Flash Cinematic Techniques: Enhancing Animated Shorts and Interactive Storytelling

Description

Apply universally accepted cinematic techniques to your Flash projects to improve the storytelling quotient in your entertainment, advertising (branding), and educational media. A defined focus on the concepts and techniques for production from story reels to the final project delivers valuable insights, time-saving practical tips, and hands-on techniques for great visual stories. Extensive illustration, step-by-step instruction, and practical exercises provide a hands-on perspective. Explore the concepts and principles of visual components used in stories so you are fluent in the use of space, line, color, and movement in communicating emotion and meaning. Apply traditional cinematography techniques into the Flash workspace with virtual camera movements, simulated 3d spaces, lighting techniques, and character animation. Add interactivity using ActionScript to enhance audience participation.

Chris Jackson is an author, computer graphics designer, and tenured professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He teaches a variety of graduate-level courses and professional workshops focusing on 2D computer animation, 3D digital imaging, instructional multimedia, and motion graphics. He is a multimedia consultant for Fortune 500 companies and national museums. Chris' professional design work has received over 25 distinguished national and international awards for online communication. He has presented his research and professional work at Adobe MAX, ACM SIGGRAPH, UCDA Design Education Summit, and the Society for Technical Communications (STC). Chris is the author of Flash + After Effects and Flash Cinematic Techniques: Animating and Building Interactive Stories, and co-author of Flash 3D: Animation, Interactivity, and Games.

"Chris Jackson has a remarkable talent for explaining complicated visual concepts so that anyone can easily digest and incorporate them into their daily workflow. Flash Cinematic Techniques is yet another of Chris' books I recommend keeping within arm's reach for that daily dose of knowledge and inspiration." --Chris Georgenes, Art & Animation Director, Mudbubble, LLC "Chris Jackson's excellent new Flash primer does a great job of patiently focusing on important design principles and the effective methods of storytelling as they apply to the medium. Using a great number of illustrations and examples, Jackson discusses various ways to improve a project's look and structure as well as incorporating virtual camera movements, simulated 3D spaces, lighting techniques, character animation and interactivity. If you get heart palpitations each time you think about taking your toon idea from paper to pixel to vectors, Jackson is the man who can calmly take you out of your tech nightmare."--Animation Magazine