Yo Lo,
The site's you're showing are those of my old constituents: tech/rave
designers. I'm a designer/animator that came into Flash a few years
ago. I've basically moved on from that kind of design (since everyone
was doing it) and find myself doing (and enjoying) more code
development.
I'm all self taught via books and the internet. While you can find
everything you need on the internet, it's not usually as easy and
focussed as paper reference manuals.
Early on, I found it helpful to have at least 2 basic Flash books on
hand, in my case "Flash MX 2004 Advanced" (Peachpit) & "Demystifying
Flash MX 2004" (MM Press). By having both I can quickly see different
views on many basic tasks, and each covers topics the other lacks.
The O'Reilly books are a must-have. I jumped into "Essential
Actionscript 2.0", trying to avoid reading about AS 1.0 in
"Actionscript for Flash MX - The Definitive Guide". This series was
fundamental towards applying OOP to Flash development.
As a designer, I still have problems understanding OOP practices, but
over time I've learned. In fact, after having the "Essential AS 2.0"
book for a year, I just recently purchased the older volume which
turned out to be quite helpful. Not only does it fill in a lot of
holes for OOP & MX2004, it also gave me insight on how & why Flash AS
has changed over the past few years.
I have a whole library of books including "XML for FLash" (FoE),
"PHP5 for Flash" (FoE), "Programming Flash for FlashComm Server", and
about a half-dozen others. While I may not use them everyday, they
can be essential for more complex projects. $20-50 for a book has
saved me days of hunting on google for answers - a very worthy
investment.
There's more new books to be released for F8 soon. I've found it
takes 3-6 months for the really good ones to emerge, as they're more
prone to point out real-life bugs/issues and rely less on filler from
previous editions.
The trick is to review a book and see it either answers the current
question you're asking, lead you forward into areas you're interested
in exploring, or both.
As for the use of AS in your examples - it's almost inconsequential.
They're very heavy graphics driven using mostly vector & bitmap art
that's animated really well. This kind of design takes time to
develop. Fastest way to learn that is observation & repetition. Look
at something you like and mimic it as fully as you can. Eventually
you'll grow past that level and have a pocketful of your own
techniques, tricks, and styles.
I'm sure some of those examples have some great AS behind them. But
I've worked with great designers whose code is simplistic and sloppy.
But it got the job done.
-radley
On Nov 21, 2005, at 7:03 AM, Lowen Fan wrote:
Hi All. I'm an advanced beginner, i know the basics, how the
application
works, a bit of actionscript... Now I was wondering how did the
pro's/advanced users evolve from here?
Did you use a book(s) or just a lot of tutorials and experimenting?
(What
book(s)?)
Another big question is when to use actionscript and when not to?
Are sites
like: www.ricksdesign.com <http://www.ricksdesign.com>
www.notrics.nl<http://www.notrics.nl>
www.h3omedia.co.uk <http://www.h3omedia.co.uk>
www.clusta.com<http://www.clusta.com>heavily based on actionscript?
I'm still so confused how to achieve certain
effects etc and apply them in a site. My goal is to create these
kind of
sites, hopefully in the future as a job.
Can anyone give advice?
greets,
Lowen
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Radley Marx
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
310.220.4088
http://www.radleymarx.com
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