Flash

While we're talking about The Child -

Little Miss OCD spends the majority of her time either glued to the TV talking loudly (and thus not noticing what happens on TV, which drives me insane), or drawing in her drawing books. She does the same picture endlessly (every few years she changes what the picture is) and sometimes does really bizarre graphic novels too, the weirdest of which was when the guy nailed to the cross because he was a robber who turned himself in was so sexy all the ladies wanted to marry him and loved him and have babies with him and then all the babies got bombs and blew up all the ladies and they became zombies and still wanted to marry the man nailed to the cross ... :eek:

But I digress.

She's recently discovered Movie Maker, and has been obsessively doing what she did in her drawing books as movies. When she's in obsesive mode she doesn't talk loudly and continuously so I'd like to encourage this As Much As Possible, mainly because silence is quite rare in this house. Before she clogs the hard drive totally with .wmv's, has anyone used Flash? Being able to use Flash strikes me as a bit more of a long term marketable skill than using Movie Maker, and the end result is probably going to look better too. And you don't have to manually draw every frame of the movie raster-style in Paint.

How hard is it to make Flash movies these days? Is the software expensive? We have a midi compatible keyboard here to make music to put in Flash thingies and a microphone to record stupid voices. Birthday season is almost upon us so I'm thinking a full-on make-flash-movies setup would be a good birthday present. The big question is - is the Flash software simple enough for a bizarre but smart 9yo to use?
 
Once we've paid the last few $1000 on our fees money isn't really an issue - I'm aware its a commercial package - its more the ease of use of the software I'm after. If you need a programming degree and 5 years multimedia experience to get going, its not worth looking into.
 
you can download a free demo version to have a go with, i think to buy it legally is quite expensive in the range of $700. There are plenty of sources to get this type of program for much less available though
 
Hi RElf,

Not sure if this has the capabilities you are after as it's not really up to making movies, more for banners and fade in fade out type flash, but you could download a trial version of Coffee Cup firestarter.

Flash can take some time to master but a "bizarre but smart 9yo" should have no problem getting started with Firestarter .. with a little guidance to begin with. It is also a good intro to the basic concepts of creating SWF's (show this, fade that timing etc etc) Makes it easier if you go to flash later.

Big plus is it's just 50 bucks.

And.. ahem ..er I've heard that it's available in bit thingys too.

Cheers,
Beef
 
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