Animation Progress

After creating my storyboard idea for my short informative animation I began to develop it on Flash. To help build up my Flash skills, I decided to simplify my idea slightly so that I could get used to a few skills and be happy that I can do them fairly well rather than struggle with trying to do too many new things.

I find that creating new layers is very helpful to make sure everything is running smoothly as it allows me to separate different parts of the animation and work on new things without ruining parts that I've made previously.

Here is what I've developed so far using mainly hand drawn illustrations, classic tweens, layers and keyframes.

I am happy with the progress but I would like to work on adding:

• More fluid movement, looking at what I learnt from the walk sequence.
• Applying the soundtrack I created in Tom's lesson to this animation.
• Making sure my message 'Time keeping is important' is clear.

Outlining My Animation

The topic for my animation is 'Time keeping is important' I will use Flash to make a short public information film to present the message.

Some ideas I'd like to include

• Multiple clocks of all different sizes and styles entering the screen at different speeds with different transitions, getting faster as the character in the animation starts to speed up and rush around.
• The character pressing the snooze button on their alarm multiple times and each time they press it we will get a closer view of the phone to emphasise their action. 
• Hands on the clock flying round at a fast speed to show time passing at super speed, the clock would then grow wings and fly away- 'time flies'.
• Teacher receiving a message from the student saying 'I'm going to be slightly late, sorry!' the teacher increasingly turns bright red.
• Student arrives late to find everyone just finishing off eating cookies and looking smug.
• Text at the end making it sound like even being just a couple minutes late will make you miss out on something very crucial. 

Researching Public Information Films

This is a public information encouraging people to make more complex passwords that are simple to remember. The voice over is enthusiastic and clear and starts by telling the viewer the simple facts about the common mistakes people make when creating a password. The voice over doesn't use any jargon therefore the video reaches out to a very broad audience, even school aged children would be able to understand the video and learn from it. 

It isn't dark and brutally shocking like a lot of videos on internet safety as I find a lot of internet safety videos try and scare you and put you off of using the internet making you feel as though nothing is safe. This video however uses simple tactics that just hint the problems that you may face, for example, a credit card belonging to 'Penny Less' which is a clever pun that will make the audience think and figure out the point that is trying to be put across. 

A positive attitude is enforced by this video through it's bright colours, simply designed animation and happy characters. Repetition is used to make the storyline clear and easy to follow as there is a problem in the beginning and a resolution at the end. The credit card pun was a good idea so it's repeated as the resolution at the end and the name is changed to 'Miss A O'Kaye', showing that the problem is simple and quick to alter.

As an end card to the video, the information about where to find out more about the campaign is given, for example, a website and social media links. This is helpful as people can click straight from the video to read more information and also find similar videos.

The Walk Sequence

The walk cycle is an essential sequence of movement in animation. After drawing someone in different positions of a regular walking movement you can produce frames to make your figure look as though it's walking on the spot or walking forwards or backwards.

This sequence of figures is made up of nine different positions, the more different positions you have, the more realistic the flow of the walk looks. You can use as little as four frames for your walk sequence however your walk will look less fluent. 

Using the sequence above as a template for my sequence, I created a layer for the template and another layer on top for my figure tracings. I proceeded to trace over each figure on the correct frame. Then using the lasso tool I separated each figure. 

The next stage was to create another layer called Guideline on which I drew a line as the 'floor' for my figure to walk on. I then place the first figures feet on the line and drew a dot above it's head, still on the guideline layer, to help with positioning. I inserted the guideline frame into nine frames as I had nine different figure drawings. I then locked the guideline so the only drawings that moved were the figures. 

On the Figures layer I moved each figure onto the guideline, each on a new keyframe so that the next frame didn't include the figure from the frame before. After completing this for the nine frames of each figure I deleted everything from the template layer and deleted all of the original traced images, leaving just the figure on the guideline. 

Finally I added a look to the sequence and slowed the FPS down to seven, this left me with a realistic walk sequence. 

6 Word Story GIF

Here is a quick animated GIF I made on Flash using symbols and classic tweens to present a short, 6 word story about what my weekend consisted of. 

Symbols On Flash

You can use flash to create a Symbol which is like a master for when you need to repeat an object. I created a simple symbol to practice the process. Firstly you click Insert> New Symbol the name your symbol, I named my house and then drew a house, which I can find in the library under the name house.

Holding down Alt to create identical copies of my house, I created a line of houses and coloured them. Once I had my row of house I clicked Modify> Convert To Symbol and named the new symbol 'Street'.

On separate layers, I replicated my row of houses and resized them as well as altering the brightness to add more depth, to look like a town scene. I then added key frames at the beginning and end of the timeline for each layer so that the street would remain the same throughout the movie clip. 

To turn my town scene into a scenario, I added a new symbol and named it Car, then drew a car. I created a new layer on my timeline and named it car one so that I could place the car on this layer. I placed the car on the edge of the left hand side of my scene then I created another key frame further up the time line and moved the car to the right side edge of the scene. 

The point of adding the car is to have it moving across the scene, so on the car layer between the two key frames I right clicked and chose 'Create Classic Tween' Now when I press play, the car moves across the scene. 

Shape Tweening

This week I looked at the 'Shape Tweening' feature on Flash. Firstly, you create a keyframe, then you insert a keyframe at the end with the shape in the place that you want it to end up. If you right click on the blank frame in-between the two frames you have filled at the beginning and the end you will get the option to 'Insert Shape Tween' and when you click this it will create the effect of your object moving from one location on the screen to another.

As you can see on my timeline, I created one layer for the Christmas tree as I wanted it to remain exactly the same in all of the frames. So I put the Christmas tree in it's own layer at the beginning and the end, therefore it remained the same. Layer 2 is my star, which is the layer I wanted the shape tween to happen on. You can see my star moving from the bottom of the tree to the top. 

Introduction To Flash

Flash can be used to make very simple or extremely detailed and complex animations and moving images. It uses different frames to create and image of something moving when we press play.

The typical FPS (frame per second) used in film is 24, we are not sure why this is, it's just the FPS that works best for the audience. However for the short and simple animation I created in Flash for my introduction, I decided to half this to 12 FPS so you can see the progress I made.

Firstly I set up my keyframe. The units of measurements used for this should always be pixels, so I made my key frame 600x400 pixels, however I can change this as I go along if I feel it needs altering. When creating the key frame I also decided to make the stage colour (background) blue, instead of using white, as the colour makes it look more exciting. 

In my first frame I used the oval tool to create my first image, which is the centre of a flower that I will begin to build up in the next frames. I filled the oval with yellow and then I copied it so that it would stay the same for each frame.

To create the next frame I clicked insert>timeline>key frame so that the centre of the flower would appear in the same place as the frame before. I used the pencil tool to draw a petal for my flower, I used the smooth pencil mode s that the petal would look smooth and neat. I then copied the petal so that it would be the same on the rest of the layers.

Each time I created a new layer I did it the same way as I did the first time by doing insert>timeline>key frame so that my frame looked that same as previous, and then I pasted the petal and added it to the flower until it was finally complete. It took me 7 frames to complete my flower.

Here is my complete, short and simple animation that I created on my first time using Flash.