Final Evaluation

This unit has been full of learning and anything but dull. From the start to finish I gained new techniques, learned to use new a software and become almost fluent with it in the process. Since the beginning of the unit I have been planning my story, developing and adapting my ideas towards creating my final production. The plot of my final production is that a normal school boy joins his detention class and starts to drift off to sleep, this is where the main section of the animation takes place, the boy appears in a dramatic yet gloomy looking dream land where he spots a silhouette figure. He follows it until he reaches the point where the figure turns to spot him, at that moment in time the boy is saved by the bell and returns safely to reality. I think I have used my time and ideas to effectively and combined them together to create a clean, smooth looking animation based on an original story. One of my main methods of conveying my story plot was using sound which I used in every scene to display actions clearly from my assets. I have also included interactivity within my animation to help involve the viewer in the plot, I have used a interactivity to open the door to allow the student to walk into the classroom and also a replay button at the end of the animation. Overall, I think I have used my planning and production time effectively to create an animation with a interesting story plot with sound and interactivity.

Process Of Final Production

My first MAIN idea for my interactive story was to create a tension building thriller like animation. It took me a while to decide on the genre, whilst humour can be easily interpreted in a simple animation I wanted to create a shock on the viewers using tension which can be greatly emphasised using sounds. I decided to create this genre because of the music I have recently been listening to, called progressive house which has very long build-ups which creates a lot of tension within the listener and I thought why not involve this method within my story?
I suggested this to my peers and one said it was "good idea, something different".

Although I am going to use stickman in the animation I have decided to create the animation using life like background, although drawn using Flash, I want to give the backgrounds a real life feeling with shadows and darkness etc. Some of my backgrounds I made I have drawn over the top from real backgrounds to make the viewer feel as though it's real. I don't want to have any text within the animation as I want the story to be told with imagery, using text can really draw away the attention of tension, having to stop and read captions etc.

I gained a lot of my inspiration for my ideas from classic school horror scenarios, although I'm not looking to scare anyone, I would really like to re-create an original story with the sense of thrill. As my ideas are progressing I have thought of new ways to build tension, using lightning, it will appear with a flash and a loud noise witch could jump the viewer but also it will reveal the silhouette of the monster which I think creates a classic edge.

Beta Testing

Today we did a Beta test for our final animations,

First Peer
After viewing my animation they thought that it was well put together and has a certain style to it which I appreciated, the only thing they suggested to improve on or create was an effect in-between the different scenes and as I am already going to add them, nothing was changed.

Second Peer
The second peer suggested that there should be some sort of caption with text to determine what is happening in the animation. Although I wanted to avoid this so that the viewer could picture what is happening and feel involved in the animation, I still took this suggestion on-board as I think it could really help improve my story and I am now going to make a caption or two for each scene, explaining what is happening.

Interactive Comic Research

Dead On Arrival

Dead On Arrival is an interactive comic that uses various different techniques that involve interactivity, the comic is displayed in a way that makes it seem almost real. Each page of the comic is interactive as you must drag the corner of each part (page) of the comic to turn over to the next. The style of this comic is a lot like Sin City, using the same sort of filters - mostly black and white/dark with some colours highlighted to emphasise them. This helps to give the effect of a mystery crime scene which is what the comic is all about.

Storyboard Research

11/10/11 - Storyboard

Once a script is written for a film or animation, the next step is to create a storyboard, a storyboard visually tells the story of an animation panel by panel, very similar to a comic book. A Storyboard should involve what characters are in the frame and how they are moving, what the characters are saying to each other if anything, the main plot of the story with act one, two and three. 


There are many different ways to create a storyboard, some might be on full sheets of paper and others on note cards. Still other storyboards might be created on squares and attached to a felt board. Even Powerpoint slides or graphical software such as photoshop or paint can be used to create individual scenes.

No matter what method is used, there are two basic parts to a storyboard, the image and the description. The image can be a basic hand drawn sketch, photograph or graphically created image. It's primary purpose is to give a basic visual idea as to what is happening.

Short Story Ideas

11/10/11 - Animation Ideas
My first idea is a student that falls asleep in class - the main acts of the idea involve a dream scene.
The animation starts with the teacher at his desk typing, the viewer will then click the door to open it so the student walks in. The student then walks in and sits down, he is now in the safety of his class, bored, but then falls asleep and dreams that he is lost and alone in a dark, unknown place, he then tries to find an exit. The student is scared and doesn't know what to do, he stands up still until the viewer clicks in a certain place - a dark shadowy pair of eyes then appear. the figure then slowly reaches forwards to touch the boy but then awakes by the teacher.


