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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

what a fantastic idea, and a great resource. Good on ya :)

So great you share that with others who doesnt have any idea :)

Yes yes yes!

TYYY I loved the first one. Wanted to also show it to you on the forum but it didnt work out.. Soooo what are the chances for more free episodes XD?

just need to steal your water effects techniques and ill be primed to take over the world.

Anyway kudos for putting alot of thought and effort into throwing together a proper set of learning tools

thanks dude.. water effects will be there eventually :D

By the way - is it ok if I have flash 8 and not cs?

yep the exercise files are compatible with Flash 8 too.. the screenshots and menu paths are all Flash CS3 so some of them might be slightly different in Flash 8.

Chances for more free ones? We'll see :P

That seems awesome. Plz make moarz bitey!!!

Going to go read it now!

Well I'm always intrested in learning

It's always good to learn more of what you already know. I'm sure this'll be a very beneficial read.

If I in theory killed you and ate your brain, would I gain the ability to animate fluids?

If so, you should be selling bits of your brain, because apparently we only use like 10%. I think there's like a fair bit of worth in the rest of it.

Plus I'm like really hungry.

Oh and nice tutorials, thanks.

I've booby trapped my brain.. if you pry, we all die!

Woah thats a really nice gesture man.

hey thats great! sorry about your book issue , but good thing you didnt let that get you down.

I will see your page nao....

ill bookmark it who knows i might learn a few things :D the only thing im sure it wont have is how to be patient at flash cuz thats my draw back in animation and it wont make me animate crap :c

Ha. Look who's back.

Bad ass! I'll be reading it like crazy.

$2-$5 is a great price in my opinion and I cannot wait. HOWEVER... if you got the chapters sponsored instead and distributed them freely then you would still make a large chunk of cash, you wouldn't have to worry about people passing them on and you losing out on money, users would get it completely free (the price is great but some people just have no way of paying) and also sponsors would be happy as they get to sponsor popular work.

Just think about it, everybody wins ;)

Like I said... can't wait! =D

great idea! I'll do some sponsor hunting because I would like to continue offering the chapters for free :)

I remember seeing some lessons on your website a while back. You showed how to do a shimering star/water effect using mask layers, it helped a lot.

You raise the dampness of the entire female population the earth by 4% on your own.

Well done.

<3 :D

woO0oy!

What are the chances of eventually seeing this available in print?

Chances are pretty high if you go File > Print

I doubt I will take this one to a publisher.

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