Comments

Our Animation

We've been tasked with creating our own animation, below I have some of the source links for some of the items used.

Image 1 : http://dailyreporter.com/2011/04/08/editorial-cartoon-168/
www.drawingcoach.com

Image 2 : http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__7733.aspx

Image 3 : http://www.123rf.com/photo_12363191_white-delivery-compact-van-front-view.html

Image 4 : http://wikicarshow.com/ford/2010-ford-transit-connect-xl-cargo-van.html

Image 5 : http://www.h20andcobathroomfitters.co.uk/contacts.html

Image 6 : http://www.featurepics.com/online/Coffin-Side-View-White-873001.aspx

Image 7 : http://processengineering.theengineer.co.uk/goodbye-to-one-man-and-his-dog/1012810.article

My animation is finally completed and I have had several comments on my animation.

Beta Testing

Matteo felt the speed of the dog and the speed of the ball the balance wasn't very good, in which I agree, he also felt it was clear and understandable, and its easy to relate to a animation through feeling and clear visual effect.

I found that I had quite alot of problems while going through the animation, I found I had alot of errors, and many animating problems, I felt flash was very frustrating and temperamental, and wasn't flexible at all, although the end result was good, i still found the whole process tough.


Screenshots

We were tasked with taking some shots for the design process, so here I will annotate what I have done and had to do.

This is my first scene, as you can see alot of work went into it, even though by appearance, it doesn't seem well done, it was my first attempt at flash in 6 years, and I had to learn how to animate something all over again, so the animations are not too in depth, even though the frames appear complex. 

 This is my 2nd scene, on the 3rd Camera angle change, its of the part where he discovers his dog has been ran over, and he starts to cry. synchronising the sound was challenging on this part, especially when I had to cut and change the sounds around.

This is the 8th scene, near the end, where the man wakes up, and seeing the ball and his dog asleep, he feels angry that the ball caused his dog to die in the dream, this he chucks it across the room, and face palms for having a bad dream. my other scenes, are well understood, but some people have questioned as to what happens at the end, thus I chose to screenshot the final image and interpret what happens.

As Mentioned before We had to modify sounds to fit the synchronisation of our animation, here I had to cut several bits of the sound out to have it match with the visuals.

Task 2

The Three act Narrative

The Beginning. 


Here I'm going to write about the three act narrative which is essentially a story structure, the start, the middle and the end.

The start of the story should be something that intrigues the reader, something that can hook them in to find out more. shouldn't be a challenge to read but rather something that increases the curiosity of the reader, " who is this? " " why is his mum an alcoholic drunk ? " " how did things get to the point of where they are? " for example.

It shouldn't be in depth but rather something that raises alot of questions, the beginning needs to be suttle, and calm, but rather effective to make the reader continue. This also works the same way for animations or animated stories, there needs to be cause as to create effect.

The Middle

The Middle is probably the most important piece to an effective story, it's about increasing the tension of the story, as alot of climatic events start to unfold, and alot of crisis starts to play a main role in the story.

this is the bit of the story where it grabs the reader and raises the interests and the excitement as the main events and plots start to unfold within the story. the middle of the story must have an understandable plot, and understandable crisis points, it is the most delicate part of the story, because if it does not make sense, it will kill the readers interest quickly if not immediately.

The End

Here the main conflict is resolved, and the loose ends are tied up. tension and excitement falls quickly, and a good ending leaves he readers satisfied even if they aren't happy with the way things turn out, sometimes its a bad and emotional ending, sometimes its a good emotional ending, both equally grab the emotions and decide on whether the book is a good book to read, or a good story to read/watch.

This is called a story Arc, you can visualise it by thinking of a diagram, where the tension and excitement rises and then abruptly declining. depending on the type of story, the rise may be gradual or it may be sharp, but the ending always shortly comes after the reader reaches the climax. What keeps the reader interested is the climax and the arc, as the reader wants to find out what happens in the next chapter, these are called cliffhangers. Once they know the plot, there isn't much for the reader to hold onto except a gradual conclusion to the story.

Story Example 1

The cat in The Hat

The Beginning

The cat in the Hat's narrative, starts with the cat going to a household where two children are and their mother has gone out, the cat brings two creatures called thing 1 and thing 2 and starts to do tricks with them to impress the two children.

The Middle

The Children, not being too fazed by the cat, decide to take thing 1 and thing 2, after making a mess and not impressing the family pet goldfish, the children gain control of the things, and have control of the cat, so ends up having to go and clean up the house.

