Sure you can animate using motion tweens, in fact we’ll help you do that with our Flash Cartoon Animation book, but isn’t there something extra special in making things move with just a few lines of code?

In this book Keith Peters guides us through some basic animation theory and then demystifies the math and physics behind creating realistic animation, looking at trigonometry, velocity and acceleration, and bouncing & friction.

As you’d expect, the book intersperses theory with practical demonstrations of the techniques covered. A basic knowledge of ActionScript concepts is all that is required to get up and running with the tutorials.

Keith goes on to cover more advanced animation topics such as collision detection, particle attraction, and kinematics. The book concludes with looking at 3D animation techniques, including building a basic 3D engine, 3D lines, fills and solids, and matrix math.

Table of Contents

• Part I &emdash; ActionScripted Animation Basics
  
  
  
  • Ch. 1 &emdash; Basic Animation Concepts
  
  
  • Ch. 2 &emdash; ActionScript Basics for Animation
  
  
  • Ch. 3 &emdash; Trigonometry
  
  
  • Ch. 4 &emdash; Rendering Techniques
  
  


• Part II &emdash; Basic Motion
  
  • Ch. 5 &emdash; Velocity and Acceleration
  
  
  • Ch. 6 &emdash; Bouncing and Friction
  
  
  • Ch. 7 &emdash; User Interaction: Dragging and Throwing
  
  


• Part III &emdash; Advanced Motion
  
  • Ch. 8 &emdash; Easing and Springs
  
  
  • Ch. 9 &emdash; Collision Detection
  
  
  • Ch. 10 &emdash; Bouncing off Angles
  
  
  • Ch. 11 &emdash; Billiard Ball Physics
  
  
  • Ch. 12 &emdash; Particle Attraction
  
  
  • Ch. 13 &emdash; Forward Kinematics
  
  
  • Ch. 14 &emdash; Inverse Kinematics
  
  


• Part IV &emdash; Three D
  
  • Ch. 15 &emdash; A Basic 3D Engine
  
  
  • Ch. 16 &emdash; 3D Lines, Fills, Solids
  
  
  • Ch. 17 &emdash; Advanced 3D: Backface Culling and Lighting
  
  
  • Ch. 18 &emdash; Matrix Math


• Part V &emdash; Tips and Tricks
  
  • Ch. 19 &emdash; Tips and Tricks
  
  

Everything you wanted to know
I’m only on chapter 5, but this book really lays out all of the tools you need to prototype and/or develop video games in Flash. At first I was a little upset because the author seemed to skip over some elements for the beginner, or rather the rusty flash programmer, but he explains just enough so that if you want to dig into it you can. This book probably isn’t for the very beginner. You need to have had some Flash experience and/or some Flash programming experience to really get everything, but a couple of tutorials should be enough. Highly recommended.

well done
Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move! is a surprisingly well-written book. I started with Flash 3, moved to server-side languages with Flash MX, and now, years later getting back into Flash has been a journey to say the least. This book, more than the five or six others I have purchased, has made the transition fairly easy.
The author has done an excellent job in breaking down Flash math for those of us old school, tellTarget, gotoAndPlay, motion tween people. The best part of this book... the examples are error free. Which should go without saying, but in this day and age it is surprising how many tech books out there (their authors in a rush to publish) have irrelevant or incorrect example code. Highly recommended.

Easy to use and understand, even for the novice
I was tasked with producing eight Flash simulations for an engineering dynamics course this past summer. I programmed the simulations using ActionScript with algebra and calculus introduced to control the behavior of a variety of objects -- no small task if you consider that I am an English teacher and not a programmer or engineer.

By doing and redoing the problems posed by Peters, I could eventually understand them well enough to be able to program similar modules for my project. No idea seems too difficult for him to explain in a manner a beginner can understand, particularly with the working models at the FriendsofED.

I purchased nine books on the subject at the beginning of the project. I ended up using this one more than all of the others combined.

I also recommend his ActionScript 3.0. Being the same book written for two different versions of ActionScript, the two books give us a really good opportunity to compare and contrast the two languages.

