Learning Chinese using traditional characters
Learning the characters is mostly a matter of memorization. You will need to learn a lot of characters in the most efficient way possible. Textbooks are not good for this. Using a spaced repetition system is normally the best method. A free spaced repetition program is Anki (http://ankisrs.net). You can find "decks" of traditional characters within Anki to start learning. 

A pay version of Anki that lets you write the characters stroke by stroke is Skritter. I personally like Skritter and have been using it for several years. I find writing out the character helps me to remember it.

To supplement the learning of characters you are going to want to get some form of grammar textbook. I like Ross's "Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar."