Last year I coincidently visited the hillmancurtis.com site through the Adobe website. I was very impressed with the animation they created. It does not like the normal Flash animation that I've ever seen before. It just likes a motion picture. I spent time on exploring his site for the whole afternoon. His designs were full of concepts, compact, directed and powerful. I've never figured out how he could get those idea and turned it into the animation.
Several months later, I have found the book written by him at the Amazon.com. I really can't wait to order it. When the book shipped, I read it thoroughly. Then I get the idea. This book is not all about how to use Flash tools, it's also teach you the background idea behind those cool clips. And that's what I really waiting for.
As you may see, hundreds of Flash book in the market would teaches you how to do incredible effect or just simple tweening motion. None of them teaches you about the design principles and idea. The writer of this book, Hillman Curtis, is a designer. So he just thinks like a designer, no matter what tools he is using. In the book he will teach you his idea and his own incredible technics that he always use in his works. You must see his site to perceive how different between his works and the normal flash animation. He will teach you how to control the streaming and make the file size as small as possible. The techniques to use 3D effects and Video in Flash were very cool. By the way he is fully understand the limitation of Flash animation on the Internet, so he also be careful to limit the file size and master of using streaming techniques. His works were fast, international, great design. That's why he received so many awards.
The book is well-designed, full of graphics and illustrations that help me to understand the steps easier. I think it's because that Hillman is not a programmer so the book do not explain much about the action scripts. But it also provides some good resources at the last chapter where I found some sites very useful.
Hillman Curtis is my inspiration for me do create my works with creative way. And as I write this I think this book is still one of the most useful Flash book in the market that you should have in your shelf. Don't wait to get one if you want to master the Flash.
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