Must Love Actionscript
I will atest that this is a great book IF you are an actionscript junkie, but if your not you will hate this book. I was looking for a book to help my students with thier Flash animations and this book was way beyond where I wanted to take my students.

Incredibly well written
I bought this book along w/ about 4 others that I needed. This one was the splurge... I was simply going to browse through it and see what I could pick up from it - not really thinking I could fully grasp the advanced concepts.

To my suprise, this book brought you all the way back to those good ole Trig classes and explained what you’d need to recall (or re-learn) and why. Every concept was very well explained and one concept builds upon the next.

It’s definitely no light read, but if you really do have a desire to learn, this is the book.

Indeed a great tool for making animations
I was looking for a script animation book and I finally found the one that cater to my needs.

Just what I was looking for...
I started learning Flash 8 about 6 months ago, hoping to make some physics simulation programs and games. I started out by buying Foundation Actionscript for Flash 8 and was quite disappointed to find that the subject of math was avoided at all costs. After reading 100 pages or so, I finally decided I’d just buy this book and hope I had learned enough to get me by. Now I regret not buying this in the first place.

Peters starts with the very basics of physics and takes you step by step on how to translate it into Actionscript. As it goes, it explains what the code means and how it works, making it possible to actually learn a lot about Actionscript in general. Although he explains how the physics works, he makes an effort to keep it at reasonable level and I never found myself the slightest bit bored or confused. This book teaches by example, which is the easiest way for me to learn. Nearly every major and minor topic mentioned has its own example with code in the book (which can also be downloaded off the website).

As can be seen from the table of contents, he gets into some relatively complicated topics and even in these, he does a great job of explaining how it works and how to keep your code efficient, making sure to mention any shortcuts that can make things easier.

So to sum things up
-this book is great at teaching you how to program realistic physics-based motion
-it’s amazing at explaining what each bit of code does and how it works to the extent that it can be used as a beginning guide to Actionscript in general.

Great for designers getting a bit skilled and willing to save some time
This excellent books helped me save a lot of time understanding the importance - and basics - of physics and physics-related tricks in Actionscript.

Easing, elasticity, and all the fancy stuff I’d seen on hot websites listed on theFWA and such, are now accessible to the mere designers-turned-programers. And that is just plain awesome!

A Code Warehouse but Beware....
Lots of great code and comprehensive in scope (covers lots of movement topics). However, explanations are frequently vague, ambiguous, and illustrations will frustrate rather than aid your understanding. To compound the poor illustrations and explanations, the author tries to explain, then show what he is trying to prove with flash demonstrations. This book would have been far more valuable, possibly 5 stars, had the author spent more time on instruction.

A Moving Thing, Really
This is my favorite Flash book! Every time I open it I learn something new and get to the root of what I’m trying to do: make things move with code. The programming concepts are explained perfectly in chunks that keep you moving along, while still explaining each step. Each bit of code, usually no mopre than a function, could be expanded and used in a class context.

Without getting to deely all the gorey physics and maths this book still allows you to harness the power of the complex to create life-like animations. It explains the principles of control for the developer/animator. Concepts such as gravity, collision detection, matrices, and even some 3D are explained in a practical accessible way that allows the reader to apply them right away. Each concept is illustrated with an animation or aspect of control.

The tone of the book is refreshingly down to earth. No silly comments or attempts at humour. Plain-spoken experienced voice sharing useful ways to work with ActionScript. Just good writing and a veritable treasure trove of knowledge and information - phew! Like an ice-cold beverage on a hot day! (I am not one of those plain-spoken knowledgeable types, you see.)

The flowcharts and diagrams are well-designed and effective. And combine with the explanations of code to make a truly effective book. Big bang for your buck. I also found the summaries at the end of each chapter well-written.

If you want to control your animation with code, get this book. Read this book. Use this book.

This Book is Hardly Useful in Practice
The only part I like about this book is the description of Flash coordinate system. From chapter to chapter, there is nothing in it but a red little ball moving around. I am not sure what is the point.