The End

after having to clean up his mess the cat in the hat leaves the house as the mother returns, not being successful in pleasing the children he ends up having to leave.

Story Example 2

The Grinch who stole Christmas

The Beginning

The Grinch is about a cave dwelling creauture, who lives up in the mountains of a town called whoville, with his faithful bit dim companion dog called max, every year he puts up with the festives of christmas, and dislikes it along with the fact he was born a heart 3x too small.

The Middle

One year the grinch decides he has had enough, and creates a plan and a plot to destroy christmas through the meand of burglary, taking everyones presents depriving them of christmas.

The End

Despite his plan being extremely successful, the citizens of whoville celebrate christmas anyway, and the grinch learns that christmas isnt about the presents, and that its about family and friendship, and decides to return the presents, and the citizens of whoville welcome him to become a part of their community.

Story Example 3

The Lorax

The beggining

The lorax is about a story within a story, with a very interesting moral, its about a boy who goes to a very run down area, to go and see " the once..ler " the once..ler told the boy he'd tell him what happened to the area if he gave him 15 cents, a nail, and the shell of a great great great grandfather snail, and the once'ler starts to tell the story.

The Middle 

the once'ler explains how he came to a land with lots of truffula trees, and explained he started cutting down the trees for thneeds, for which everyone needs, made for clothes, after cutting down several trees the lorax appeared out of a tree stump, and explained he speaks for the trees as the trees cannot talk, and said there would be grave consequnces if he carried on, the once'ler ignored the warnings and continued to ravage the lands with his family, while the lorax and all his friends left, the lands were destroyed.

The End

the lorax left a sign, saying " unless " and he once'ler explained to the boy, he didnt know what it meant at the time and didnt care, but now he knows what it means after everything is and was destroyed, and he explained it meant, enless...someone cared. and then he gave the boy the last truffula seed, and told him if he cared enough, he could plant the last seed, and bring back he trees, and maybe the lorax and his friends will return.

Robot Demo and Demonstrations

Adobe Flash Player

10/10/2012

The Robot Demo

When Using Flash Player, you can Import Images you have downloaded, by using file and then going to import, and placing it within the stage.

After doing this, if you Press F8 and then rename the image and save it as a Movie file. you can then go to the top right hand corner, and click library, and from there you can drag and place unlimited amounts of the image that you created.

From there we Double clicked the robot to go into the library editor. we then used the line tool to draw around the robots head and then we eyedropped the colour inside the selected area and used the paintbucket to fill in the head, we then used the colour palet in the top right and selected the gradient editor from the drop down menu and changed the gradient. Results Below.

We have now been instructed to repeat the above process to turn the rest of or some of the robot into a more cartoonish appearance.

After we Filled in enough to make a cartoon robot, we unlocked the other layer and deleted it, from there we moved the robot in two places and created a Motion Tween we did this by slelecting the 30th movie slot and created a new frame by pressing F6, from there we right clicked the middle and clicked motion tween. 

We then wanted to try and animate the legs, to do this we decided to highlight the legs and and highlighting all the tight points by pressing and holding shift, we then pressed F8 and titled it legs, we then double clicked it to go into the movie file edit mode.

Using these Abilities, we Used the free transform mode and the library mode to rotate the legs seperately from the body so the body would move with the legs, we had to create 2 seperate layers for 2 different pairs of 2D legs to move correctly, we then used the Motion Tweens placing 15 frames per movement to make it all move correctly.

Story Planning and Ideas Generation

Creating and Planning a Digital Story

02/10/2012

I Read through our tasks, and noted that we had to take down notes of animations that were done by other students, who had completed our Unit beforehand, I watched several animations including one about a kid who has a nightmare in detention and wakes up from it, and also the one I liked most where two stick men have a fight, and you can choose multiple endings.

I had previously researched and noted down how a story progresses, and noticed that each of these stories have exactly the same concepts, which are the three act narratives explained below, researching the stories created by other students, I have learned and come to terms with how short the story and animation needs to be, as flash can be a challenge to use.

Animating and doing comic animations comes down to experience and knowledge, its a very time consuming process,  a wide arrange of comical animations can be created and made, from different eras, to different characters and scenarios, a fine example is this comical animation I found on youtube, its one of many different creations that can be made. Using a wide range of tools.

02/10/12

I already had my ideas created and written beforehand, but realised I needed to do the Ideas generation through the diagram, I have now completed and analysed my ideas generation, as you can see below.

Each of these stems are the ideas, with their potential effects and outcomes extended and built.

