My Pitch

P7-Task 4 (Create, test review and document an animation you have designed)

My Animation

Creation 

This is My Animation

Test Plan

For each animation is created a vital Test Plan needs to be included, this means the implementer has check to see if it meets the user requirements, it displays correctly and it functions in the way it was supposed to, hers my test plan for my animation loop for my game that is at the creation point

Test Number	Test	Expected Result	Actual Result	Problem	Solution
1	Does the animation function correctly?	The animation functions correctly	The animation functions correctly	There was no problem	N/A
2	Are the colours displaying correctly?	The colours display correctly	The colours display correctly	There was no problem	N/A
3	Does the animation play on a loop?	The animation repeats itself on a loop	It loops at the correct points	There was no problem	N/A
4	Does the image gradually increase in size?	The image within gradually increases	The image Doesn't correctly	The animation text doesn't increase  in size yet	Apply settings to make text change size
5	Is the text appropriate?	The text displays ‘Quarantine’	The text appears	There was no problem	N/A
6	Is the text readable?	Users can read the text	The texts readable	There was no problem	N/A

Review

Animators Review (Self Review)

I think my animation is the best it can be for the purpose it was designed for, which was marketing and advertisement towards the game Quarantine, I chose to design a small text appear gradually getting larger and larger until it disappeared, to give the sense of excitement and mystery. As the game it a horror genre and contains zombies this will hopefully give them the power to then search for the site or even the game on the net to see what it’s all about then hopefully the client will be induced into buying the game and playing it for themselves

Audience Review (Audience Review)

As a viewer of this animation piece I think it will successfully do what it was intended for, which was to market the game to the older audience with the black background and mystery it contains within the animation and will helpful boost sales to the game (Reviewed by - Tyler Pool)

There are more Reviews attached to this Post 

Other Reviews

Documentation 

Every game has vital documentation within creating and designing, here I have attached a file;

PowerPoint – This is the PowerPoint in where my classmates chose from two of my storyboards in which to base my animation around, they had chosen the second storyboard, in where the text becomes bigger, a quote from a student was ‘even though the other storyboard was more detailed and advanced, the easier one would bring more mystery to the game and then invoke more visitors to his site’ – Danny Bates

Task 4 (Design 2 animation using different animation techniques)

My Animation Storyboard's


Storyboard 1

My first shot from storyboard 1 

My  second shot from storyboard 1 

My third shot from storyboard 1 

My fourth shot from storyboard 1

My fifth shot from storyboard 1

 

My sixth shot from storyboard 1

Storyboard 2 

This is my 1st and 6th shot from storyboard 2 

M3-Task 3 (Explain particular techniques)

A Flash file can be quite large so I’m going to explain a few techniques to save file space and save rendering time

Crop

You can crop down the whole animation by opening the flash project/gif file in adobe flash or your chosen animating software, and latterly crop the whole animation down, you can change back ground colours to black and white to save file space, or you could even just cut the whole bottom of the animation down

Pixel dimensions

You can also change the pixel dimensions to make the whole projects smaller in size and physically saving you more space as it will require less because the whole project is smaller, think with animation the smaller the better

Compressing 

You could also compress the file when either rendering or you could place the whole project for storage in a zip file and only open it when you need to, but by choosing to render it at a compressed ratio you would lose some image quality and would need to find the balance in how big the file is and how clear the picture is 

P5-Task 3 (Factors needed for the web)

Email Attachments

When a user tries to send an email with a file attachment to another user, the file size builds up and may take longer to send. This is because most files sent over the web could be documents, images and movies; these files could be between 1MB to 100MB. Most email sites have a limit of around 10 Gigabytes per message, hence why most people don't send full movies via email, alternatively you could send files like animation formats such as gif and flash, movies under a compressed ZIP file because it compresses the file size in order for the file to be transacted correctly and fast, and it could also help with the file size problem some workplaces/colleges have

E-Cards

An e card stands for an Electronic Card, which is basically a type of post card or greetings card that is sent over the web to another user. These electronic cards can be easily created on websites to be sent from user to another through E-mails. The e card is basically in an animation format such as, gif and flash so they can be transferred quickly over the internet. They are specifically designed for taking up less space for when sending to a client

Output devices

Printer- will print out animations onto paper from office applications or straight from the web. When printing out paper that displays a fair amount of colour, it will take longer due to the amount of colour and text that is produced for using on paper.

