Book excerpt: Learn how to bridge the gap between the traditional animation principles and digital software. Tradigital Flash: 12 Principles of Animation in Adobe Flash brings the essentials of traditional animation and Adobe Flash together. The early masters of animationcreated a list of 12 principles which are important for anyone who wants to create interesting and believable animation. Digital animation continues to make incredible technological advancements that give animators the capability to produce visually stunning work. New technology, however, also has a tendency to create an environment where animators are so focused on adapting to the new workflow that they tend to dismiss these fundamental animation principles... which often leads to poor and lifeless character animation. Tradigital Flash helps you focus on these principles while using the program’s wide array of features to create believable animation, consistently. Tradigital Flash joins three other Tradigital books covering Maya, Blender, and 3ds Max. This new volume in the series approaches the topic in a different way, giving readers both a practical look at the software, and providing a theoretical understanding of the genre. ? Learn a new principle in each chapter, the Flash tools most related to it and how to put it all together. A plethora of examples demonstrate the good methods which animators should use in Flash, how to avoid the bad ones and ways to create a workflow that works for you. An easy-to-follow approach with examples throughout the book that build on each other, showing how the principles act together. A companion website www.rubberonion.com/tradigital-animate features more examples, downloadable FLA resource files, video tutorials.