Weeks 13&14

Over the past two weeks I have spent a lot of time in the Steel Plant working on my animation. I'm one to leave things until the last minute, but I've enjoyed designing my animation so much that I have gotten a lot more work done earlier than I ever would have thought. For this week all I have to do is add in my sound and edit my first scene a bit.

The scenes that I've added are the living room scene, kitchen scene, space travel scene and the dancing aliens scene. A lot of my animation is made up of classic tweens and shape tweens. I used shape tweens to make transitions from one scene to the next. I changed the alpha of black squares to do this. I played a lot with creating movie clips as well. For example, I created a Christmas Tree with flashing lights. I also included the smoke movie clip from a priorly created scene in my kitchen scene. The smoke comes out of a pot on the stove in the kitchen. I made a symbol of a large smoke cloud that grows and gets darker. I decided to make the smoke cloud as a reaction to the UFO that shines its light beam into the kitchen window. I thought that it would be a good way to create an eerie situation. I plan on adding in UFO sounds in the kitchen scene to add to the eeriness. I also created a music note movie clip to add some continuity to my scenes. There is a flow of musical notes that attracts my alien character as well as the UFO.

For my outerspace scene I created a starry background. I created multiple layers of stars to create a sense of death and I played with making it appear as if a camera is zooming in so that the alien planet comes into view. My planet scene with the dancing aliens will include Christmas music that will transition into the song "Cynthia She's a Really Cool Dancer." My alien characters are all done frame by frame. Each motion for the alien characters are different symbols. I finished the animation with credits flying up the stage on a black background. I also made a movie clip that says Merry Christmas with flashing lights.

Week 13

This week I spent most of my time home for the Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends. I tried to get some work done on my animation Sunday night before leaving for Long Island on Monday. After some Black Friday Christmas shopping while I was home, I think that asking for the Adobe Suite will be a smart choice! My rationale-- waiting on all those lines during the holiday season is a nightmare when I can just order some software online!

One new element that I added to my animation is actually a VW Beetle that I drew in Illustrator for another one of my classes. I made the VW Beetle into a movieclip so that its wheels spin constantly. The VW drives passed a few houses and then the camera zooms in on the house in the center. The UFO flies into the scene, getting smaller and smaller, and directs a beam of light into one of the windows of the house. I created the beam of light on its own layer and used a shape tween to animate it. I used a low alpha on the light to make it more believable. In addition I added puffs of smoke coming out of the chimnneys of the houses. The smoke clouds are a movie clip as well.

I also worked on my outerspace scene a bit. I played around with the speed of my alien character's walk cycle. My next goal is to design the inside of the house and create an outerspace scene leading to the alien planet.

Week 12 (continued)

This weekend I worked on the second scene of my animation. Getting my house symbol just how I wanted it was a challenge and I probably will have to make a few adjustments later to make everything consistent. I am still deciding how to move from the first to the second scene. I want the storefronts in my first scene to make a little more sense with the rest of my animation. I think that I'm going to add music notes that attract the UFO in the first scene to make it more consistent. I have a lot of work to do!

Week 12

Last week we were given time to work on our animations in class and we went over how to incorporate sound into our final animation. The week prior we discussed how to create the illusion of a camera panning around a building. I had a lot of trouble with this techniques. I would like to create the illusion of a camera panning from one side of the house in my animation to the other, but because I'm working with so many symbols this technique poses quite a challenge. Also, we learned how to make a mask last week. I didn't really have enough time to play with it in class, and for the part of my animation that I'm working on now it is not needed. If I decide to use a mask, I think that I'll be able to figure it out with a little practice. As for incorporating sound, I plan a converting songs in a few Youtube videos to MP3s. I found a website that allows me to do this quickly.

Week 11 (continued)

I had to make the windows, doors, lamps, wreaths, and trees their own symbols within my storefront symbol in order to avoid the future hassles. It is very convenient to be able to drag a Christmas tree or a window onto the stage from my library rather than drawing out ever little thing. For my UFO I worked within the graphic symbol as well as a movie clip to achieve the effect of flashing lights. Rather than just having the UFO fly across the screen and stop abruptly, I decided that making my UFO hover, moving up and down, for a few seconds would act as a good transition. I also decided that I would like the viewer to meet the aliens earlier in the animation than I originally planner. I am trying to achieve the effect of a window opening like a shield on the UFO. I need to learn how to use a layer mask in order to achieve this effect and avoid jumpiness.

Week 11

Last week we were given lab time to work on our final animations, and on Thursday we shared our progress so far with the class. So far I have created many graphic symbols and a few movie clips, and I have worked a bit with classic tweens. Currently my animation opens with a line of stores that is one symbol composed of many small symbols.

Week 10

Last week we shared our character sheets with the class. I decided that the most effective use of my time would be spent creating the walk cycle for my alien character. I have nine or ten poses in my alien's walk cycle. I also did multiple forward facing views of my alien character. I wanted to create various poses that I could use to make my alien dance and walk toward the "camera" rather than just across the stage. I also drew little pictures of objects that I would like to include in my animation, including a radio, wreath, snowman, and a lamp post.

This weekend I brought my alien walk cycle images into Illustrator and used the live trace tool to turn them into vector images. I had to do some editing in Photoshop as well to make sure that all of the lines connected so that after I live traced the pictures it would be easier to fill them in with the appropriate colors. I found that bringing the vector images into Flash was helpful because in Flash I can break apart the images and proceed to fill them in with the paintbucket tool. I converted all of my walk cycle images into graphic symbols. This week in class I would like to line everything up in a frame by frame manner to get a perfectly animated walkcycle. In addition, I created a dancing alien and a boombox that releases music notes this weekened. I used movie clips to achieve this.