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Book Review
Creating `flashy' animation
FLASH 5 — F/X AND DESIGN: Bill Sanders; Dreamtech Press, 19-A, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 399 (with CD) (email: idgbook@vsnl.com).
THE INTERNET'S influence on the creative business of cinema increases every day. Already, it has created a whole new sub-culture of Net-based movies, which has broken through barriers of low budget to what is (with only slight hype) called "no-budget film making".
The main engine of such shoestring cinema is a piece of ubiquitous software called Flash, made by Macromedia.
For those who have a natural feel for art and design and dream of putting the products of their genius on the Web, this book is an excellent do-it-yourself guide.
It is important for beginners to appreciate that Flash achieves its neat animation and sound "F/X" (effects) by using vector graphics rather than bit maps. Simply put, it breaks down a shape into a large number of lines with a fixed magnitude and direction — rather than treating them as a fine mesh of dots.
The beauty of Flash lies in its intuitive simplicity — and once the prospective animator gets used to thinking of the screen as a dynamic graph paper, it is relatively painless to create interesting shapes, movement and colour, which can be preserved in a movie format.
The CD that accompanies the book provides a trial version of Flash 5 — the new version — as well as complementary tools like Dreamweaver and Fireworks, which help create enhanced effects and Web pages populated with Flash animation. There are also 50 sample Flash movies with sound in the popular Quicktime format.
All in all, an elegant and handy guide to those who want to make the products of their imagination, wriggle and squirm, twist and turn, to the beat of their own music, on the Web.
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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