Lecturers Lesson 5 : Interactive Media

In my lecturers lesson today, I continued in finishing off my coursework in completing all my Pre-production, Production and Post Production.  I felt that in the future I need to  give myself more time in completing work. I can do this by making sure I follow my production schedule and stay on time.  

I've completed my 60 second animation and I uploaded it onto you tube. Here is my you tube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUFoQk7HxKw&feature=channel_video_title

The skills which I feel I can improve on improving my ability the technical side of flash, so that I can produce future animation projects quicker and use better techniques.

Flash hates me , I hate Flash (Problems I encountered)

In Lecturers lessons,  I had a few problems with flash which slowed me down while producing my work.  The main problem which I encountered was having a rotation problem with the circle. I tried to fix it doing many things such as importing it as a different picture file type because it was a Photoshop file and the recommended file type by my lecturer was a GIF file.

Another method, I tried was to delete the layer and create a new layer to help me, to see if I had changed the settings by accident but, it still didn't work. I got to a point where I couldn't do anymore and then suddenly, it decided to work again out of the blue. This suggests that the software is very buggy and I need to take care when using it because it could crash and I'll loose hours work on that practical piece of work.

Lecturer Lesson 4 : Three examples of Analysis

In todays lesson for interactive media, I have been studying three examples which will help me to influence my 60 second animation.  The three examples which I looked at are The Simpsons, Wallace and Gromit and Explania.  So far I have explained the first two examples of animation.  I have found this lesson really helpful because it has helped me to gain ideas for my 60 second animation. Hopefully from this analysis which I'll complete for next lesson, I'll be able to start doing my storyboard. 

Here is my essay:

I will be talking about three examples which will influence my 60 second animation. Some of the reasons why I am doing this is that I can develop my animation and make it better for my target audience.   I will carry this out as an investigation because it means I can note down the techniques and information in my research. 

The first example of my animation is a website called explania. Explania is a website about creating educational content, for a range of ages.  Explania is a small company part of a larger multi-media company called Instruxion which are specialized in creating high impact explanatory content. This is shows that this is really good animation website to use because it has to explain highly complicated topics in a simple format for a general age target audience. The five main topics of this website are health, technology, work, software and sports. I can use this example to help me develop my idea for my 60 second animation. Some of the aspects from this animation which can help me to make my 60 second animation are using the simplest drawing techniques to create my object and this can help me to create my 60 second animation quicker.  Some these techniques which I can implement into my animation are the simple animations which describe the text , so that the message is shown clearly.  As you can see in the clip below simple colours and simple animations are used to help the message of the clip:

http://www.explania.com/en/animations/detail/calculate-your-body-mass-index-bmi

This is what I’m going to do and try to use these techniques  to make it easier for my target audience (14-16yrs ) to understand what the content is and that they will learn it and enjoy rather then, being boring and not taking the information on board.

The second example which I’m using is the Simpsons because my target audience enjoy this TV programme.  A few reasons why I choose to do the Simpsons is because it is a highly successful cartoon comedy programme around the world.  As you can see ‘John Campea’ says “A Simpsons episode produces over $400,000 dollars a year.  This shows that this Simpson’s series  theme is  suitable  for my 60 second animation. This is because this TV programme is very popular and this particular  target audience (14-16yrs). I won’t using incorporating any of the Simpson’s animation techniques because it will be too complicated and the detail of it would take too long for my animation. However, I may decide to incorporate the Simpsons characters because it seems like a good influence for animation which will ne helpful and hopefully succeed in targeting the right audience.

Introduction

Simpsons

Explania

Wallace and Gromit

conclusion

Simon Lesson 3 - Bouncing Ball and Timeline Effects

I learnt a lot of things in flash today. I completed a bouncing ball in Adobe Flash Action script 3.0, I achieved this by  creating a symbol in Adobe Flash. I learnt many tools such as the motion guide tool, which allowed me to create a path for my object  to travel.  I also, played around with the timeline effects which helped me to do many different effects such as blur, fading, scale , change colour and exploding image up into pieces.

Some other tips which I learnt in today's lesson was publishing the file as swf, so you could open it up and player the actually sequence of the ball jumping up and down.  We got told that only JPEG and GIF files could be imported into flash because otherwise the flash file would get too big and probably cause the Adobe Flash to debug and shut down.  A tip to prevent this was to go to image and click on break apart which changes the pixels to save space.

From this lesson I will be able to take this further by experimenting with these techniques and use them for my 60 second animation. I would use the motion path tool to follow my animation.

Problems :

Some of the problems which I encounter which could be an issue is creating a complex path for my object because when i played my animation it wouldn't work.

Simon Lesson 2

By this lesson, I had completed the research undertaken into animation. I got onto the pre-production which I need to complete in order for me to create my 60 seconds animation. The pre-production which I had to do was to complete three storyboards, a mind map and a justification to help me decide which idea I wanted to develop and take on as my final idea. I choose my first idea which was an old classic cinema theatre as my layout. A basic line will go to the right showing a simple timeline moving. I will have short funny animations to make it more interesting for my target audience which is 14-16 years old.

Also, in this lesson I started to write up my skills Audit which is about the skills have learnt so far on this unit. The only skills I have learnt so far are having a better understanding of the history animation and the interface of Adobe Flash Action script 3.0.

Simon Lesson 1

This is my first lesson with Simon so far and we have been introduced to the topic we are studying which is the history of animation. For this task, I have to write a written report about the history of animation. I undertook some research in the history of animation. I did this by visiting the library and took a few books out to help me find deeper history about animation motion devices because I sometimes find that websites don't always give me the right information I want.  I found some really useful encyclopaedia books called Britannica. These helped me to find out some research about a famous pioneer called Walt Disney. I also, found out a better understanding of animation and how it was created. I found some other useful interesting books in the psychology and sociology area about how brain works and how that the brain can receive image differently than, the actual animation playing itself.    

I've learnt that  when undertaking research, you should use wider range sources because you can get more valuable information to help me, write a better report. 

Simons Lesson 2

Simon

skills audit

storyboards

mindmap

justification

Useful Links : How Walt Disney films made in the 1940's

I was research on how Walt Disney films are and I found this really interesting and inspiring:

Introduction

I've learnt from Simons lesson, the criteria for this project which is to:

1. Understand the techniques and development of 2D animation
2. Be able to devise a 2D animation with  a soundtrack
3. Be able to produce a 2D animation with a soundtrack
4. Be able to evaluate audience responses to own 2D animation work

I will be creating a 60 second animation using Adobe flash and Adobe Photoshop.
timeline

animination

websites to help

mindmaps

references

pitch