New Masters of Flash, The 2002 Annual

TITLE: New Masters of Flash, The 2002 Annual PUBLISHER: Friends of Ed ISBN: 1-903450-36-5 PAGES: 534 colour CD: Yes AUTHORS: Vas Sloutchevsky, Samuel Wan, Marc Stricklin, Chris Andrade, Gabriel Mulzer, Brian Limond, Pete Barr-Watson, Mickey Stretton, Josh Levine, Jessica Spiegel, Hoss Gifford, Manuel Tan, Amit Pitaru, Ross Mawdsley, Erik Natzke Get it from Amazon.com

How to start a publishing company 101:
Someone adds a programming language to a graphics package and almost by accident creates a cultural phenomenon. A young and vibrant community grows up around the product.

Okay, now here comes the clever bit. You don't write a book about the product, you write a book about the community. That's what Friends of Ed did with their debut release, 'New Masters of Flash'. It was an instant best seller and made Amazon's computer book of the year.

Now, it gets better. We're a year or so down the line and I'm glancing along the shelves of my local bookstore. The difference between Flash 4 and Flash 5 couldn't be more marked.

Instead of four Flash books on the shelves there are four shelves of Flash books. The funny bit is that they are all the same. They all still focus on the product. Wasn't anyone paying attention? Luckily for FOE it appears not. They still have this rich little niche to themselves.

The concept of New Masters of Flash 2002 is pretty much the same as before. Take fifteen people from the Flash community and give them a chapter each to talk about their influences and their philosophy and then walk you through a tutorial explaining one of their techniques.

New to this edition is a 'Headnotes' section that follows each chapter. In here the Ed-itors get to wax lyrical about the potential for each of the techniques. Before the book kicks off though we have two great little introductions from the creator of Flash, Jonathan Gay, and by NMOF alumni, Yugo Nakamura.

First up to bat is the wonderfully named Vas Sloutchevsky. Vas is the brains behind the multi-award winning Yigal-Azrouel site and in his chapter he explains how he constructed the very sexy Y-A mouse driven image scroller.

After Vas, Samuel Wan shows us how to add beauty through code. With the addition of some subtle object oriented programming he creates some beautiful interactive motion.

From beauty to the beast: Marc Stricklin's Photoshop fueled www.brittle-bones.com has been turning heads for a while now. Although he's the first to admit that design is his strong point the code in the tutorial is all good stuff. Whilst building a "freak on a leash" we're introduced to some important programming methodology like breaking down your interactions into modules and prep-ing them with pseudo-code.

Chris Andrade carries on from Andries Odendaal's introduction to 3D in the original NMOF book. In his tutorial we create a 3D object and through the use of .prototype extend its methods to build in transforms and translations. If you're not a programmer then your brain will melt just reading it but it's good solid stuff.

More 3D next from Gabriel Mulzer, creator of the eerily beautiful VoxAngelica. Although he doesn't go so far as to give you the source code for the Ice Queen his tutorial explains the concepts and maths behind it. His makeover work on the Freshfroot site is also featured.

Glasgow's finest, Limmy and Hoss bag themselves a chapter each. If you've ever had a chance to catch the boys live then you'll know that they have no problem getting your attention. They are both straight talking guys (if you can understand a word they say) who love what they do and this really comes across in both chapters.

Limmy's tutorial catches him in introspective mood with a short piece called 'Time' and Hoss delivers a fun little drawing tool as well as some fantastic observations regarding form, function and Ron Jeremy.

Pete Barr-Watson is the founder of Brighton based web-shop Kerb, and in his tutorial he walks you through the dynamic possibilities of mixing Flash with ASP, HTML and the humble text file.

Being a sucker for all things chrono-logical it was nice to see both Mickey Stretton and Jessica Spiegel tackle the undervalued delights of the Actionscript Date object. Mickey uses the various measurements of time to dynamically change the visual components of the interface, and Jessica delivers a database driven calendar engine.

Manuel Tan, the mad scientist behind uncontrol.com cooks us up a gorgeous butterfly animated entirely with Actionscript, and self confessed Datsun fan, Josh Levine, delivers a trippy little number that combines intertia, some fake 3D and the sound object. Don't do drugs kids.

Jazz programmer and all round hoopy frood, Amit Pitaru takes us on an explorative journey through Flash. Applying the basic elements of music (rhythm, melody and harmony) to programming he is treading some interesting new ground.

Ross Mawdsley discusses the influences behind his Simian site before weaving some Photoshop/Flash magic in a tutorial from the site. Erik Natzke rounds things off with a few of his trademark experiments.

All in all this is as good if not better than the original release, and as last time the layout and presentation is glorious. Most importantly the format is still unique. With New Masters Of Photoshop hitting the bookshops this month it'll be interesting to see if the 'community book' concept can be extended beyond the Flash community.

 

 

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