Learning Flash

Let's say I wanted to learn Flash. I doubt that I can learn it enough in 30 days to warrent spending $500 on the product. Is that really the only option? It seems a bit rediculous to me.

One option is that you could buy the book 'Sams teach yourself Flash MX in 24 hours"

Realisticly it would take you about 3 days to learn, leaving 27 days to practice.

Again the task is quite daunting and unless u care for pirated software, i suggest you start learning.

best of luck

Ali

I agree with Ali.
After Sams book, i would really reckon you to buy this book. Its a real spoon-feeding and worth for money book.
then you can visit www.flashkit.com to download and practice on the tutorial samples.
Anyway learning flash is not difficult if you already know some graphics making tool like photoshop, PS pro.

Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
Let's say I wanted to learn Flash. I doubt that I can learn it enough in 30 days to warrent spending $500 on the product. Is that really the only option? It seems a bit rediculous to me.

Oh... i would download the 30days evaluation software and buy two books for < $100.

So the tool to make flash stuff costs $500!!!

So all those cute little movies are made by folks that have shelled out some serious bucks?

So all those cute little movies are made by folks that have shelled out some serious bucks?

Not necessarily.

Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:

Not necessarily.

Ouch! I think I'd rather pay $500 for a nifty editor.

Hmmm, the C/C++ solution sounds like something for programmers ... not quite the same.

Has anybody used the $500 thing? Is it really great?

If someone wanted to try their hand at a five minute animation, what might be the best route?

They have Basic Flash 8 or something like that which is like $399. Not a big difference there.

I would say try downloading a trial and see if the kiddo likes it.

Eric

There is also the Swish product line which is quite a bit less expensive.

Macromedia used to offer an educational version of their products for much less. I bought the entire MX suite about 4 years ago for a few hundred. They may still offer the educational versions, which are exactly the same as the full versions but you must agree not to develop anything for commercial purposes.

Here in the UK the educational version costs abou �80 or US$160 ish (assuming you are some kind of student). Only limitation is the stuff can not be used commercially. Perhaps its just me, but I did not find learning Flash a trivial experience. It looks eeezy when experineced people are playing with it but there are quite a huge lump of gotchas. I like the swish tool (much much cheaper) and it offers lots more built in stuff. For example if you want to fade in some text it is just a click away. In flash you have to dig into the properties, set the alpha blend at the start and end of a tween etc etc. The down side of swish is that its not Flash and every man and his untalented dog is doing flash. Personally I agree with Jakob Neilson, 99% Flash is evil

But Flash output is lovely particularly from the free tool Wink at http://www.debugmode.com
[ December 19, 2005: Message edited by: Marcus Green ]

The education version is usually a *lot* cheaper. If that's not an option...

Koolmoves (windows only, free trial, $45 full)

I haven't tried this one out, but it gives you all you need to make animations and compile them into the swf format (aka flash). It might not offer all the gazillions of features that Macromed- uh, I mean, Adobe Flash does - that could be a huge advantage actually. Flash's crowded interface takes a fair amount of getting used to.

Another advantage with this one would be that eventually you can learn some ActionScript (Flash's scripting language) if you're so inclined. Not necessarily the latest version, but for just learning that shouldn't matter. Mostly you can just make animations if that's what you want.

I haven't looked at it for a long time, but Blender might be an option. My son use to use it before going on to 3DStudio MAX...