Flash Math Creativity

Front Cover

The seminal book, Flash Math Creativity, completely revised for Flash MX 2004 and ActionScript 2.0!

Macromedia Flash is the industry standard design tool for digital design and web programming. With the release of Flash MX 2004 and its accompanying built-in language ActionScript 2.0, Macromedia yet again upped the standard for creating immersive digital experiences.

This book revolves around Flash and math. It’s what you do in your spare time: just take little ideas and mess around with them. This is a book of inspiration, beautiful enough to leave on the coffee table, but addictive enough to keep by your computer and sneak out while no-one’s looking so you can go back to that movie that you were tinkering with 'til 3 o’clock this morning. It’s a fun book!

Flash Math Creativity is a book of iterative experiments generative design. It’s a showcase of the 15 authors’ experiments. The book will explain how these work and how you to can experiment further yourself. Each author does four experiments; each experiment takes up four pages. We give you the code and explain the essence, then you take away your inspiration and run with it. The purpose of the book is to learn through experimentation because you are inspired to do so, not because someone is telling you to do so.

About the author (2004)

Kip Parker is a resident of London, born on 31 January 1973. Having previously worked as a van driver, nanny, ice cream seller, sandwich maker and band manager, in 1997 he answered an ad that asked "Do you want to be a web designer?" Kip works through his own company, Hi-Rise, and in collaboration with Anthony Burrill as friendchip. friendchip's first commercial job was for German electronic band Kraftwerk, and has gone on to work largely with bands and music companies. Projects include ongoing work for 13amp.tv, and a new site for Bjork (littleibooks.com). As Hi-Rise, Kip works with airside on a multi-player game for 23rdfloor.com.

Brandon Williams is a senior at Spring Woods High School in Houston, Texas, with many years of mathematics and computer science studies under his belt. His mathematics focus has been single and multivariable calculus, real analysis, linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, elementary combinatorics, and number theory. His computer science experience is based on programming design, object-oriented programming, and problem solving. His goal is to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics. In his spare time, he helps run the math forum at Were-Here under the name of ahab, and works for Eyeland Studios as a games programmer.

Jared Tarbell was born in 1973 to William and Suzon Davis Tarbell in the high-altitude desert city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. First introduced to personal computers in 1987, Jared's interest in computation has grown in direct proportion to the processing power of these machines. Jared holds a bachelor of science degree in computer science from New Mexico State University. He sits on the board of the Austin Museum of Digital Art, where he helps promote and encourage appreciation of the arts within the global community. Jared is most interested in the visualization of large data sets, and the emergent, lifelike properties of complex computational systems. Jared has recently returned to Albuquerque to work closer to friends and family while enjoying the unique aspects of desert living. Additional work from Jared Tarbell can be found at levitated.net and complexification.net.

Manny Tan works for a design shop called The Fin Company in New York. In his spare time, he updates his sites, www.uncontrol.com and www.66mph.com. Both deal with programmatic movement in Flash. Uncontrol is the place for Manny to experiment with motion and behaviors through code, while 66mph is where he does his more "arty-farty" stuff. Manny has been published in several books, like New Masters of Flash, 72 DPI, and Young Guns NYC III, and has exhibited works at OFFF in Barcelona and ADC in New York. He was involved in the biennial at Tirana and was exhibited at the Deitch Gallery in New York City. When he's not doing Flash stuff, Manny builds Bandai models, mountain bikes, and grows herbal plants on his windowsill.

Glen Rhodes started his mind going early in life, when he was about 4 years old. At that age, Glen began playing the piano, which was sitting unused in his family's house. He's been playing ever since. Later, in 1997, Glen co-wrote a full-length musical called Chrystanthia. Somewhere along the way, he picked up game programming as a hobby, and eventually ended up making games professionally for home console systems. Then, in 1998, Glen discovered how he could take all my experiences and combine them, when he discovered Flash. The rest is history. Glen shares his ideas on his website, GlenRhodes.com.