An Important book to learn Actionscript with
As in all the books friends of Ed published, I found Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move to be one of the most informative books in my library. There is enough of a learning curve to keep the reader challenged. Yet, the book does not go too far over the student’s head. This book gives clear lessons on how to become a competent ActionScriptor. I would recommend this book to anyone in the interactive design world.

The missing link in Actionscript education
(This review is of the digital download version) If you have Actionscript OPP down but still struggle with programming the animation "guts" of your classes, this book is for you. It’s nice to see someone finally dedicate an entire book to the coding of what makes Flash so special... animation.

The Most Comfortable Read to Learn Actionscript
Great learning tool for designers new to Flash to learn the basics of Actionscript. Although it is a great book, this primarily covers the Actionscript 2.0 syntax. Use this book to learn the basics, then dive right into an advanced Actionscript 3.0 book to avoid picking up bad habits from the liberal 2.0 syntax.

Makes Flash’s quirks understandable in ways other books just don’t address
I wish I had this book a year ago. I spent countless hours fussing over a project that used interactive motion. This books explains in the first 50 pages stuff that would have been very useful in solving my application problems. It’s easier to understand than other titles like Flash Games Demystified, or that book on Flash object simulations, etc. This book should be read before tackling the other ones or even bothering with the lynda.com online actioscript series.

The author does a real good job of not jumping around too quickly, establishing the basic concepts of Flash actionscript’s gotchas before delving too deeply into showy tricks. Very unlike Joey Lott, who is a little more schzoid in the lynda [...] series, and often more showy, missing important concepts that need to be understood before moving on.

If you want movieclips to move and interact programmatically in your Flash, get this and read it. It is the best thing out there.

One of the best Actionscript books on the market
This is an excellent book. it takes you step by step with easy to understand language.
The lessons in this book are great and will add to anyones Flash Arsenal.
The is one of the best actionscript books I have read, I would give it 6 stars if I could.

Physics Made Easy For Artists
This is the best computer graphics book I’ve ever read! It gives you just the amount of information you need to start making things move right away. Not too much theory, but enough for it to make sense. It cuts to the chase, gives you the bottom line, and each chapter even has a list of formulas at the end for easy reference.

All of the formulas are developed in easy to digest chunks, with a piece of sample code for each step. So you decide how much detail you want to go into, just the basics or simulating 3D rendering. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more on that, but perhaps that’s another book.

The theory and formuals in this book are not just for Flash but can be used in any system that has a scripting language. It does clarify some issues that are particular to Flash, and those issues are definately worthwhile understanding, but this book can also be used as a general reference book for computer graphics formulas for animation. If you have any interest in procedural animation, this is a must buy.

Actionscript Animation
Great book, with a lot of information, well explained, keeping all simple, but not for newbies.

Hands down, the BEST ActionScript animation book ever.
My jaw dropped when I started reading this book. I write ActionScript code almost every day for various animation effects, but I often run into situations where I need to figure out some sort of trigonometric problem and my logic is a bit fuzzy. This book made the solutions not only clear, but simple and fun. It opened up a world of possibilities. And just to be clear, this book addresses FAR more than trigonometry and how it relates to ActionScript animation. It’s a must-read for any intermediate or advanced ActionScripter (beginners might struggle a bit).

Excellent!
This is an excellent book! It walks the reader through the fundamental workings of Flash, important animation concepts such as trigonometry and physics, and then ties all the information together with examples. The book is well thought out and very comprehensive. A great book on learning how to make things move in flash!

great book.easy to read.fun to learn.
This is one of the best actionscript so far.

great book.easy to read.fun to learn.
This is one of the best actionscript book so far.

great book.easy to read.fun to learn.
This is one of the best actionscript book so far. A book must have for 2d adn 3d animation artist.

VERY Useable
The style, organization and layout all make this book really accessible, easy to read and use by both novice and expert-level A/S writers. It breaks down some pretty complex physics into understandable descriptions -- rather than a bunch of tech-talk -- and straightforward code that I could figure out and apply without sweat. No "headscratching" and/or deep thought required. I like that!

