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.

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. 

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.

Colour Association

All colours convey different feelings and emotions but how they're used and what they're used for. Red is a colour that can have contrasting meanings, for example, red can often mean 'danger' or 'stop' when you see it used on road signs and traffic lights however it can also mean love and romance as it's the main colour used for love hearts and the theme colour of valentines day is red. If a female wears red lip sticks she will automatically give of a feminine and sexy vibe which is a complete contrast to red's connotations of danger.

I think that blue only has one type of emotion attached to it. A calming and soothing feelings usually present where blue is used. If you go to a spa or a pool, one of the only colours used is blue but in many shades, along with white. If you go to a spa and the colour of everything is blue, you feel relaxed because especially paler shades of blue are easy on the eye and non-offensive. If the colour red was used in a spa, you wouldn't feel so relaxed and the other shades of red will always become darker as if you make red lighter it turns to pink. In a spa you want the atmosphere to be light and fresh, not dark and heavy.

The colours yellow and pink always uplift me. They're bright and happy colours so are used for upbeat and uplifting products and situation. 

Smiley faces are classically yellow along with spring flowers, and children's toys like rubber ducks. Yellow is a primary colour therefore it's in it's simplest form although it can be extremely bright or muted down if you want it to be easy to look at for example a lot of new born babies clothes and decor are often a very pale shade of yellow.

Pink is a feminine colour. It's the traditional stereotypical colour for girls so almost all baby girls clothes and clothes for young female children are pink  to show the clear line between girls and boys. The stereotype of pink being a 'girls colour' mainly just lasts for childhood because as we get older we are more open to accepting and trying new things and breaking gender stereotypes.

Construction Toy- The Pick n' Mix Girls

Initial ideas

Here are the initial sketches that I drew for our groups construction toy. I came up with the idea for a doll that you can change the outfits of yourself, so young girls can create the doll that they desire, rather than the 'perfect' barbie doll that comes already complete from the shops.

Description of the construction toy

We have chosen to create an item called ‘’Pick ’N’ Mix Girls’’, we are going to have two dolls, one will be white/british and the other will be ethnic. The aim of this product is to make children creative and use their imagination to change the clothing and body parts of each doll. The dolls come with a birth certificate each so the name and age of the dolls can be chosen by the owner. The clothes we will provide will be very versatile, for example we are including a football shirt as well as a dress so the children will be able to understand the sort of clothing they like and their taste. The clothes will all be plastic so they will be able to clip together however the coat will be material so it can slip over the plastic clothing. We will not be making the dolls skinny like barbie, they will be a realistic size. If this product sells well on the market, we thought it would be a good idea to add a male version of the toy so it will be acceptable for both genders to enjoy.

Outfits

- A spotty dress that attaches to the doll at the neck with two holes at the bottom for legs and two on the side for the arms.

- A pair of jeans that have a nodule at the top that will be used to attach to a t-shirt. The jeans also have holes are the bottom to insert legs.

- A black skirt with a nodule at the top to attach a t-shirt and holes at the bottom for legs.

- A white vest with purple sweet, it has a hole at the top for the neck, holes in the arms and holes at the bottom to attach the trousers.

- A sports top, it has holes in the sleeve to attach the arms, hole in the neck for the neck and a nodule in the bottom to attach trousers.

- A black material coat, the coat fits over the plastic clothing, it has not nodules.

Reflection

I thought of a construction toy that was aimed at females as because I'm a female myself, I know what toys I enjoyed playing with when I was younger and what kind of toy I wish there were more of.

I liked this construction toy task as I worked in a small group and the project was collaborative. This meant that everyone in the group had their own input meaning the final design included everyones views and ideas. I learnt that collaborative projects are often more successful because each person can give their idea preferences meaning that a wider target audience will be reached.

If I was to do another project like this I would probably try and target the product at males or both genders so that I can show my thoughts are more diverse and it would also be more of a challenge designing something a male would like as I don't have personal experience of what boys are really interested in. 