Keith Peters lives in the vicinity of Boston with his wife, Kazumi, and their daughter, Kristine. He has been working with Flash since 1999, and has co-authored many books for friends of ED, including Flash MX Studio, Flash MX Most Wanted, and the ground-breaking Flash Math Creativity. In 2001, he started the experimental Flash site, BIT-101 (BIT-101.com), which strives for a new, cutting edge, open-source experiment each day. The site won an award at the Flashforward 2003 Flash Film Festival in the Experimental category. In addition to the experiments on the site, there are several highly regarded Flash tutorials which have been translated into many languages and are now posted on web sites throughout the world. Keith is currently working full time doing freelance and contract Flash development and various writing projects.

Connor McDonald has worked with Oracle since the early 1990s, cutting his teeth on Oracle versions 6.0.36 and 7.0.12. Over the past 11 years, Connor has worked with systems in Australia, the U.K., southeast Asia, western Europe, and the United States. He has come to realize that although the systems and methodologies around the world are very diverse, there tend to be two common themes in the development of systems running on Oracle: either to steer away from the Oracle-specific functions or to use them in a haphazard or less-than-optimal fashion. It was this observation that led to the creation of a personal hints and tips website (http://www.OracleDBA.co.uk) and more, presenting on the Oracle speaker circuit in an endeavor to improve the perception and usage of PL/SQL in the industry.

Ty Lettau is a partner at the Fourm Design Studio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He created Fourm with JD Hooge, Craig Kroeger and Erik Natzke. Ty's personal site, Sound of Design, explores and experiments with the possibilities of interactive media. He also teaches part-time at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Ty has created projects for Vector Lounge and Born Magazine.

[Bio updated October 2008] Paul Prudence's current work can be found at transphormetic.com. Paul is an artist and real-time visual performer working with computational and visual feedback systems and video. He uses VVVV, Flash & processed digital video. He's also a lecturer on visual music and syneasthetic art. Paul is a researcher and writer at Dataisnature.

After graduating from design school in 2000, JD Hooge started the Fourm Design Studio with three close friends. Since then, he's been dedicated to educating and inspiring audiences through interactive experiences. JD is constantly learning, probing and absorbing information and insight to bring into his own work. Above all, he enjoys solving problems, whether working with a client or on a side project. In his spare time, he has worked on several time-consuming projects such as infourm.com, gridplane.com, miniml.com, and collaborated on installations for a conceptual art gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

First, David Hirmes wanted to be a fireman, then an astronaut, then a car mechanic, then an architect. Then, he wanted to make dioramas for the Museum of Natural History. Then he wanted to be a rock star, then a writer, a 3D animator, a carpenter, and then a writer again. For a while, all he wanted to do was ride the F train drinking Tecate from a can. Then he wanted to be a web designer, then an artist, then a roof gardener. Now, he's back to fireman.

Ken Jokol is not American and doesn't live in London. He just works in the U.K. as a web developer for cash. Ken's site for this week is pinderkaas.com, and this is his life so far: Acorn Electron, BBC Micro Model B, Spectrum 48k, ZX Spectrum +, Dragon 16k, Atari ST 520, Amiga 1200, 286, 386SX 25Mhz, 386DX, Pentium 166 Mhz, iMac 400, Power Mac G4 450 Mhz. Ken's ambitions were to be a palaeontologist, or a milkman (so he could sit at home, eat fish fingers, and watch Moonlighting). One day, he will learn how to tune his guitar.

Born in 1979, Pavel Kaluzhny has had many achievements. He graduated from Moscow State University's department of computer science, where he researched methods of texture compression. Pavel is interested in computer graphics, image processing, 3D visualization and so on. He also likes playing computer games and creating them. His currently work is associated with Macromedia Flash; sometimes, he thinks that it's the greatest software for development.

Gabriel Mulzer was born last century in southern Germany and lives in Berlin. He works as a freelance media/motion designer; this means working a lot with Flash and on concepts. He lectures on occasion and also writes sometimes, too.