People have often come to me asking for recommendations on resources for learning Flash and ActionScript. Each time I’ve gathered a list of what I think are excellent resources for getting into this field, and over time this compilation has become more thorough. I thought I’d post my suggestions here for others to refer to, and will try to keep this updated as I come across anything new.
I’ve grouped the following resources into what I think are logical levels and disciplines, but as you might know or come to realize, Flash has a lot of gray areas. Please browse through the topics that appeal on your interests versus simply focusing on a specific discipline.
Some websites and listservs are listed in multiple sections because they are appropriate for multiple disciplines within Flash – this goes back to the “gray areas” I was talking about.
General Flash
General Flash references are primarily for the entry-level people. These are basically primer resources that introduce you to the Flash IDE, and give you best practice approaches early on. It also never hurts for seasoned Flash users to thumb through or troll these resources. There are usually things you’ll see here that you may have forgotten, or come across something that gets you to look at an old tool in a new way to accomplish something different.
Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, by Tom Green
This book is an excellent foundation book for anyone that wants to get started in Flash. Tom Green does an excellent job of walking you through using the application in such a natural way that it makes it enjoyable. You don’t find yourself spending too much time “reading the manual.” In my opinion just cracking open an app and playing around is the best way to really learn it, and this book does a good job of letting you do that. You will not become an expert after reading this book by any means, but you will have the right information to get you started in the right direction.
Websites
Design and Manual Animation
The resources that I list here focus on design, character animation, and motion graphic techniques that are useful both inside and outside of Flash. I’ll mark them accordingly, but the reason for this variety is because Flash animation is merely a focused area of this discipline. It’s imperative that you consider yourself an animator before you consider yourself a Flash animator.
The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
Written by a two of the original Disney animators, this book is an essential resource that every animator should read thoroughly. I cannot recommend this book enough, and would consider it required reading for any designer/animator entering the field.
The Animator’s Survival Kit, by Richard Williams
This is another book that doesn’t not focus on Flash, but instead on the discipline of animation. The book focuses on techniques and approaches for honing your craft. Like any valuable animation book, these lessons hold true through any technology.
How to Cheat in Flash CS3: The art of design and animation in Adobe Flash CS3, by Chris Georgenes
I have not read many of the “How to Cheat” titles, but this book by Chris cannot be passed up. Chris began his career in the field of more traditional forms of animation before moving into Flash in it’s earlier days. His techniques are valuable, and can save you a lot of trial and error since he has paved the way for much of what is done today. Most importantly, the tools you learn here are a great foundation upon which you can build. Chris has contributed many articles to the Adobe Developer Center, and has two websites (keyframer.com and mudbubble.com) with plenty of resource material.
Websites
ListServs
ActionScript, Programmed Animation and Interactivity
Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock
This book is the latest in a long line of key ActionScript books that have always sat at the core of any Flash developer’s bookshelf. The original books, called Definitive Guides focused on fundamentals, touched on some best practices, and finished off with the second half of the books being a thorough reference tool. As the language has evolved the books became “essentials” that covered the fundamentals, best practices, and inner workings while leaving the Flash documentation and live docs as the main reference material. As ActionScript has become a more complete and sophisticated programming language, this approach has been the better option. With third party libraries, and new packages continually being added to the language writing the book using the old approach would have simply left users with an incomplete manual. This approach allows readers to get a deeper understanding of the inner workings of the language, and still remains the first book choice for anyone entering the discipline of Flash development.
Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!, by Keith Peters
These books have, in my opinion, always been some of the best ActionScript for animation books that I’ve read. They cover everything from the basics, all the way to such complex topics as inverse kinematics. All examples in this book use best practice approaches in the programming examples. Another key thing to point out about this book is the approach taken when looking at how to create animation through scripting – calculating position by evaluating time instead of using frame-based animation (if this doesn’t make sense now it will after you’re more familar with the topic). This book has done a very good job of picking up where Robert Penner’s book (below) left off in ActionScript 1.0. Anyone interested in getting heavily into ActionScript animation should consider reading this book. It’s a great way of giving you starting points from which you can continue to experiment and explore.
Programming Macromedia Flash MX, by Robert Penner
This book is a classic, and helped many people look at Flash animation through the eyes of a physicist and mathematician. What eventually became the Flash Tween and easing classes was originally Robert Penner’s animation classes. Based on key math principals many Flash designers and developers were able to quickly make realistic and reusable animation. The design community simultaneously started flexing their brain muscle by pulling out old algebra, trig, and calc techniques while hearing their grade school teachers in their minds telling them “I told you that you’d need this stuff.” The code examples are dated, but the practice and process are still very relevant today.
Websites
ListServs
- FlashNewbie – Mailing list for new users of Flash
- FlashCoders – High traffic mailing list for programmers using Macromedia Flash. The topics discussed here are advanced.
- FLASHmacromedia – This moderated discussion group is for Macromedia Flash users who want to use Flash more effectively for building websites, games, apps, etc.
Advanced Programming Topics
ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques, by William Sanders and Chandima Cumaranatunge
This book is for the Flash programmer. At this point you should be very comfortably with the topics of classes, packages, polymorphism, and other fundamentals of Object-Oriented programming. This book takes these topics and begins putting them in to the context of design patterns. Written for the advanced programmer these patterns are essential in building frameworks, and packages designed for flexibility and longevity. I really enjoyed this book as it introduced methods not discussed in other ActionScript books.
Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0 by Todd Yard, Peter Elst, and Sas Jacobs
Another great OOP book. This book, like Design Patterns, discuss some of the more advanced topics. This one, however, has a lower entry-point so it may be easier for users to transition into these topics by first reading this book. This one also provides more practical examples that you can begin using in your existing projects.
Advanced Flash Project Topics
Flash to the Core, by Joshua Davis
This book is now out of print, but if you can get your hands on it then do so. Like Penner’s book the code in this book is dated because it uses older versions of the language; this doesn’t matter though. It’s more a book of inspiration, and a way of getting you to stop thinking in traditional ways typically dictated by the majority of the Flash development community. Typical thought and approach in Flash leads only to mediocrity. Joshua Davis does a great job reminding readers of this in the book.
MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer, by Hillman Curtis
Not so much a Flash book as it is a book from a well know Flash expert, and video artist. In this book Hillman shares his process and methods as a designer. Written more as a narrative, this book also does a great job of getting you to focus on how to approach your projects. Like Joshua’s book and all great books that discuss artistic creativity, it reminds you that you always need to get out of your comfort zone and really explore to create remarkable work.
There are of course plenty of other books and resources out there, but I tried to keep this focused on a few key materials that I am confident in recommending. I will continue to add/remove/modify this list so that it’s up-to-date.
What are resources and references are you using learn Flash or even to stay up-to-date? Please feel free to share it here, and I’ll certainly include it on this list if it turns out to be a great resource or reference.