Monitor- is a type of output device where it will display the physical animations in their working state. For your computer to display animations and media content on the internet, the system or device needs to have flash installed to display various features on websites and Java needs to be installed to play video games that contains graphic animations within

Mobile Devices

Most mobile devices don't have the same compatibility within the device as a computer has or can handle. All websites created for computers and mobile devices have two separate formats for each one. When websites are created, they develop the website in a different format so mobiles can have the benefit to navigate to these pages too. When a mobile device navigates to a website that only has computer compatibility, everything within that site will be small for the user to see and will have to enlarge the screen size. Mobile sites will automatically be fitted to the right screen mode for mobile users to interact on the site

P4-Task 3 (Tool functionality's)

Animation Tools

Frames

Frame – A frame is each time anything moves within your project for example, you would have as a default 25 frames per second                     

Key Frame - A Key Frame is the start and end point of any smooth transition, for example moving a leg whilst running a key frame would be the leg going up and the leg going back down again

Layers

A layer is much like Photoshop in the sense that you layer it on and above the other layers to get a picture, you could use this by having one layer as the back ground and the top layer is the moving animation, you can hide layers change what position they are within the project and many other settings to meet your requirements

Tweening

Tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Tweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion. Tweening is a key process in all types of animation, including computer animation.

Tools Available

The tools and buttons available vary for different software package but you will have these buttons in some way or another within the package you are using, here I will be explaining buttons within Adobe Flash 

Zooming - To zoom in on an element, select the Zoom tool  in the Tools panel, and click the element. To switch the Zoom tool between zooming in or out, use the Enlarge or Reduce modifiers (in the options area of the Tools panel when the Zoom tool is selected) or Alt‑click (Windows)

Rulers - To show or hide rulers, select View > Rulers. To specify the rulers’ unit of measure for a document, select Modify > Document, and select a unit from the Ruler Units menu

Grids - To get the grid option to display on screen go to; Select View > Grid > Show Grid

Guides - When rulers show (View > Rulers), you can drag horizontal and vertical guides from the rulers onto the Stage. When you create nested timelines, draggable guides appear on the Stage only when the Timeline in which they were created is active

Tools Panel - The tools in the Tools panel let you draw, paint, select, and modify artwork, as well as change the view of the Stage. The tools area contains drawing, painting, and selection tools

Libraries

When you select an item in the Library panel in Adobe Flash, a thumbnail preview of the item appears at the top of the Library panel. If the selected item is an animation or sound file, you can click the Play button in the Library preview window to watch or listen to the item. To use a Library item in the current document, drag the item from the Library panel onto the Stage. The item is added to the current layer. To convert an object on the Stage to a symbol in the Library, drag the item from the Stage onto the current Library panel. To use a Library item from the current document in another document, drag the item from the Library panel or Stage into the Library panel or Stage of the other document

Symbols

A symbol is a graphic, button, or movie clip that you create manually in Adobe Flash Professional or by using the Button (Action Script 2), Simple Button (Action Script 3), and Movie Clip classes. Once you've converted an object to a symbol, the symbol appears in the Library and you can reuse the symbol by dragging out instances of it throughout your document. You can also copy symbols to use in other documents.

Integrating Other Media

Flash is now such a popular multimedia format for the Web that it can now be integrated with the other web media formats and programs such as, QuickTime and Real Media

M2-Task 2 (Comparison of other animation formats)

Animation Formats

Dynamic HTML

This allows scripting languages to change variables in a web page's language, which could effect the look of

"static" HTML page content, after the page has loaded completely. this is an add-on to HTML and can easily be changed by the coding administrator, this was specifically made for the admins to make changes and add effects to a webpage more easily for example roll-over text and moving text effects

Flash

Flash animation is a type of vector animation software used to create animation clips. Flash also manipulates raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It allows bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone and camera. Flash applications and animations can be programmed using the object-oriented language called ActionScript (3.0 is the current one we use). Adobe Flash Professional is the most popular and user-friendly authoring tool for creating the Flash content, which also allows automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL)

Shock wave

This format allows the user/admin of the page to add an animation effect or GIF file to a webpage, which allowed adobe to publish their own applications and allow users to see and use them assuming they have the shockwave 'plug-in' installed

QuickTime

QuickTime is a format crated and devloped by Apple inc, capable of handling picture, sound, video, panoramic images and interactivity. there are many different versiosn on QuickTime player, and the more classic first edition is available on windows XP, and now QuickTime is really only developed and used by Apple and the latest version is QuickTime X

Real player

RealPlayer, formerly Real One Player, is a cross-platform software product created by Real Networks  used for playing recorded media. The media player is compatible with numerous formats within the multimedia region, including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of RealAudio and Real Video formats. RealPlayer is also available for other operating systems (OS) and Linux, Unix, Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian versions have been released. The software is powered by an open source media engine called Helix.

Silverlight

Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, with features very similar to Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for web browsers running under Microsoft Windows and OS X. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, current versions support multimedia, graphics, and animation, and give developers support for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight is also one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages which use Silverlight cannot run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there is no Silverlight plug-in for Internet Explorer on those platforms.

