Amazon.co.uk Review
New Masters of Flash is a showcase, a tutorial and an inspiration. Divided into 19 chapters each devoted to the work of a single Flash designer, it is international in scope and encompasses work ranging from the strictly commercial to the purely experimental.
Each contributor begins by explaining their general approach to using Flash, from their personal design philosophy and motivations to how they achieve the realisation of a project from concept to reality. Then it's down to the practicalities--step-by-step explanation of how to complete an entire Flash project.
Todd Purgason, Creative Director at Juxt Interactive, demonstrates the tools and techniques he uses to create mood-setting audio loops for commercial projects. Luke Turner provides the secret ingredients to the text ripple effect that he has helped to perfect at The Void--and has been copied all over the Web. Fine art graduate, Andreas Odendaal, uses Flash 5's 3-D Action scripting to create an interactive 3-D interface. Irene Chan's intimate poetic pieces combine beautiful animated typography with dreamlike music to produce something of rare emotional impact.
And the results are stunning. From Olivier Besson's wildly animated Globz logo to Yuko Nakamura's interactively gooey Mona Lisa. The accompanying CD-ROM, itself a clever piece of Flash design, is packed with interviews, the book tutorials and the original Flash project files for you to disassemble.
Take a look at www.eneri.net, www.mondo.com, www.thevoid.co.uk and www.2advanced.com. When you see what's possible, you won't need to be persuaded to buy this book. --Ken McMahon
Book Description
New Masters of Flash is both global showcase and practical tutorial. Nineteen of the planet's most awe-inspiring Flash designers share their influences, ideas and objectives in individual introductory essays. They then take the reader through a step-by-step tutorial explaining in detail how to create in Flash 5 the interfaces, applications and effects that they have made famous. On the accompanying CD, watch interviews with the designers, follow animated versions of the tutorials and download FLAs for Flash 5 (Flash 4 FLAs are also supplied). The author-designers are some of the most legendary Flash innovators currently working - from the US to Japan, Europe to South Africa: Yugo Nakamura, Joshua Davis, Manuel Clement, Irene Chan and Tomato's Joel Baumann together with fifteen other leading Flash practitioners. These are the designers who are expanding the horizons of interactive interface design with Flash. Join them.
by Hoss Gifford
