# What's the best thing to use to make flash movies, etc...? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 30, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-best-thing-to-use-to-make-flash-movies-etc/216027 "2003-11-30T06:10:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrentLumkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9d8465/32.png) [@BrentLumkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrentLumkin)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-best-thing-to-use-to-make-flash-movies-etc/216027/1 "2003-11-30T06:10:28Z")
Also, do you know anywhere on line that has a few tutorials and the such for this kind of thing? Thanks a lot guys! ---
**Author:** ![Iteki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eada6e/32.png) [@Iteki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iteki)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2003, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-best-thing-to-use-to-make-flash-movies-etc/216027/2 "2003-11-30T20:20:39Z")
At the risk of stating the obvious, the best program for making flash movies is, well, Flash. Made my Macromedia. [www.macromedia.com](http://www.macromedia.com) I am not sure what you mean by “etc”? You can find tutorials all over the web for various levels of proficiancy, you can google for them, I have found [www.flashkit.com](http://www.flashkit.com) useful in the past. ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2003, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-best-thing-to-use-to-make-flash-movies-etc/216027/3 "2003-11-30T21:34:03Z")
“etc” probably means flash websites. Which can be built with macromedia as well. ---
**Author:** ![ReuvenB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@ReuvenB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ReuvenB)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2003, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-best-thing-to-use-to-make-flash-movies-etc/216027/4 "2003-11-30T22:12:14Z")
I have a book borrowed from a friend sitting next to my desk, “Using Macromedia Flash MX” by Michael Hurwicz and Laura McCabe, that has proved quite useful. As stated before, in order to make flash movies, you should either buy Flash (I think the current version is MX 2004), or there’s a free trial online at macromedia’s website, if you want to test it out. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2003, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-best-thing-to-use-to-make-flash-movies-etc/216027/5 "2003-12-01T11:09:37Z")
- - - Well, this depends on exactly what you are trying to do: - For general website and interactive-game programming, Macromedia’s software is generally regarded as the best. Adobe LiveMotion 2 is another Flash creator, but it is no longer updated or distributed. - For creation of classic Disney-style cartoons there are at least three programs specialized to do that sort of theatrical animation: ToonBoomStudio, Animation Stand --and the third one I always forget–but there is another one out there somewhere… Animation Stand is considered to be the professional tool for this sort of thing, and they have a free personal version for download as well: [http://www.animationstand.com/products/personal.html](http://www.animationstand.com/products/personal.html) … Ironically, I have not tried the Animation Stand but I have played with ToonBoomStudio, and TBS is very cool, very expensive ($350) BUT it is for making regular film-type presentations only–_it doesn’t support any type of scripting at all_. It only supports the color and manipulation of vector shapes and scheduling of sounds. It outputs as a flash file however, so you could possibly create a flash movie in it, and then import that as an element into another “website-style” flash creation program. ~