Flash has evolved into an excellent tool for creating innovative vector graphics and animations for the Web, due mainly to its easy-to-use features, high-quality output, and relatively low cost. But Flash is also a perfect illustration tool. Why hassle with creating your illustrations in one tool and then exporting them when you don’t have to? Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 provides in-depth methods for mastering the truly jaw-dropping illustration possibilities you can achieve with Flash. The book is written to teach new and experienced users how to use Flash as your illustration tool of choice. It provides innovative techniques and solutions for using the drawing tools in Flash from an artist’s perspective, and it teaches you the methods needed for making beautiful, effective illustrations, whether you are naturally artistic or not. This new edition has been completely updated to cover the latest advances in Flash, provide new techniques and solutions, and to teach you the entire process for creating vector illustrations using step-by-step tutorials. Beginning with a tour of the basics of illustration concepts, techniques, and approaches, you’ll progress to learning about design techniques for logos, interfaces, and content layout, as well as animation and texture techniques. You’ll also discover how to use Flash to draw in a variety of different styles?cartoon, anime, and photorealistic, and you?ll finish up with advanced tutorials for layering multiple textures, using filters for blur effects, and using linear gradients to create a wrinkle effect. If you want to learn how to use Flash as your illustration tool, this is the one resource you need.

Flash has evolved into the perfect tool to create innovative vector graphics and animation for the Web, due mainly to its simple-to-use features, high-quality output, and relatively low cost. Illustrating With Macromedia Flash Professional 8 is completely updated and provides users with the entire process for creating vector illustrations in Flash using step-by-step tutorials. Beginning with a tour of the basics, including learning to use Flash?s drawing tools to create impressive effects and professional interfaces, the book then progresses to using Flash to draw in a variety of different styles?cartoon, anime, and photo-realistic. The book concludes by teaching users how to create a photorealistic optimized vector graphic in Flash that takes up a very small amount of file space. This is the one guide users need to master Flash illustration techniques.

Curse you, Charles River Media!!!
I’m not a fan of Charles River Media’s books. They don’t have color illustrations, aren’t well proofread and just generally seem cheaply put together.

Despite all that, Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 is a must-have book for anyone using Flash. Firebaugh’s use of Flash as an illustration tool is mind blowing, using simple vector tools to create photo-realistic images.

The problems of being published by CRM are evident though. The black & white pictures make it hard to judge what’s going on and there are a few confusing typos and mis-wordings. (he often says "delete" when he really means "cut") You end up stuck having to have the FLA files right in front of you while you read. It’s a good way to learn, but rather inconvenient.

I don’t want to come off as down on this book just because I don’t like the publisher. There’s tons of great learning in this book. The source files are set up so you can poke through each step and see how things are put together. Also there are exercises at the end of each chapter to practice what you’ve learned.

All in all, Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 puts you on the path the to do things with Flash you never thought were possible.

Second Edition to Use Flash 8 Features
Micromedia Flash, now part of the Adobe family, has long been thought of as an annimation tool for web sites. This book stresses that Flash is also capable of producing high-quality photorealistic illustrations. To get the most out of the book you should have some experience with Flash. As such, I consider it an intermediate level book.

This is the second edition of this book, with the new edition focusing on more advanced illustrating projects, covering the new features built into Flash Professional 8, and covering points discovered since the first edition appeared.

The format of the book is basically a tutorial. It starts with simple line art, like you might use to illustrate assembly instructions for a bookcase. From there it goes on to more complex items eventually getting up to what the author calls ’photorealistic.’ The images are close to photo quality. As some of these illustrations are quite complex, they are included on a CD supplied with the book.

Using Flash as the way to generate illustrations increases the utility of the program, their data storage formats are smaller than those of many other programs, and of course animation is available.