Resources Exploration: Flash, Game Development, Sound, and More

I chose 4 websites for my resources exploration.

The first site I chose to explore is “gotoAndLearn.” This site is so great. It is full of tutorials of all kinds teaching different approaches and uses for Flash. The entire menu of tutorials is presented as a neat full-page palette of uniform size graphic buttons. And the menu includes tutorials for Flash, HTML5 and Game Development. Just about everything on this site is new information to me. I think the only thing I ever did here was green screening. It’s amazing that such a well-organized palette of tutorials is free. I liked that they include a lot of flash alternatives for mobile like Air and Animating with JavaScript.

The second site in my exploration is Kirupa.  Kirupa has a dedicated section to only Flash and ActionScript tutorials. Kirupa tutorials page is set up like a long-paged blog with links to the courses. There are no cool graphics at all on this page, but the simplicity in presenting the tutorials is so well-organized that its easy to make choices to get the help you need fast. Kirupa tutorials include Flash and ActionScript courses in the following: Basics/Animation, Drawing and Design, Common Tasks, ActionScript Basics, External Tasks, Special Effects, Isometry and Game Development.

The next website in my exploration is Shockwave Sound. Shockwave is not a Flash specific resource, but rather it is a resource for some of the best royalty free music, sound effects and voiceovers for very reasonable prices. There are many sites that offer these services, but I have not found any that offer the professionalism, variety and pricing combination that Shockwave offers.

My final resource is “Flash Perfection.” Flash Perfection is display as a simple page-long menu of options. The free tutorials are all based on Flash and the list runs down the left side. However, this site also includes other resources like templates, flash website creation tips, flash content management, photoshop tutorials, free layouts and even links to graphic design jobs. Flash Perfection also allows user generated content,which gives users the opportunity to submit tutorials.