Animation Further Progress

Today I did some practice on making a symbol on Flash. Too show a way of time keeping I decided to create a calendar, crossing out each date to a deadline. I drew the calendar using a combination of shapes, lines, the text tool and the brush tool. As each individual part of the calendar was separate it meant that when I moved one part of it, only that part would move and that wasn't what I wanted as I wanted the whole calendar to gradually come onto the screen. 

I highlighted the whole calendar then right clicked and chose 'create symbol' then I name the symbol Calendar. Now the calendar is a symbol it means that every part of it is just one shape, so it all moves together.

I think that I am on track to be able to finish my animation today as after the calendar I just want to insert an end card that says 'Time Keeping Is Important' just to make it clear what the message of my animation is. 

Here is my finished animation as a GIF, I am happy with how it turned out overall. There are a few bits that could do with some perfecting for example tidying up around the edge of the calendar, but the overall animation makes the small mistakes less important.

Initially when I began creating the animation I was unsure that I would be able to make it long enough, or add any interesting aspects. I have surprised myself with what I have done as I like the different scenes e.g. the bedroom, the alarm clock and the calendar.

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. 

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.