Flash

[gkd_uk]

Hi

I want to learn more about working with flash. I have a friend who would like a website for a car hire company. He would like his homepage to start with a bit of flash (moving cars etc)

Is flash the best software to use for this type of design?

I have flash installed but would like to learn a bit more about it.

Can you recommend a good book or even website that will get me started?

Thanks

[melkior_inactive]

Well, I've worked in Flash but never anything serious. I just never had the need for it.
One of my friends does miracles with Flash, but he does it just for himself. His interest in Flash is only academic.

It all depends on how much flash you want to use. If it's going to be a simple animation on the homepage than you could use SWiSH (http://www.swishzone.com/index.php).
Since you were talking about cars that could present a few problems.
If you're going to draw them yourself you need the knowledge of drawing and animation.
If you're going to use real car pictures things get a lot more complicated. Flash works great with vector drawings but using bitmaps is a lot harder. Effects on bitmaps are harder to create. I've seen some fabulous designs with bitmaps but all of them were using Flash accompanied with Adobe After Effects (which are really expensive). After Effects were designed to create effects on movies and they work well with Flash but they also involve learning new things.

[gkd_uk]

Thanks for the great info Melkior

[melkior_inactive]

No probs gkd!
If you settle on Flash and choose the basic concept of the page you can post here and I can ask my friend for some tips and I'll post them here.
(I'd invite him here but he's really not keen on forums.)

[gkd_uk]

Thanks Melkior
I think I will be working with basic Flash.

My friend did mention that he had seen a car hire site that he really liked and wanted something similar. I will post the site here as soon as I have it and then we will be able to discuss further.

Really appreciate your help Melkior

[gkd_uk]

Sorry for the delay, but here is the site, i was on about:

oandk-pd.com

Thanks