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Macromedia Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
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by Ibis Fernandez
Sales Rank: 1155849
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List Price: $39.99
$35.99
At Amazon
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Paperback: 500 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies December 19, 2001
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0072133236
ISBN-13: 978-0072133233
Product Dimensions:
9 x 7.5 x 1.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
Product Description
Master Flash animation and cartooning using this complete hands-on guide. You'll discover shortcuts for drawing heads and bodies, developing your own characters, and learn to incorporate movie techniques--all from a real-world animator and video producer. Including an 8-page color insert which details the stages of the animation process, this book serves as practical tutorial to creating dazzling images and characters using Flash.
Back Cover Copy
Bring Cartoons and Animation to Life!
Open new worlds of creativity with Flash--one of the most versatile graphical applications available. Macromedia Flash Animation & Cartooning: A Creative Guide will help you learn professional cartooning techniques and create dynamic animated content for the Internet as well as offline. Learn basic formulas for drawing heads and bodies, and the best methods for developing memorable and functional Flash cartoon characters. Discover how motion can help bring a Web site to life, attracting interest and repeat visits. From easy-to-learn illustration and animation techniques, to the details of effectively running the application, this insightful resource will help you accomplish more with Flash animation.
*Conceive, create, and publish professional Flash cartoons
*Make the Flash interface your personal creative tool
*Acquire the production skills to effectively animate your work
*Infuse your movie with transition effects, dolly shots, and other Hollywood techniques
*Generate reusable ActionScript and other time-savers
*Use industry shortcuts and proven illustration techniques
*Develop exciting animations and rich media content that can be streamed over the Web and viewed in a variety of formats
Customer Reviews & Comments
This book talked a lot of cartooning, then it talked about Flash and cartoon, and sometimes showed you about it. It's neither a beginner book nor an intermediate/advanced Flash cartooning book. It just doesn't hit the mark well for any of these categories. The first 116 pages (25% of the book) focus on character types and drawing them. It also touches on different types of computers that you might want to use to cartoon with. Some of the drawings are interesting and helpful, but almost a direct rip off of Christopher Hart's "How to Draw Cartoons for Comic Strips" (which is a really great drawing book by the way) , only without the indepth instruction. Fernandez does touch on the drawing tools, yet very briefly. There is a screen shot of them and gives a brief description about them. That's pretty much it. He goes on to show about splitting up a character into symbols, the differences between importing artwork through Freehand, Streamline and using Flash itself. A horrible walk cycle example in Flash is shown. It's not in depth. It doesn't talk about moving pivots, grouping, one layer animation vs. multi-layer animation, nor squash and stretch (other than the traditional bouncing ball), swapping symbols, eyes (all which are really important and deserve attention) In the advanced techniques section, he does give some examples of rotoscoping, animating a gradient fill and a cool Japanese anime technique. He also includes some cartoon cheats about a blur and smear. (this section was good, but just too short with no examples on how to do it in Flash. The last 100 pages talk about lip sync. Fernandez does a good job here explaining and showing the different mouth positions and having a plan before you start to lip sync. He also talks about scripts, different formats (NTSC, HDTV etc) and camera techniques. There's no cd, written from a PC perspective and no mention of short cut keys. If you don't have an internet connection, no luck, but I doubt you want to download any of the examples. The book is black and white and this was a mistake. There isn't enough instruction on cartooning with Flash, but lots of ideas on how traditional animation is done and `oh by the way, let's use Flash to show it'. If you're a beginner, buy another book that will teach you techniques as this will not give you the basics. You're wasting your money. If you're an intermediate/advanced user, it's good for ideas, but your skills are past this book. If you want to read about Flash cartooning (an overview) this book is ok. This can't be the only Flash cartooning book or 1st cartooning book you buy because it doesn't give you enough information on how to cartoon with Flash. 2.5 stars and still looking for the perfect or near perfect Flash cartooning book :(
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Macromedia Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
List Price: $39.99
Available from Amazon
Price: $35.99
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