML, and other Flash- and Web-specific topics.

The second great feature is the CD-ROM, which includes samples and material used in the chapters, but above all contains a digital version of the book. Not a stripped-down, bare-bones text version, but a full-color, searchable version. Having a material like this at one's fingertips on CD-ROM raises its usability rating through the roof.

Written in a clear, concise, and lighthearted voice, the book spans 15 chapters. Every page has a handful of screen shots, and every page is in full color. There were no shortcuts taken in either content or production value.

It's remarkable that there aren't more books like this. Sure, Flash is a great tool for all kinds of dynamic graphics and interactivity, but the Flash cartoon sites get a disproportionately high number of hits. Flash cartoons download fast, are often wonderfully creative, and in most cases carry a strong sense of the artist who created them. This is what Flash and the Web have created--a venue for independent animators. Maybe cartoons still aren't taken seriously and that's why so little has been published on the topic; regardless, Flash 5 Cartooning excels in its class, not because the genre is so nichey, but because it is simply a terrific book. --Mike Caputo

Product Description
Flash 5 Cartooning is a stunning, full color book that reveals scores of tips and techniques for building great cartoons, regardless of your artistic experience. Everything from cartooning fundamentals to advanced Flash techniques like ActionScripting and selling your work online is covered here, in this unique guide to creating exciting Flash cartoons. Author Mark Clarkson dives deep into the key topics cartooners need to know, with an emphasis on things like interactivity, special visual and audio effects, timing (it's critical to a good joke, you know), cartoon physics, and more! A free companion CD-ROM is packed with sample cartoons from the book, additional cartooning material, and product tryouts.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 231 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764535471
• ISBN-13: 978-0764535475
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #838,984 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to 'Toon' with Flash 5, BUY THIS BOOK!, April 17, 2001

By	J. Gross (State of Mind, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No kidding, this is a must have book!, April 4, 2001

By	Mike Rhodes (Walnut Creek, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Start from ROCK bottom..., October 21, 2002

By	ewomack "ewomack" (MN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.