Preface

Adobe Animate is a platform-agnostic asset creation, motion design, animation, and interactivity software packed full of time-tested tools and workflows. Using this software, you can target multiple platforms to produce motion design content, character animations, interactive displays, games, desktop and mobile applications, and anything else you might think of. Perhaps the greatest strength of Animate is in the diversity of its toolset, along with the unique workflows, which allow developers to use it for design and allow designers to use it for development. Animate is a true creative powerhouse for hybrid creative work unlike any other.

Given Animate’s previous incarnation as Flash Professional, a fair amount of what the software can produce is web-based, but the past few years have really opened things up to help in targeting all manner of diverse platforms. We can target the native web through the HTML canvas element or via WebGL, generate rich, animated content for broadcast via television and film, develop games and applications for Apple iOS, Google Android, Microsoft Windows, and Apple macOS, and even generate content for virtual reality. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to produce a variety of media assets, motion design materials, animated artifacts, and interactive content pieces—all while targeting a wide set of compelling platforms.

This book will not teach you everything there is to know about Animate—as no book could possibly do that. It isn’t an introductory book either, as there are many such works available elsewhere. The intention of this book is to help you gain mastery of Animate and its various workflows and platforms built upon a solid foundation of its history alongside an increasing collection of modern tools and related workflow capabilities. I hope you enjoy the contents of these pages and use the concepts within to further the creative legacy of this wonderful software!