Flash Math Creativity [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Manny Tan (Author), Jamie Macdonald (Author), Glen Rhodes (Author), Brandon Williams (Author), Kip Parker (Author), Gabriel Mulzer (Author), Jared Tarbell (Author), Ty Lettau (Author), JD Hooge (Author), Keith Peters (Author), David Hirmes (Author), Lifaros (Author), Paul Prudence (Author), Pavel Kaluzhny (Author), Ken Jokol (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Also featuring: Keith Peters, David Hirmes, Lifaros, Paul Prudence, Pavel Kaluzhny, Ken Jokol

Forget school math class, Flash math is about fun. it's what you do in your spare time - messing around with little ideas until the design takes over and you end up with something beautiful, bizarre, or just downright brilliant.

It's a book of iterative experiments, generative design; a book of inspiration, beautiful enough to leave on the coffee table, but addictive enough to keep by your computer and sneak out while no-one's looking so you can go back to that Flash movie that you were tinkering with 'til 3 o'clock this morning.

In New Masters of Flash the designers told us about themselves and deconstructed their finest effects. Well this time we've gathered the best in one book and simply asked them to go away and do what they do best: play. We give you the code and explain the essence, then you take your inspiration and run with it.

About the Author
I started my mind going early in life when I was about 4 years old. At that age, I began playing the piano, which was sitting unused in our house. I've been playing ever since then. Later, in 1997, I co-wrote a full-length musical called Chrystanthia. Somewhere along the way, I picked up game programming as a hobby, and eventually ended up making games professionally for home console systems. Then, in 1998, I discovered how I could take all my experiences and combine them when I discovered Flash. The rest is history. I share my ideas on my website, www.glenrhodes.com.

After graduating from design school in 2000, I started the Fourm Design Studio with 3 close friends. Since then, I have been dedicated to educating and inspiring audiences through interactive experiences. I am constantly learning, probing and absorbing information and insight to bring into my own work. Above all, I enjoy solving problems, whether working with a client or on a side project. In my spare time, I have been working on several time-consuming projects such as infourm.com, gridplane.com, miniml.com, and have recently been collaborating on installations for a conceptual art gallery in Milwaukee.

I was born at 1979. Since then I've had many achievements. I graduated from Moscow State University department of Computer Science, where I've research methods of texture compression. I'm interesting computer graphics, image processing, 3D visualization and so on. I also like playing computer games and creating them. My currently work is associated with Macromedia Flash. Sometimes, I think that it's the greatest software for development. It gives me all tools what I need.

Ty is a partner at the Fourm Design Studio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He created Fourm with JD Hooge, Craig Kroeger and Erik Natzke.
Ty\'s personal site -Sound of Design - explores and experiments with the possibilities of interactive media. He also teaches part-time at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Ty has recently created projects for Vector Lounge and Born Magazine.


I was born last century in southern Germany and currently live in Berlin. I work as freelance media / motion designer. At the moment this means working a lot with Flash and on concepts. I lecture on occasions and also write sometimes too.


I\'m a resident of London, born on 31 January 1973. Having previously worked as a van driver, nanny, ice cream seller, sandwich maker and band manager, in 1997 I answered an ad that said \"Do you want to be a web designer?\". I now work through my own company Hi-Rise and in collaboration with Anthony Burrill as friendchip.
Friendchip\'s first commercial job was for German electronic band Kraftwerk, and we\'ve gone on to work largely with bands and music companies. Current projects include ongoing work for 13amp.tv, and a new site for Bjork (littleibooks.com). As Hi-Rise I\'m working with airside on a multi-player game for 23rdfloor.com.

First I wanted to be a fireman, then an astronaut, then a car mechanic, then an architect. Then I wanted to make dioramas for the Museum of Natural History. Then I wanted to be a rock star, then a writer, a 3D animator, a carpenter, and then a writer again. Then for a while all I wanted to do was ride the F train drinking Tecate from a can. Then I wanted to be a web designer, then an artist, then a roof gardener. Now I\'m back to fireman.