Construction Toys- Lego

The famous toy Lego, meaning 'play well' was created in January 1949. Lego is so popular that statistically each person in the world owns 86 Lego bricks. Lego is multicoloured interlocking bricks that you can use to construct anything you wish. Along with the construction bricks you can also get Lego characters and add ons to create specific scenes, for example, Lego offer Star Wars, Harry Potter, Princess and many more sets.

The target audience for Lego is young children as they can be creative and learn how to link the bricks together to create something their proud of. Although Lego is aimed at children, Lego is becoming increasingly more popular with adults who work for months on end to create dramatic structures purely from Lego bricks.

Here is a life sized Superman sculpture made entirely from Lego Bricks.

The pros of Lego are that the bricks are great to help children improve their dexterity skills as well as their imaginations. Lego bricks often come with instructions to make specific structures so children will learn instruction following and problem solving skills if they decide to flow the instructions rather than being completely creative. Lego is usually a lot of fun and can be played on your own or in a big group of people if you want to work together and make something original and exciting. 

However there are some cons. Although there are now some cheaper alternatives to Lego, the real Lego brand can be expensive to buy if you decide to expand your collection when the set you have is no longer challenging or interesting and when you have a large set it's inevitable that pieces will go missing and if you stand on a missing Lego piece it's uncomfortable to say the least! Another con is that Lego only works one way, there are nodules on the top and holes that fit the nodules on the bottom. You must get the top of one brick and the bottom of another perfectly aligned for them to work which may be challenging or time consuming for some people. 
Due to the increase in popularity of Lego since it was first created, there are now many Lego Land parks worldwide. The parks have Lego themed rides along with Lego themed activities and much of the park is built purely from Lego. 

I worked in a group with Issy Briggs and Jess Stockman, there links to their blogs are:
Issy- issybriggscobc.blogspot.com
Jess- jstockmanmediacobc.blogspot.com

Presenting Data In Illustrator

Here is what I did in the lesson. We looked at info-graphics that displayed data about a subject in the form of a graph e.g. bar chart, pie chart, line graph and images. We were given our own data from a survey we answered ourselves about classroom rules and were told to make an info-grpahic poster in a similar style. 

The info-graphic must clearly show what the charted infromation is about so I used the brush tool to draw some punctuation for the header of the poster as '?!#!$' is often use to replace swear words in text.

I wanted to use bright colours to make charted information look more attractive, if an info-graphic is eye catching then the information appears more interesting. If I saw a dull looking info-graphic then I would think it was boring and I wouldn't be interested in finding out about the statistics, hopefully my info-graphic would make learning more fun.

Drawing Selfies

Today I started wring on Adobe Illustrator for the first time, as I'm working towards being able to draw a self portrait. The picture above was drawn using the pencil tool. I also used some of the shape told to create the pupils of my eyes as I wanted them to be symmetrical. 

Before starting the portrait I worked on learning how to use the shape tools. First of all you draw the path which is the shape itself, then the stroke draws a line around the shape and finally the fill colours the whole shape. I used the shape tools and altered the stroke and fills to create a wonderful firework display, image below!

My Alien GIF

The image above if my finished alien transformation GIF. After researching the internet for dark, demonic transformations I decided on my idea. The theme I seemed to favour was demon eyed black and white images as I feel they look deep and creepy to look at.

As this was my first time using photoshop properly and my first time ever creating a GIF I decided to keep it simple yet effective. To begin with, I took a series of images on Photo Booth, in each of the images I moved my hand slightly further down my face to cover and then reveal my eyes. After taking the images I imported them into photoshop where I painted my eyes black and converted the images to make them have more fearful connotations. Using a very helpful tutorial on GIF making, I created my alien transformation which I saved to web and shared on my Google Docs.

My GIF turned out well, it is how I pictured it in the first place and I think I managed to incorporate some of the ideas that I found online for inspiration. I really like the use of GIFs as they show you more than a still image would without the complexity and duration of a film or short video, I would definitely like to work on my GIF making skills.