Most of the Java books talk about double buffering for removing theflashing. It solves the problem to some extent but not 100% perfect in caseof flashing. I am giving the following tricks to solve the flashing problemin animation :

1) Use Media Tracker for downloading the images.
2) Use double buffering.
3) Change the default background color of the applet to the color ofyou Canvas by using setBackground(Color of the Canvas) in the init method ofthe applet.
4) In an animation if you are updating only part of a area userepaint(x1,y2,x2,y2) instead of repaint().