Shelby Simmons
EDET 703, Spring 2012
Graphic2 Reflection
March 15, 2012
Graphics2 Project: http://www.shelbyesimmons.me/graphic2.html
Describe what the scene means to you: Honestly, I think I may have totally misunderstood the intended concept for this project and had technical difficulties every step of the way. The animation I created is a dance scene in a dance studio and was created with a theme of “Self-image, it’s in your head!” I took dance classes as a high school student and really enjoyed them, but have held back from participating as an adult due to aesthetics – leotards are cuter on ages 3-16 and professional athletes – not me! This animation kind of makes fun of that self-limitation and transforms a really cute clipart girl into a stick figure, showing that cute, not-cute, and every other classification is in our head and the important thing is the dance! The key thing to remember is that this animation takes place in the imagination of the character.
Describe what you did to build the scene: The background and the head of the animated character come from online sources (backdropsbeautiful.com; sophiefitness.ca) and the background is unaltered in the final version. In alternate versions the background enlarged or spun to give a zoom or dizzy effect or had place settings for each character. The alternate versions are available on my website. The animated character is the head of a cartoon that I removed from the body using tools in Adobe Fireworks and created a stick body in place of the pre-existing body. I then animated the stick figure body to make it dance. In other versions of the project, I completely created stick figure animations. I thought it was required to do this all in one program, so I did not use Paint.net which I would have been much more comfortable with using.
After days of confusion and trial and error, I realized I needed to put each character in a different layer and think of each stage as a frame. I also realized I needed to click within the stage when transferring from one file to another, otherwise changes would be made within the previous file even if I had clicked on the appropriate stage. I also had difficulty working with the library and didn't realize until the last day that the rotation was measured in degrees, not number of rotations as in Flash. If the trial had not expired, I would probably have completed the assignment in Flash. I was unable to figure out how to use the animate settings to move the character across the scene while dancing, although I did go in by hand and alter each stage so the dancing figure floated out at the end.
Requirements: Two images were taken from the internet as indicated above; I created the bodies of the characters using the drawing tools in Fireworks. The scene, is blended in that each component represents my concept as well as catering to my lack of artistic ability. All of the elements are drawn, rather that coming from photographs.
Each character moves internally – the arms and legs move in a little dance, as well as spinning to change orientation, shrinking or enlarging to change size, and moving across the screen to change location. One character appears to change direction within the animation.
My calculation of elements includes: 2 images taken from the internet, 1 drawn body, 1 internal animation (actually 2 arms and 2 legs), 3 changes of location, 2 changes of orientation, 3 changes in size, 1 change in direction, 4 instances of animation/path, 4 instances of state manipulation animation (the characters hop while dancing in the first part of the scene and then the final section has a dancing character float off stage).
EDET 703, Spring 2012
Graphic2 Reflection
March 15, 2012
Graphics2 Project: http://www.shelbyesimmons.me/graphic2.html
Describe what the scene means to you: Honestly, I think I may have totally misunderstood the intended concept for this project and had technical difficulties every step of the way. The animation I created is a dance scene in a dance studio and was created with a theme of “Self-image, it’s in your head!” I took dance classes as a high school student and really enjoyed them, but have held back from participating as an adult due to aesthetics – leotards are cuter on ages 3-16 and professional athletes – not me! This animation kind of makes fun of that self-limitation and transforms a really cute clipart girl into a stick figure, showing that cute, not-cute, and every other classification is in our head and the important thing is the dance! The key thing to remember is that this animation takes place in the imagination of the character.
Describe what you did to build the scene: The background and the head of the animated character come from online sources (backdropsbeautiful.com; sophiefitness.ca) and the background is unaltered in the final version. In alternate versions the background enlarged or spun to give a zoom or dizzy effect or had place settings for each character. The alternate versions are available on my website. The animated character is the head of a cartoon that I removed from the body using tools in Adobe Fireworks and created a stick body in place of the pre-existing body. I then animated the stick figure body to make it dance. In other versions of the project, I completely created stick figure animations. I thought it was required to do this all in one program, so I did not use Paint.net which I would have been much more comfortable with using.
After days of confusion and trial and error, I realized I needed to put each character in a different layer and think of each stage as a frame. I also realized I needed to click within the stage when transferring from one file to another, otherwise changes would be made within the previous file even if I had clicked on the appropriate stage. I also had difficulty working with the library and didn't realize until the last day that the rotation was measured in degrees, not number of rotations as in Flash. If the trial had not expired, I would probably have completed the assignment in Flash. I was unable to figure out how to use the animate settings to move the character across the scene while dancing, although I did go in by hand and alter each stage so the dancing figure floated out at the end.
Requirements: Two images were taken from the internet as indicated above; I created the bodies of the characters using the drawing tools in Fireworks. The scene, is blended in that each component represents my concept as well as catering to my lack of artistic ability. All of the elements are drawn, rather that coming from photographs.
Each character moves internally – the arms and legs move in a little dance, as well as spinning to change orientation, shrinking or enlarging to change size, and moving across the screen to change location. One character appears to change direction within the animation.
My calculation of elements includes: 2 images taken from the internet, 1 drawn body, 1 internal animation (actually 2 arms and 2 legs), 3 changes of location, 2 changes of orientation, 3 changes in size, 1 change in direction, 4 instances of animation/path, 4 instances of state manipulation animation (the characters hop while dancing in the first part of the scene and then the final section has a dancing character float off stage).
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