Best Design Options

If you want to learn some animation techniques using Adobe Flash, there are a lot of websites that offer free Flash animation tutorials. Most of these websites also provide the Flash (.fla) source file of the tutorials so you can dissect how the flash movie or certain effects were done. For me, the most effective way to learn a new design method is to look at how others do it. If you are not sure for example how to create a blur effect in a Flash photo gallery, then you can download some Flash files from one of the websites below and study or play with them to learn how these effects were done. Or, better yet, open the file in your Adobe Flash programs and recreate the effect by following the step by step tutorial provided in the site.

Here, I am going to list some of the most useful sites for learning Adobe Flash:

1) Flashkit – Flash Animation tutorials

Flashkit has a huge collection of Flash animation tutorials categorized into flash ecards, intros, banners, vector animations, rotating cubes, anime, games as well as full flash applications including guestbooks, chat rooms, calendars and much more. All of these tutorials come with downloadable FLAs.

Flash Animation tutorials

2) Pixel2Life – Flash Animation tutorials

This site offers hundreds of useful tutorials for learning adobe Flash, from the most basic animation techniques to building an entire website or application using Adobe Flash. Among the popular Flash animation tutorials from the site are on how to create firing bullet effects, creating a Flash website intro, random actionscript movements, super mario sprite character, and many more. Most of the tutorials that you can find here come with downloadable file that you can customize and experiment with.

Flash Animation tutorials

3) Entheos – Flash Animation tutorials

Aside from providing website templates, Entheos also have a rich archive of useful Flash animation tutorials. The tutorials that you can find in this site cover the basics of Flash animation and Flash actionscripting. Check out this site to learn cool Flash effects and basic Flash concepts. However, please note that you need to have Flash Player 7.0 or higher installed to view the Flash animation and Flash MX 2004 or higher to be able to open the .fla file that you can download.

Flash Animation tutorials

4) ToxicLab – Flash Animation tutorials

ToxicLab offers more than 800 Flash tutorials ranging from the most basic animation techniques to the most complicated Flash applications using Action Scripts. Among the popular tutorials from this site include tutorial on how to create rollover button, editing, adding and removing timeline effects and matrix effects, among others.

Flash Animation tutorials

5) Lashf.com – Flash Animation tutorials

Lashf.com is a place where you can find Flash tutorials and Actionscript snippets. New tutorials are being added weekly so be sure to include this site in your bookmarks.

Flash Animation tutorials

6) Internet Cross – Flash Animation tutorials

Another useful Flash tutorial site where you can also download loads of FLA files is Internet Cross. This is a good site for learning the basic functions and effects that you can do using Adobe Flash. Examples of the FLA files that you can download include templates for creating forms, clocks, passwords, loading jpg images and many more.

Flash Animation tutorials

7) Flash Advisor -Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Advisor is a dedicated flash resource site since 2002. The site offers not only good tutorials but downloadable Flash file templates that you can experiment with and customize.Among the top tutorials in this site include tutorial on creating dynamic photo gallery, smoke text effect, scrolling menu and submenu and many more.

Flash Animation tutorials

FlashVault – Flash Animation tutorials

A collection of Flash tutorials with accompanying FLA files that you can download for free. The tutorials in this site range from basic to advanced  techniques in Adobe Flash. Among the top downloads from this site include the advanced full flash site, water effects, high tech city animation, special feature effect and many more.

Flash Animation tutorials

9) The Flash Blog – Flash Animation tutorials

Offers tutorials about almost everything about Flash. Authored by Lee Brimelow who is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe focusing on the Flash, Flex, and AIR developer communities, this site lists hundreds of useful tutorial for people who have basic Flash skills as well as for those who are already advanced users or Flash developers.

Flash Animation tutorials

10) Layers Magazine – Flash Animation tutorials

Lots of useful Flash tutorial can also be found on this site. Among the tutorials found here include creating classic 3D effect, audio visualization and masks, vanishing point, rotation in Flash, etc. Most of the tutorial come with an FLA file so you can study how certain effects were created. Some of the tutorials are also in video form so be sure you have the latest Flash player (which is a freeware) installed in your machine.

Flash Animation tutorials

11) Flasmo.com – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials

12) Flash Fridge

Flash Animation tutorials

13) Flash Game Design – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials

14) gotoAndLearn() – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials

15) Flash Perfection

Flash Animation tutorials

16) Adobe Developer Connection – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials

17) Tutorial 5 – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials

18) Deviantart – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials

18) Taengo Media Concept – Flash Animation tutorials

Flash Animation tutorials