Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 (Graphics Series)

By Robert Firebaugh

Intended for graphic designers already familiar with Flash, this guide introduces drawing, design, animation, and texture techniques for creating high-quality, photorealistic vector illustrations in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1584504773
• ISBN13: 9781584504771
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Charles River Media
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Curse you, Charles River Media!!!

I'm not a fan of Charles River Media's books. They don't have color illustrations, aren't well proofread and just generally seem cheaply put together. Despite all that, Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 is a must-have book for anyone using Flash. Firebaugh's use of Flash as an illustration tool is mind blowing, using simple vector tools to create photo-realistic images. The problems of being published by CRM are evident though. The black & white pictures make it hard to judge what's going on and there are a few confusing typos and mis-wordings. (he often says "delete" when he really means "cut") You end up stuck having to have the FLA files right in front of you while you read. It's a good way to learn, but rather inconvenient. I don't want to come off as down on this book just because I don't like the publisher. There's tons of great learning in this book. The source files are set up so you can poke through each step and see how things are put together. Also there are exercises at the end of each chapter to practice what you've learned. All in all, Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 puts you on the path the to do things with Flash you never thought were possible.

Second Edition to Use Flash 8 Features

Micromedia Flash, now part of the Adobe family, has long been thought of as an annimation tool for web sites. This book stresses that Flash is also capable of producing high-quality photorealistic illustrations. To get the most out of the book you should have some experience with Flash. As such, I consider it an intermediate level book. This is the second edition of this book, with the new edition focusing on more advanced illustrating projects, covering the new features built into Flash Professional 8, and covering points discovered since the first edition appeared. The format of the book is basically a tutorial. It starts with simple line art, like you might use to illustrate assembly instructions for a bookcase. From there it goes on to more complex items eventually getting up to what the author calls 'photorealistic.' The images are close to photo quality. As some of these illustrations are quite complex, they are included on a CD supplied with the book. Using Flash as the way to generate illustrations increases the utility of the program, their data storage formats are smaller than those of many other programs, and of course animation is available.