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D2: Evaluate the tools and techniques used to create animations.
In this document I am going to talk about the animation that I have
created on Bingo nursery rhyme, the animation was created using Adobe
Flash professional Cs 5.5 . In this document I will talk about ease of use of
the tools that I used to create the animation. The tools that were used in
Adobe Flash were all used to my advantage to create the animation
straight from the software. I am also going to talk about the technical
aspects of the animation that I have created. I will also talk about the
limitations of the software package that I used to create my animation.
Then last of all I am going to talk about the appearance of the animation
that has been created on Bingo nursery rhyme.
The tools I have used:
Frames
Layers
Tweening
Controls
Symbols
Frames
Adobe Flash Professional documents divide lengths of time into
frames. In the Timeline, I worked with these frames to organize and
control the content of my document. I placed frames in the Timeline in the
order for the objects in the frames to appear in my finished content.
A key frame is a frame where a new symbol instance appears in the
Timeline. A key frame can also be a frame that includes ActionScript code
to control some aspect of my document. I can also add a blank key frame
to the Timeline as a placeholder for symbols I plan to add later or to
explicitly leave the frame blank.
A property key frame is a frame in which I define a change to an objects
properties for an animation. Flash Professional can tween, or automatically
fill in, the property values between the property key frames in order to
produce fluid animations. Because property key frames let me produce
animation without drawing each individual frame, It makes creating
animation easier. A series of frames containing tweened animation is
called a motion tween.
A tweened frame is any frame that is part of a motion tween.
A static frame is any frame that is not part of a motion tween.
I arranged key frames and property key frames in the Timeline to control
the sequence of events in my document and its animation.
I was in a position where the frames were synced with the song, So when I
played the song the animation was faster than the song, because the
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frames were not set properly with the song. It would have been better if
Adobe flash could sync the song with the animation when the song is
added in the timeline.
Layers
Layers helped me to organize the artwork in my document. I can draw and
edit objects on one layer without affecting objects on another layer. In
areas of the Stage with nothing on a layer, I can see through it to the
layers below.
To draw, paint, or otherwise modify a layer or folder, I selected the layer in
the Timeline to make it active. A pencil icon next to a layer or folder name
in the Timeline indicates that the layer or folder is active. Only one layer
can be active at a time (although more than one layer can be selected at
a time).
When you create a Flash Professional document, it contains only one layer.
To organize the artwork, animation, and other elements in my document,
add more layers. I can also hide, lock, or rearrange layers. The number of
layers I can create is limited only by my computers memory, and layers
do not increase the file size of of published SWF file. Only the objects I
placed into layers add to the file size.
To organize and manage layers, create layer folders and place layers in
them. I can expand or collapse layer folders in the Timeline without
affecting what I see on the Stage. Use separate layers or folders for sound
files, ActionScript, frame labels, and frame comments. This helps me find
these items quickly to edit them.
To help create sophisticated effects, use special guide layers to make
drawing and editing easier, and to make mask layers.
I had to face a challenge where, some objects were overlapping the other
objects, because the layers were not set properly according to the frames.
So when the animation was played Objects were in different frames. I had
to resize the layer size to fix the problem.
Tweening
A motion tween is an animation that is created by specifying different
values for an object property in different frames. Flash Pro calculates the
values for that property in between those two frames. The term tween
comes from the words in between.
For example, I can place a symbol left of the Stage in frame 1, and move it
to the right of the Stage in frame 20. When I create a tween, Flash Pro
calculates all the positions of the movie clip in between. The result is an
animation of the symbol moving from left to right, from frame 1 to frame
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20. In each frame in between, Flash Pro moves the movie clip one 20th of
the distance across the Stage.
Motion tweens in Adobe Flash Professional are applied to symbol instances
and text fields. Only symbol instances and text fields can be tweened; all
other object types are automatically wrapped in a symbol when a tween is
applied to them. The symbol instance can contain nested symbols, which
can themselves be tweened on their own timelines.
The minimal building block in a tween layer is a tween span. A tween span
in a tween layer can contain only one symbol instance. The symbol
instance is called the target instance of the tween span.
Only one symbol can be used at a time in a motion tween. If I add a
second symbol to a tween span, Flash replaces the original symbol in the
tween. I can change the target object of a tween by dragging a different
symbol from the Library onto the tween span in the Timeline. I can delete
the symbol from a tween layer without removing or breaking the tween.
This allows me to add a different symbol instance to the tween at a later
time. I can also change the type of the target symbol (button, graphic, or
movie clip) of a tween span.
However there was a problem I faced using these motions because I did
not have full control over them, the computer may not do it correctly
which can result in the animation not looking right when it is being
previewed. However some shape tweens caused problems as well for
example if there is a shape and accidentally there is a dot or line drawn in,
then it will tween that into being in the shape as well which could mess up
the way the shape should look and the way it ought to be moving.