Amazing !!
I have been studying Flash for years and in one week this book opened my eyes to such amazing things. If you are going to use flash 8 buy this book !!

estudioworks ( Flashkit Moderator ) AKA FlashMechanic

Fantastic Book
This isn’t just a great Flash book; it’s a great read, too. The author claims this in the beginning even! It breaks down scary concepts like trigonometry, velocity, friction, and kinetics to really understandable language followed by some good best-practice AS2 code examples. This is not a reference book like ASDG, but it could be used that way if you want a good understandable source for animation/trig formulas missing from almost all books I’ve seen. I like how Keith is nice and humble and seems first to admit he wasn’t all that good in math and still can figure this stuff out like the pro he is.

A Diamond Sparkling in the Sand
This book has been my constant companion ever since I got it. The power that comes with the knowledge passed thru these pages is a gift with boundless potential and the true beauty is that any flash user of any level can pick up this book and learn something from it. That means novice to advanced level flash users will benefit from reading this book.

Keith Peters shows he has respect for the learning process and wants you to learn rather than just copy & paste. He gears his book toward making a sincere effort to help you understand what you are doing, consequently you are learning the concept and reasoning behind the actionscript. I thought he did a good job explaining the syntax used. Novice users should know these are extremely complex concepts presented here starting at beginner level working all the way up to advanced so hang on and hang in.
My only complaint is
{Written in true programmer stlyle}
you won’t find much humor or philosophy injected into this one, the narrative is very straight, one can only take just the facts page after page for so long,
"However if you are addicted to trig can’t get enough, you can skip to chap 14"
ahh more humor like that, please.
Be that as it may, as you read the book and work the code, its the animatons and the magic created by actionscript that keeps you hooked, wanting more.
Basically what we have here is a book gently guiding you into using trigonometry and physics in your actionscript to control animation AKA: Math based Flash.

If this is not your cup of tea then sit back and watch while the readers of this book create
as no doubt the some of the most fascinating things you will ever see on screen will have been created by those who have read this book.
I’m giving it 5 stars for breadth of coverage, depth of content.

Great book but explains mainly "how" and not "why"
Another great book from friendsofED. I would rate this book higher but I think it should not only explain "how" to write code that makes things move, rotate, swing, spring etc.. Although some parts of the book explain math and physics "behind" all that, I think it’s not enough, especially for those who have never studied math and physics. There should be more explanations, formulas and illustrations that help you understand "why". Anyway it’s a great book and it’s definitely worth buying.

In depth, clearly written introduction to a specific area of ActionScript programming
Summary
Although the book has a few shortcomings (at least in my opinion) which will require the reader to have a solid grounding in ActionScript 2.0 syntax in order to make the best use of it, overall I think it is a very well-written, easy to understand and thorough guide to the subject of ActionScript animation. Considering it comes from a Flash developer who is one of the most well-known for this type of work, I think it is a great book to have if you are interested in learning more about that subject.

What I liked best

This book is well-written in terms of the sequence and clarity of the examples. He starts out explaining the basic principles (mostly trigonometry formulas) which underly the different animation behaviors. For the most part this is done in a clear, easy to understand way, even if you haven’t studied math for several years (like me) -- all his examples are of common uses of the formula in ActionScript, and he’s quick to point out which formulas you’ll use all the time and which ones you’ll use less frequently.

I also found the way he ordered the content, and the examples within each section, to be particularly helpful. Most topics build on the previous one, with clear and obvious connections between them.

Room for improvement

No book is perfect, of course, as any author will likely admit. These are the most noteworthy problems I found with this book. But let me say up front that I think the book is well-written enough and in-depth enough that it is worth owning in spite of these specific shortcomings:

- Narrow example domain

I can’t complain too much about this one, but the examples both in code and in concepts in the book are almost entirely focused on creating video games in Flash. However, I think it’s much more common to use these techniques for other things like user interface effects, something which (as far as I remember) wasn’t even mentioned in the book.