Image Assets                            

• School Boy
• Teacher
• Dream Bubble
• Figure

Sound Assets

• Teacher talking in background
• Snoring
• Soundtrack that increases tension
• Gasp for when boy wakes up

Feedback

One Peer suggested that the idea is good, it's well structured with the main three acts - school boy bored at school (normal act 1) school boy starts to dream and conflict starts and finishes (act 2) everything returns to normal (act 3)

Another peer mentioned that although the idea is good - it involves a lot of different assets which could lead to not being finished in time.

Storyboard

Scene One - Medium shot of whole classroom, it's a normal day at school and the sounds of the classroom and teacher are playing in the background.

Scene Two - Close up shot of main character, he's bored in class and shows it by fiddling with his pen on the desk.

Scene Three - Close up shot of main character, he starts to yawn.

Scene Four - Close up shot of main character, sounds from the classroom start to fade as the boy slowly falls asleep and begins to dream, shown my a dream bubble.

Scene Five (dream scene) - Close up shot of main character, he starts to wake and finds himself in a dark place, alone. Sounds of faint animal noises in background to create dramatic tension.

Scene Six (dream scene) - Medium shot of main character, he slowly begins to stand up, he's scared, shown by facial expressions, a bright lightning flash then eyes appear behind him.

Scene Seven (dream scene) - Medium shot of behind the main character as he turns around, he is now facing the eyes, frozen still - growling sounds from the beast (eyes).

Scene Eight - Medium shot of main character back in class, he suddenly wakes up by the sound of the bell and classroom sounds slowly fade in.

Adobe Flash Techniques

04/10/11 - Adobe Flash Demo

Today we were given a demo on using Adobe Flash. We started off by creating a new file and selecting "Actionscript 3.0".

imported an image of a robot from google that our tutor gave us.

Started experimenting using the "Line Tool" to draw around the robot - selected the colour window then added a fill.

Selected a gradient and experimented using different shades and colours.

we then continued to draw around the robot, experimenting with snapping and gradient colours.

We then selected the outline of the robot and converted it to a symbol by right clicking it and selecting convert to symbol, naming it robot.

We then created a coloured light on the robot in a new layer using the "line Tool" to help experiment with using frames.



We then inserted a new frame after five seconds. To make the light flash on and off we inserted two frames inbewtween the five seconds with the light was not showing. 

Motion experiment

We created a new layer, made a shape (circle) using the "Shape Tool" then selected the circle, right clicked it and converted it to a symbol, naming it "ball".

The next step was to create motion of the ball, to do this; we moved the key frame head to 25 frames then moved the shape which brings up the motion path of the object (shown in the screenshot below).

We then did the same again but this time we morphed a square shape into an oval. The steps are very much the same apart from there must be another shape for the original to morph into, in this case we created an oval.

Text Experiment

We then experimented with text, to do this we created some text, highlighted and selected the window "Modify" then "Break Apart" we then repeated that again.

Once the text is broken apart it is free to transform by pulling the edges of the text.

We then created a another shape so that the text would morph into it, to do this we created the shape and the send of the frames then created a motion tween between the two.

Back to Robot

Here we created a new leg on a new layer using the "Line Tool" so that it could move separately.

We then selected the leg and converted it into a symbol naming it "Leg 2".

We then cloned the leg by copy and paste and made both legs move in opposing directions.

We then scaled the finished robot down to size and placed it to the right of the stage, we then created a key frame at around frame 50 with the robot on the other side of the stage then created a "Classic Tween" in-between the frames.

This is the animation being played as a movie (Cntrl + Enter)

For the next part of the demo, we imported this image of a wall from the web,

Using the "Distort" tool we shaped the wall so that it was right for the demo and what we wanted to achieve,

We then created a button using the "Rectangle" shape tool, we made the button stay on the stage for the whole movie by selecting the button layer then pressing F5 to create a key-frame at the point of where the animation stops.

We added a speech-bubble using the "Oval" shape tool, then filled it in white, using the "Line Tool" we then transformed the bubble by dragging the edge of it out so that it looked like it was coming from the robot.

The final step to add was sound - to do this, we went to a website called http://sounddogs.com/ then downloaded the sound of a bird tweeting,

We then edited the sound in Adobe Audition by making it shorter so that it focused on the bird tweeting part and not the background noises before and after.

Importing the sound file was the last step of creating our own animation, it was very easy and similar to importing an image,

Overall, this was a very intresting demo, although it was fustrating at points, problems and errors were made easy to fix as it shows your error in Flash and you can then click it to find out where and what has gone wrong. But at the same this demo was very enjoyable as we were learning something different and it gave me a good idea of what creating animations will be like for the future.