25/9/2012

Idea 1.

 I have been tasked with creating a short but effective digital story for the next unit our class is going to complete, Unit 46.

My story is going to be about about a young man, in a Post-apocalyptic world, where war has torn humanity apart, and he must fight to survive to succeed, and on his journeys while surviving, fights one of the many hunters that is also attempting to survive, which one will win?

I would like to create this scenario as I have always found a fondness for sci-fi scenarios, and I think a fight in post apocalyptic life, could turn out to be quite interesting.

Idea 2. 

I have always had a fondness in sci fi as previously mentioned, and I have liked creating fights in sci-fi, my second idea would come under a superhuman having to save a city from a rampaging giant robot, and a great battle breaks out between two super-human beings.

Idea 3. 

For my 3rd and final idea for creating a storyboard for animations, I may see if I can create something dramatic instead of sci-fi, maybe about a boy and his dog, where in a tragic accident his dog is killed, and the boy has to go the hardship without having his best friend anymore.


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Review

For my 3rd and final idea for creating a storyboard for animations, I may see if I can create something dramatic instead of sci-fi, maybe about a boy and his dog, where in a tragic accident his dog is killed, and the boy has to go the hardship without having his best friend anymore.

Even though each of my Ideas are quite likable, I would like to Most likely go with my first idea, as it sounds the most interesting, and would probably turn out to be the most funny. I spoke to Corey Reading, and asked his opinion on which of the above ideas he liked most, and He agreed with my opinion on the fact that the first Idea would probably be the most likable, and said if I was to choose one, he'd like it to be the first.

Task 1

The Interactive Stories

Class analysis of “DEAD ON ARRIVAL”

How is narrative told?

Pictures illustrate the story

Page turning device to further the story

speech bubbles tell the majority of the story

text captions written in the 1^st person

music choice eg. Opening music was suspenseful, music pace picked up as story unfolded,  on the hangover scene the music “jangly”

“easter egg” clickable items gave information to move the narrative forward for example coffee cup, the phone,  the office files.

Zooms on important items, e.g. the insurance documents to draw the viewer’s attention

“Spiked” drink

The variety of devices to tell the story and the amount of interactivity held the viewer’s attention well and made the storyline very clear. There wasn’t much animation as such, but the “shaking” animation on the hangover scene helped to contribute to the atmosphere.

User enjoyment through interactivity:

Searching for and finding clickable items

These items popped up which drew attention

A character/text captioning gave hints to what was clickable

The interactive pans were not very exciting.

The potential of digital media:

All the above points illustrating the use of interactivity, the use of sound and the fact that the user could guess who the murderer was show what potential digital media has to enhance user enjoyment. These features could not be included in a traditional comic book.

above is the class analysis of dead on arrival, we ran through this with our tutor, to try and analyse what makes a story, how it develops, and how it comes to an end at the end, we also analysed how sounds and interaction can make a better user experience. below are my examples of my own personal analysations. 

Dracula

I decided to select an Interactive comic to study and analyse , the comic is called Dracula - the interactive comic. I wanted to try and go with something different instead of following all the other students with the direction of HOTEL and Dead on Arrival.

Dracula is a story that anyone would suspect in a classic style of, weary traveller goes to stay with Dracula in his castle.

How Effectively is the Narrative told and how does animation and sound contribute to the narrative?

The narrative is quite straight forward and simple, it is much simpler than clicking and changing scenes, Dracula's Narrative is in reels of images, that you can slowly scroll along to take in all the necessary information. It has speech boxes which are clearly and effectively placed by making them obvious yet out of the way of any important information. The Captions are done from 1st person of the traveller, so it has more of a story told effect on the reader, it brings the reader in. The music is extremely creepy and sketchy which really sets the atmosphere of the comic, there are several interactive sounds which set the feel of the comic, but there are not enough to make it feel over the top.

toy my knowledge there are no interactive items that are easter eggs, but you do interact with items to make your escape, if and when the traveller gets to dracula, you can choose to run or fight, and its interactive abilities allow you to use a webcam to bring a real life object into the game and use it as a weapon to fight dracula.

How does the interactivity increase user enjoyment?

as the Story continues and rolls on there are several things you can interact with, it appears hat as the story progresses you can interact with the comic more, including custom weapons and choices, when you scroll over certain scenes objects and images pop up to set the feel and try to make the reader feel uncomfortable and scared, which considering for a short comic, it does a very good job and setting the scare factor, by doing this it raises the enjoyment and the feeling for the comic for the reader.