- Unnecessary basic concepts

In the introductory portions of the book, Keith faces the typical book-author dilemma of "what should I assume is the prior knowledge of the reader." The book includes a couple of sections introducing basic ActionScript concepts such as functions and event handlers. However, I think those sections are ones he should have just left out completely -- the quick summary treatment isn’t enough to really teach those concepts well if somebody doesn’t already have experience with them, and it’s just annoying filler for the reader who does already know what those things are.

- ActionScript version confusion

One of the stated goals of the way the code is written is that "it will work in ActionScript 2.0, and with few or no changes it will work in ActionScript 1 also." I disagree with this choice; I think at this point (two and a half years after the introduction of AS2, with ActionScript 3 already in the public eye) I don’t think there’s a very good reason to cater to the ActionScript 1 audience. I think it would have been better to just write the examples in pure AS2, and let people who need the code in AS1 work out the differences, especially since teaching AS1 isn’t a stated goal of the book.

simple steps, astounding outcomes
Flash is never funner than when you get to use math to move stuff around.

If only Flash had been around when I was in high school! Fooling around with scripted animations--seeing the results, right here, right now, often with a surprise ending--has made me love math, which would have been unthinkable back then.

Problem is, I don’t get to experiment with Flash math continuously, and the truth is, all the unrelated hacks I’ve used over time tend to get lost.

I had already looked into most of the material in this book--3d, easing, billiard balls--but I bought it because it looked like an accessible reference book.

Well...I spend all weekend reading it. Here are some new things I learned: springing is just easing applied to velocity instead of position, Flash ignores a pixel value below 1/20, 3d matrixes can be slow...

What excited me even more was the way the way all the old hacks come back to me and begin to hang together in a stronger, more flexible knit.

It’s hard to describe how effectively the book is structured. If you’ve followed Keith Peters’ web lab, you know he works by iteration, taking one thing, changing it a little, hooking it to another thing. He takes the same modular approach in the book; every step is clear, and builds on the last step in practical, albeit often surprising fashion.

This is a textbook from the future--where students will be introduced to difficult subject by fellow experimenters who get them involved immediately. Dudes like Peters.

My only gripe is with two short sections: one on the law of cosines, and one on 3d lighting. Both are necessary, but involve perplexing math. I think what would have gotten me over the hump in these sectios is more graphs, with more and better annotations on them. (The graphs are weak thoughout.)

Great Book , but not so much for a novice.
I read the back thinking that this would be okay for a novice as it reassured me that "there’s no need to worry, even if you’re a relative newcomer to programming...." But having little programming background myself, I found some of the explanations hard to follow.

The examples are great though. This would be a great book if I had some programming knowledge under my belt, but the book should preface that it would be advatageous to have some previous actionscript knowledge.

If you aspire to be great at Flash, buy this book. Now!
Keith Peters does an outstanding job with this book and topic. It isn’t just about animating with actionscript, it is about learning actionscript. He introduces theory, good practice techniques, and touches on all areas of actionscript that every flash developer should know. One of the best things about this book is the high level material is presented in a manner understandable by flash newcomers as well as long-time developers looking to expand their knowledge base. This book will inspire you to experiment with flash and, in turn, will make you a better developer. I recommend this book to all who work with flash. You can’t invest a better 25$ anywhere. (Well, maybe Apple)

An Indispensable Tome
I’ve been working in Flash and Actionscript since 2001. If I’d had this book when I was starting out it would have saved me countless hours of research and experimentation. Foundation Actionscript Animation is stuffed to the gills with useful programming techniques, yet is also very readable and concise.

Unlike so many authors, Keith Peters is not out to impress us with his cleverness and intellect. His main purpose is to share a wealth of practical knowledge that he’s been building up over the years in a practical way. You won’t find any cartoons or jokes in this book. Nor will you find digressions and distracting sidebars. Though it covers a number of complex topics in Math and Physics, it does not read like a textbook -- the author strives to explain only what is necessary to get things working.

Sometimes he is downright apologetic when he has to cover a difficult subject. At the start of the chapter on Momentum, he writes "I have reached a point where I just can’t ignore mass any longer. Mass is just so tied up in the subject of momentum that I’m just going to have to confront it head on." If anything, this constant apologizing becomes a bit tiresome!

