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chluaid
Adam Phillips @chluaid

Age 94, Male

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Bitey Castle, top floor

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I'll teach you Flash

Posted by chluaid - September 16th, 2008


If you need help learning to use Flash for animation, you might like to keep an eye on my BiteyCastle Academy page. I'm releasing one chapter at a time and there are 2 free chapters up there now.

Something like 2 years ago I was contracted to write a Flash 8 'how-to-animate' manual for a publisher who eventually decided not to publish it. As a result, I had written and illustrated 10 complete chapters that would never see the light of day. 6 months of really hard work for almost nothing.

This made me just a little bit angry (i.e. I was seething with white hot rage), mostly because the publisher owns all the work I had done. Having no ownership rights prevented me from using any of the work, taking it to another publisher or publishing it on my site. However, despite not going to print, they did pay me some of what I was owed (it was a contract, after all) so I had to be grateful for that much.

Recently, I decided that I could rewrite the whole thing from the ground up, thereby creating a completely new book that was entirely mine and loads better than the first. This would be time-consuming but not too difficult because I already had done all the groundwork. The best thing is that there wouldn't be some clueless editor telling me to revise chapters when he didn't have a fucking clue about what animation is or how it's done!

So I wrote and illustrated a completely new book, provided completely new exercise files and took new Flash CS3 screenshots. I got my girlfriend to be tech-editor because she knew absolutely nothing about Flash and was therefore the perfect test reader. She read every page and completed all the exercises. If there was anything in the book that she didn't understand, I'd rewrite it or clarify with extra screenshots/illustrations. Needless to say, she now knows how to use Flash :D

The result of all this is on my BiteyCastle Academy page, where I've released those 2 free chapters (almost 80 pages), with other chapters to follow in the weeks and months to come.

Future chapters will be charged at between $2 and $5 each, depending on the content but the best thing is that unlike a book from a publisher, you can choose what individual chapters to buy. For example, you may already know how to do basic illustrations and animation in Flash CS3, so perhaps you only want the Special Effects chapter. You'll have that option when it's released ;)

Even if you know how to use Flash CS3, do me a favour and check out the first two free chapters and let me know what you think. If you don't know Flash CS3 yet, I'm sure you'll get a lot out of those introductory chapters.

Here's the link again: BiteyCastle Academy.
Hope you like it!
-Phillips

I'll teach you Flash


Comments

Time to go learn some cool shit from the X-Men Academy!!!

Sorry I meant Bitey Castle Academy!!!!

My school teachers were useless and I have yet to find a serious book on effects
anywhere, I think if you concentrated on that you could make a killing
sign me up for that one.

yeah I think there's a worldwide shortage of good feature-quality FX lessons. That's what my FX DVDs series was supposed to be for.. even got two sponsors for that one, so it's in the works too.

Can't really say when it'll be ready though, because it's all screencaptured video in a workshop style. Effectively it's all the work of writing a book but instead of screenshots and typing, it's video and talking. I've done a couple of chapters though and will post them on my Academy page soonish.

All I can say is thanks ;) This will be so much help.

If the world could have one guru of flash animation, it would be you.

I need to learn light effects, like how to animate a flash from a gun on a persons face, the flash, not the muzzleflash from the gun but that burst of light that reflects off a person.

Another example would be like lightning or the flash from a camera.

Is that covered in there?

not in the first two chapters, but yeah I'll include at least two FX chapters, as Light FX deserves its own full chapter.

If I had flash I would gladly be under your wing, especially since your one of the best authors on the site.

YES!
A large resource for animation that's about FLASH. You're great.

Very nice first few chapters, I might invest in that soon.

Kickass! I looked at the first two, and I it turns out I already know the basics of flash. Hopefully the next chapters can show the animation part. I hope to save money for those ones cause I think they're worth it.

You have done a great deed Mr. Philips. However, I use Flash MX on a low-end computer, but that won't let me down.

The good thing about animation in Flash is that the timeline concepts and basic tools haven't changed much over the years. Flash 4 to 9 have pretty much the same animation capabilities, with the exception of a few newish features like Filters, Custom Easing and Enhanced Gradients.

Therefore I think perhaps 80% of what's in these chapters will be applicable to earlier versions of Flash and when we start talking about animation, the concepts will be easy to translate to whatever version you're using.

Awesome, really grat stuff, perhaps i even learn how to animate with that !
BUT jus t a question from where do i download the Flash CS3 (link) ? and it's free ?

thanks

If you don't have Flash CS3, you can get a 30-day fully functioning trial version from the download page on adobe.com.

Apart from that, you can often get earlier versions of Flash for very low prices on eBay or your local software store's bargain bin. A friend of mine got Flash MX 2004 (version 7) on eBay for about $40.

I know where I'm spending my money this year.

Finally some professional doing big effort for the lesser ones.
Il read those two free, then maybe il pay up for more if I'm able to.

Thanks for doing this. It's great that I can get a proper tutorial on how to get started in making flash, but it's even greater that it's coming from you.

Thank you so much sir.

So... Much...

Just throwing this out there but do you think it would be worth taking it to LuLu and creating a hardcover book version too? I know i wouldn't mind paying the extra money for the information in that format.

Coolio, BBB here... I'm doing alright, I'll be sure to check out the forums sometime... it's been a while...

hey man.. new forums too. Check it out, will be good to have you back ;)

why not tell us the publisher's name eh? i mean they practically screwed you over. why not smear their name a bit in public. >:)

hahah yeah I have so many bridges! Should hurt to burn a few :P

if you keep doing these you should just write a book, newgrounds store could hold it maybe because theres tons of people that come to newgrounds that bitch about wanting to learn to animate

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