Help a newbie out

[Chongo888]

Hello, Newgrounds. I wouldn't consider myself a beginning Flash artist considering I gained interest and made lame flash toons when I was 11. But now I'm 20 years old and haven't been too involved with Flash for a while.
I use it once in awhile, but for things like school projects and photo editing.

I'm mainly experienced in music recording and I do own (in my opinion) quality recording equipment which will help a bunch with making new Flash animations. Lately I've been in the mood to get back into flash animation and I have a couple of questions, if you would.

First question; I've been thinking about purchasing a graphics tablet and I would like a third party's opinion about it. Which tablet do you use and/or prefer?

Second question; How do I apply the realtime playback controls to my flash animation? I noticed it being used quite often recently and I feel it is very useful. No longer having to wait for the loading bar.

Third question; As an upcoming flash artist I would like to start off contributing to a few collab flashes to get into the swing of things. Where might I be able to find projects where I can contribute my work?

Thank you for your time. I'm looking forward to getting started . :)

[RobertTaylor]

First question; I've been thinking about purchasing a graphics tablet and I would like a third party's opinion about it. Which tablet do you use and/or prefer?

I'd recommend a Bamboo or Intuos Wacom Tablet. Almost the same thing, only Bamboos are smaller and cheaper. I wouldn't go for any non Wacom brands, I've had quite a few tablets in the past and other brands (in my experience) are pretty useless.
I myself use a Medium Intuos 5.

Second question; How do I apply the realtime playback controls to my flash animation? I noticed it being used quite often recently and I feel it is very useful. No longer having to wait for the loading bar.

You can create your own timeline controls with ActionScript, but I think in this case you're looking at actual exported videos. Recently Newgrounds allowed users to submit video files. A good program to export .swf files to video format is Swivel.

Third question; As an upcoming flash artist I would like to start off contributing to a few collab flashes to get into the swing of things. Where might I be able to find projects where I can contribute my work?

Check out the Collaboration board.

[Chongo888]

Awesome! Thanks! That's all I needed to know.