How does this demonstrate potential for media?

My research here shows that an interactive comic has several advantages over a regular comic, you can surprise, scare and pull the reader in much more than what you can with a regular comic, regular comics do not have moving pictures, or interactive objects, you cannot give choice and multiple interactive endings in regular comics, whereas with dracula, this has been clearly demonstrated, with multiple choice scenarios, surprises and feeling.

Detention Nightmare


The Narrative is simple and straightforward, it starts with the teacher at his desk completing work and asking the student in detention to come in, the student then comes in and sits down down at the desk, and begins to fall asleep, that is the first Scene. The second part of the story consists of the student falling into a dream where he encounters a monster in a dark forest, the sounds enhance the feeling by adding thunder and lightning. the 3rd part is where he wakes up and realises it was all a dream.

Dr Villain

Dr villain is about a vigilante who must find and stop a evil scientist from destroying the world with the " crystal of order " its more of an interactive game than a movie, there are alot of interactions, which actually makes the game quite fun, while hunting for the doctor, the vigilante encounters a robot which is where the story goes into scene 2, you then choose how to defeat the robot, and after doing so do some more running, afterwards the game moves to the final bit of the plot to where you encounter the doctor, who escapes using a teleport. the game uses various sounds including robot sounds, burning flames, footsteps, explosions, and sword sounds along with various other sounds per scene, all in all creating quite an interesting arc, plot, and enjoyable user experience.

Selina rawless

Selina rawless appears to also have quite alot of user interaction and good use of sounds, the story appears to be about in the first part a normal girl going to go and see her friends, who had long ago defeated an evil being, until where it goes into scene 2, the evil being manages to somehow resurrect himself and returns to the town to terrorize it, him and Selina then lock into battle, in which it turns to scene 3 where the malovent spirit is defeated, it uses a wide range of sounds like evil laughs, footsteps, rain, and electrical sounds to give the magic powers more effect.

Spider Spider Jason

Spider spider jason is about a small spider who wants to become spiderman after reading the comic, he starts to work out and makes a spiderman costume, and jumps into a building and hurts himself, the story is clear and effective, clear speech bubbles are used to make the character feel alive, and to explain what goes on, different facial expressions are also animated and used to show how the character is feeling, there is small amounts of interactivity as well to increase user enjoyment and iinterest.





09/10/2012


For My Interactive Story I have Decided to do Idea 3, it will compile of 3 acts, as mentioned above.

I previously mentioned from constructive criticism that I was gonna do Idea 1, but I decided to change my mind simply because I thought choosing a different idea might be a better direction, plus when I create my storyboard, I want my Ideas and constructions to stand out, and not be like the rest.


1st Scene

for the first scene, you will see a Short clip about a boy and his dog, playing in the front yard, on a sunny day, when He accidentally throws the ball too far, the dog runs out into the road and a car comes by and knocks his dog down. and you'll see the effect of it on the boy.

2nd Scene

The second Scene will consist of a small funeral, and the boy's family and him grieving, wishing that things were different.

3rd Scene

The 3rd and final Scene will consist of the scenery suddenly changing to a bedroom, showing that the boy has only just woken up from a very nasty nightmare, with his dog on the end of the bed. Realizing he was only dreaming, he picks up the ball and looks at it, and then puts it down and refuses to go out and play.

Firstly Before we go into construction we have to create storyboard image drafts of our story.

Scene 1 

In the first image, I will just be using Sounds like Car engines, the dog barking, and the birds tweeting. The dog will be running around back and forth as the boy chucks the ball while cars go by.

soon after the boy chucks the ball across the road and the dog runs after it, and is tragically hit by a car. so a blundering sound will be used with car horns.

Here i will try to use crying effects, with a dramatic fading scream.

Scene 2

In this part of the animation, I will use thunder and lightning effects, with animated speech bubbles to express how destroyed its left the boy.

In this part I will use an animation of him touching the photo he has, and looking very distressed. 

Source photo : http://ironingboardcollective.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/a-man-and-his-dog/

Scene 3

after fading out the boy wakes up in his room like in every day life, picking up the ball and realizing it could do more harm than good, I will using tweeting birds in this scene as a sound effect.

The above pictures are my prototype storyboard images, as you can see, the boys dog dies, and he has a funeral for his dog, but it just turns out to be a dream, and he chucks the ball away realizing it could actually get his dog killed.

The sound effects for the final picture will be the same as the previous, except I will probably have a bouncing ball sound included in this scene.