Flash has been an evolving platform over the years, and Actionscript Animation does an admirable job putting everything into a helpful historical perspective, showing how things have changed from Flash 5 to Flash 8. Chapter 2, is such a perfect overview of common techniques for building Flash applications that I have recommended it to some co-workers who are programmers, but who haven’t had experience with Flash. The Flash 8 examples are usually in their own section of a chapter, and can be ignored if you’re working with an older version.

I recommend this book even to veteran Actionscripters. Though this is not an OOP book, most of the examples are only about a function or two long, so you can easily convert them into methods for your classes. Furthermore, even topics you are comfortable with can worth reading about because Peters may surprise you with a new way to do something. For example, after covering the basics of Trigonometry, he immediately provides a number of useful examples of pulsing and elliptical motion that can be achieved with trig functions, including an interesting example that applies the function to the scale of a movie clip to create a pulsing effect.

The final chapters of the book cover basic 3D animation techniques. While I didn’t feel ready to build the next Quake, I was grateful for the author’s gentle introduction to a topic that is often presented in a very confusing way. When I was done, felt prepared to tackle a more difficult book on 3D graphics.

Though it’s not designed to be a reference book, Foundation Actionscript Animation will certainly find a home near my computer. And next time I’m creating an SWF that involves collision detection, gravity or matrices, this is the first place I’ll go for a refresher.

The Best Programming Book i’ve Ever Read
This book teaches everything you’ll want to know to make not just great animations in actionscript but also all the essentials on game programming too. The author leaves nothing behind in the explanations of the code, i have never been good at maths but now i am comfortable with trigonometry, vector operations, and loads of physics. My study has got stacks of books on game developement but this is the first book i’ve read from cover to cover. I dont like writing such an unbalanced review of any book but i haven’t a got bad word to say about it.

Excellent animation tutorial for the ActionScript enthusiast
Being an old-fashioned programmer, I generally avoid script languages and try to do everything in traditional programming languages with one exception - ActionScript. From my first introduction to the language I’ve been hooked by its combination of power and simplicity. If you already have an intermediate grasp of ActionScript and want to learn how to make realistic animations using this language, this is the book for you. This book was written for someone familiar with ActionScript to some degree but with little knowledge of math or physics. As a matter of fact, if you are a mathematician or physicist, you probably will not truly appreciate this book due to its accessible style. This book is NOT about controlling tweens and simple animations. Instead, each chapter lays out the rules of physics, trigonometry, matrix algebra, vectors, and 3D mathematics very plainly and clearly while applying it to an animation problem. Part four of the book takes the principles you learned in the first three parts of the book and applies it to 3D animation. Each chapter intersperses code with equations and explanatory diagrams, and then at the end usually summarizes key algorithms in numbered steps. This book has a simply excellent treatment of both forward and inverse kinematics to the point that I would recommend its tutorials to robotics students that are having a hard time finding anything readable on the subject. If you don’t think your ActionScript skills are up to the challenge of this book, might I recommend the excellent "Essential ActionScript 2.0" by Moock. If you don’t know ActionScript, you will by the time you finish that book.

Scripts and theory for the interaction designer, game programmer, experience and user interface developer
I found this book to be an excellent collection of scripts and theory for the interaction designer, game programmer, experience and user interface developer. The book covers ActionScript basics, OOP and best coding practices, classes, new Flash 8 features, lots of trig, and physics formulas for velocity, acceleration, friction and gravity. I would actually highly recommend this book to any designer who is thinking about picking up ActionScript. The coding practices and sample code will immediately spark your imagination, while setting you on the right track as to how to think about programming and structuring your code. You’ll get instant gratification from learning how to build very interactive widgets quickly, while also enhancing your code libraries.

If you are a seasoned ActionScripter but never experimented with particles, collision detection, IK or 3D there are plenty of advanced scripts and theory for you as well. I was happy to see coverage of matrix math and the matrix class, considering their usage in Flash 8

Overall a great compilation of code and theory. It’s complete, well written and for Flash 8!