After being asked same questions related to Flash, and specifically Flash intro making, over and over again, I've compiled four guides that will be very useful for any first-time Flash intro maker. These guides aren't designed to teach you how to assign actions to buttons or how to draw things in Flash - there are countless Flash books, tutorials on the web, and of course Flash Help itself to teach you that. What these guides WILL do for you is teach you how to better approach and organize your Flash animation project, how to optimize your graphics for smaller file size, how to reduce CPU load when your Flash movie runs, and what tricks you can use to synchronize your animation and your soundtrack. Most importantly, they will teach you how to stream and preload your Flash animation efficiently.
- Making Flash intros - Organizing your work
- Making Flash intros - File size and CPU load optimization
- Making Flash intros - Soundtrack synchronization
- Making Flash intros - Streaming and preloading efficiently
Note: I have originally written these guides in 2001. Now, in 2005, there are some new techniques and new Actionscript code that can be used, but what's in these guides still holds true, as far as I know. I've changed and updated a few relevant things in the guides, but in case I've missed something, if you would like to make some corrections or additions to the guides, email me, and I'll put new information in, with proper credit of course.
And here's another guide, for those who would like to make their Flash movies talk to CGI scripts. It explains some fundamentals of communication and sending data from Flash to CGI scripts and back, has an example CGI script and a FLA to download, and should be quite useful for beginners:
Enjoy. If you find these guides useful, send me a link to your next Flash piece - it'll make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that my guides serve some good purpose.
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