P3-Task 2 (Ad's and Dis-ad's and limitations of animated GIFS)

Animated Gif's

A Gif is a file type which is short for Graphics Interchange Format, they are a file that is mainly used on the web, and for web banners in advertisement. Animated Gif's are made up of an animation project then looped together to create a vision of a moving image replayed over and over again

Gif files are a group of frames linked together and then looped into creating a 'short movie' type of document,

Limitations of Animated Gif's

Larger animations can be memory taxing.

File size limitations

Best to limit colours used

No sound

Playback speed dependent on connection speed

Appear different on different platforms or browsers

Remember that all animation is a slideshow of rendered images.

Advantages:

1. Easy to make.

2. Small in file size.

3. Load quickly.

4. Easy to use in webpages.

5. If browser supports images it most likely supports animated gifs.

6. No plugins needed

Disadvantages:

1. No interaction that is available in flash.

2. No Sound.

3. Harder to make more complex animations.

4. Hard to modify once created.

5. Animations are static i.e cannot retrieve text,settings from a file or database to change the animation.

P2-Task 1 (Explain the different uses of animation)

Why do we have Animation?

There are many reasons in why we use animation and here are some of them in their fields,


Advertising

Often on the television within programs we see adverts advertising Bupa, Direct Line and many of the adverts contain a real-life scenario but portrayed by animated clips, for example the Argos advert over the Christmas period featured aliens getting all their items out of Argos and the famous quote from that commercial was 'These are alien prices'.

Company's often use various animated clips within adverts because its more entertaining then seeing humans, and it keeps the viewer enticed into not changing channel and keep watching the advert and could eventually boost their sales to a certain product, for example my 5 year old little sister saw an advert for a children's doll and immediately asked my parents for the extras for a doll 'because barbie wears them on the tv' 

Creative Arts

Animation is also used in creative arts to show and produce the skills needed to achieve a grade for example an IT course is creative arts, which is a specified skill in creativity. They would use animation in their work and much of it for presenting to the class they would use various diagrams and animations to get a topic across the the class in presentations

Entertainment

Animation for entertainment purposes has been used for a long time and recently become introduced on to the TV. This started with a series called 'the jetsons' which was first broadcast in America on the channel ABC on march 16th 1963.

Shows like the Simpsons and South Park, are animated and more recent series like futurama and family guy all all produced by programs and are all animated, the way we animate has changed dramatically, since 1963 animated films/clips have developed, by using more specialist programs to create these animations like Maya, Flash add-on's and many others.


Education

Education uses curtain types of animations to present to pupils in subjects like RE, Catering and CDT. The main reason teachers and lecturers do this is to help the pupil understand simple ways in how to complete a task or show the pupils how something works. When I was at school our geography teacher always used animated diagrams to show different topics like shore line drift, and for the image to be animated to brings the audience to see how the object works in a safe environment.

Scientific Visualization

In science animation is used a lot to in a way simulate how curtain parts of the body work or how to carry out an operation, they show this be animation because its a safe way to do so, and obviously we cant see what goes on inside the human body so we have these way's of doing so. Also this keeps a safe and healthy environment, because if we needed to see inside of a human heart we would have to go to the extent of opening a human body so this keeps everything safe whilst leaning safely.

Simulations 

for every simulation we have an animated source, like for a flying simulation they would have a plane cockpit and LCD screens with an animation of the plane taking off in a real-life world. The reason why learners aren't allowed to just jump in a plan and take off and learn on the way is because of cost and safety. Imagine how much it cost to take have a plane take off every time someone need's a test, or how unsafe it would be having  a multimillion pound jet in the hands of a trainee pilot? so this is the most efficient way of doing leaning, improving skills.

M1-Task 1 (Explain the persistence of vision)

The Persistence of Vision

Everybody has a different persistence of vision and 'eye tricks' this is when an object could be motionless could suddenly be moving really fast just at a turn of your head. This often occurs in a lot optical illusions where the image could be still but the circle is drawn in such a way it looks like its moving.

Well in the animation world we have a device called a zoetrope and looks like the one at the bottom of this page. This would basically have an animation reel inside covering the circle interior and small slits cut out of the outside box and when the user spins the box and little slots would trick your eyes into thinking the animation is moving

The modern zoetrope as we know of was invented around the 18th century by a British mathematician called William G Horner, he called it the deadalum, but it was more commonly known as the 'wheel of the devil'. The zoetrope didn't become popular until the 1860's when it was patented by British and American makers. An American developer developer names the device the zoetrope in which it is known known as today as the 'wheel of life'

Deadalum (zoetrope)

P1-Task 1 (Explain the different types of animation)