Controls
Control video playback. Behaviours are prewritten ActionScript scripts that
you add to a triggering object to control another object. Behaviours add
the power, control, and flexibility of ActionScript coding to your document
without having to create the ActionScript code. Video behaviours play,
stop, pause, rewind, fast-forward, show, and hide a video clip. To control a
video clip with a behaviour, use the Behaviours panel to apply the
behaviour to a triggering object, such as a movie clip. Specify the event
that triggers the behaviour (such as releasing the movie clip), select a
target object (the video that is affected by the behaviour), and when
necessary, select settings for the behaviour, such as the number of
frames to rewind. Note: The triggering object must be a movie clip. You
cannot attach video playback behaviours to button symbols or button
components.
I had a problem when playing the animation in SWF format, because I
wanted to start the animation from a specific point, it did not let me
because there was no control for it, It would be better If there was a seek
in the SWF format.
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Symbols
A symbol is a graphic, button, or movie clip that I create once in the Flash
Professional authoring environment or by using the Button (AS 2.0),
SimpleButton (AS 3.0), and MovieClip classes. I can then reuse the symbol
throughout the document or in other documents.
A symbol can include artwork that I import from another application. Any
symbol that I create automatically becomes part of the library for the
current document.
An instance is a copy of a symbol located on the Stage or nested inside
another symbol. An instance can be different from its parent symbol in
color, size, and function. Editing the symbol updates all of its instances,
but applying effects to an instance of a symbol updates only that instance.
Using symbols in my documents dramatically reduces file size; saving
several instances of a symbol requires less storage space than saving
multiple copies of the contents of the symbol. For example, I can reduce
the file size of my documents by converting static graphics, such as
background images, into symbols and then reusing them. Using symbols
can also speed SWF file playback, because a symbol needs to be
downloaded to Flash Player only once.
Share symbols among documents as shared library assets during
authoring or at runtime. For runtime shared assets, I can link assets in a
source document to any number of destination documents, without
importing the assets into the destination document. For assets shared
during authoring, I can update or replace a symbol with any other symbol
available on my local network.
If I import library assets with the same name as assets already in the
library, I can resolve naming conflicts without accidentally overwriting
existing assets.
Types of symbols
Use graphic symbols for static images and to create reusable pieces
of animation that are tied to the main Timeline. Graphic symbols
operate in sync with the main Timeline. Interactive controls and
sounds wont work in a graphic symbols animation sequence.
Graphic symbols add less to the FLA file size than buttons or movie
clips because they have no timeline.
Use button symbols to create interactive buttons that respond to
mouse clicks, rollovers, or other actions. You define the graphics
associated with various button states, and then assign actions to a
button instance.
Use movie clip symbols to create reusable pieces of animation.
Movie clips have their own multiframe Timeline that is independent
from the main Timelinethink of them as nested inside a main
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Timeline that can contain interactive controls, sounds, and even
other movie clip instances. I can also place movie clip instances
inside the Timeline of a button symbol to create animated buttons.
Ease of use
The animation I have created was made in Adobe Flash, the Adobe Flash
software has its own tools built in. I found all the tools that were in the
adobe flash software that I needed. The tools I used to create the
animation were the Symbols, the text tool, motion tween tool and many
others. I found that the Motion tween tool came in very useful as it
allowed me to move the objects. This allowed me to make the pictures
move up, down, left and right as it was said when I created the animation.
The techniques that I used in the animation were text tool, this was so
that when the animation is played the subtitles will be appearing
according to the song. The bad thing about the ease of use of Adobe Flash
is all the different tweens that you could use in the animation.
Technical aspects of the animation
The technical aspects of the animation are that I will need to have a
computer that can run Adobe Flash. I will also be required to have the
Adobe Flash software on the computer. The animation I created was saved
using two different animation file types; they were .fla and .swf both of the
file types allowed the animation to run. And to record all the steps I have
done to create my animation, I used office mix which was a add on to the
Microsoft PowerPoint. The tools that I used in Flash were technical but not
complicated to use. I believe that the Flash animation software is one of
the best on the market as it allows me to produce some of the best quality
animations and not hard to use. The one problem with Flash is that it is
not in 3D therefore the animation is not as good as animation from Maya
for example.
Limitations of Adobe Flash
There are a few limitations to Adobe Flash, the main one is that Flash is
not specialist software and is not used in industry. If I went into an
animation job and had only ever used Flash I will find that this could affect
me if I get the job. The other problem with flash is that it does not create
animation in 3D, this means animation cannot be used for things like
games or TV ads. Because it is not professional quality and it has to be if I
want to use the animation in the media. I found when using Flash that it
was well laid out but at times could be tricky to use as some tools are in
one place, then tools that were related were on the other side. An
improvement that could be made is that all tools that relate should be in
the same place so the user is not confused.
Appearance of animations produced
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The animations that are produced in Adobe Flash were good but just not
to a very high quality. The animation software Flash could be improved by
using 3D, the reason for this is that the animation will look more
professional. Also the animation that is created in Flash just does not feel
smooth how the tweens fit together. When animation is not smooth this
makes it not look as good and then could make the audience not as
interested.
Conclusion
My conclusion of the tools and software I have used in the animation that I
created is the software Adobe Flash is good but just not the best if I want
my animation to look professional. If the animation I was creating was just
going to be basic and used for education like the animation I created then
Flash is a good choice. The reason for this is that Flash is not hard to use
and does not take a long time to create animation. If the animation I was
creating was going to be used on for example an advert then I would use
professional software like Maya or Blender.