Keith lives in the vicinity of Boston, MA, in the USA with his wife Kazumi and their new daughter Kristine. He has been working with Flash since 1999, and has co-authored many books for friends of ED, including Flash MX Studio, Flash MX Most Wanted, and the ground-breaking Flash Math Creativity.

In 2001 he started the experimental Flash site, BIT-101 (www.bit-101.com), which strives for a new, cutting edge, open source experiment each day. The site recently won an award at the Flashforward 2003 Flash Film Festival in the Experimental category. In addition to the experiments on the site, there are several highly regarded Flash tutorials which have been translated into many languages and are now posted on web sites throughout the world. Keith is currently working full time doing freelance and contract Flash development and various writing projects.

My name is Manuel Tan but almost everybody calls me Manny.
I currently work for a design shop called The Fin Company here in New York. In my spare time I update my sites www.uncontrol.com and www.66mph.com. Both deal with programmatic movement in Flash. Uncontrol is the place for me to experiment with motion and behaviors through code, while 66mph is where I do my more arty farty stuff.
I've been published in a few books like New Masters of Flash 2002 annual, 72 DPI, and Young Guns NYC III as well as exhibiting works at OFFF in Barcelona and ADC in New York. I was recently involved in the Biennial at Tirana and was exhibited locally at the Deitch Gallery in Soho, NY. When I'm not doing Flash stuff I build Bandai models, mountain bike, and grow my herbal plants on my windowsill.

Jared Tarbell was born in 1973 to William and Suzon Davis Tarbell in the high-altitude desert city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. First introduced to personal computers in 1987, Jared's interest in computation has grown in direct proportion to the processing power of these machines. Jared holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from New Mexico State University. He sits on the Board of the Austin Museum of Digital Art where he helps promote and encourage appreciation of the arts within the global community. Jared is most interested in the visualization of large data sets, and the emergent, life-like properties of complex computational systems. Jared has recently returned to Albuquerque to work closer to friends and family while enjoying the unique aspects of desert living.

Additional work from Jared Tarbell can be found at levitated.net and complexification.net.

Brandon is a senior at Spring Woods High School in Houston, Texas, with many years of mathematics and computer science study in his c.v. His mathematics focus has been single and multivariable calculus, real analysis, linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, elementary combinatorics, and number theory. His computer science experience is based on programming design, object-oriented programming, and problem solving. His goal is to pursue a Ph.D. in Mathematics. In his spare time, he helps run the math forum at Were-Here under the name of ahab, and works for Eyeland Studios as a games programmer.

I\'m an ActionScripter from Chile. There aren\'t many of us AS coders here, and there aren\'t many ActionScript jobs either, so I started searching for clients on the Internet instead, developing some applications, and participating on Flash forums.
I have a lot of hobbies &emdash;sometimes I work as an electronics engineer on satellite communications and networking, sometimes I work as a pa

[Bio updated October 2008]

Paul Prudence\'s current work can be found at transphormetic.com

Paul is an artist and real-time visual performer working with computational and visual feedback systems and video. Uses VVVV, Flash & processed Digital Video. He\'s also a lecturer on visual music and syneasthetic art.

Paul is a researcher and writer at Dataisnature.

I\'m not American and I don\'t live in London. I just work in the UK as a web developer for cash. My site for this week is pinderkaas.com, and this is my life so far:
Acorn Electron, BBC Micro Model B, Spectrum 48k, ZX Spectrum +, Dragon 16k, Atari ST 520, Amiga 1200, 286, 386SX 25Mhz, 386DX, Pentium 166 Mhz, iMac 400, Power Mac G4 450 Mhz.
My ambitions were to be a palaenotologist, or a milkman (so I could sit at home, eat fish fingers, and watch Moonlighting).
One day I will learn how to tune my guitar.


None Available --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information; illustrated edition edition (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1903450500
• ISBN-13: 978-1903450505
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #893,712 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget the Coffee Table...Keep this One by the Computer, June 19, 2002

By	Mike Carter (Ojai, CA) - See all my reviews

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Math Creative?, May 7, 2002

By	Edward Bringas (NYC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most essential non-beginner flash book, April 16, 2002

By	C. Bijalba "rouge on azgalor" (chicago, il United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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?