Monday September 12th:
Today I have had a lesson with Simon and about how we are going to use Adobe Flash. We will soon learn some techniques and that some will be harder than others. I was also told we had to be able to handle the basic techniques in Flash. In a few weeks I will be producing a 2D animation with a soundtrack. What I will learn is to understand and develop the techniques of 2D animation. I will be able to devise a 2D animation with a soundtrack, generate ideas, understand audience, planning, mind maps, storyboards and sketches. Be able to evaluate audience and response to feedback.
As this is my first day back to college, we have yet to officially enrol on to the course. We will be enrolling later this week. And as we need to start doing research on the history of animation right now but we do not have our computer login’s, so we have all gone to spend the majority of the lesson in the library to do research on the history of animation in there and take notes etc.
I think that it is good that we are doing this because these days, we rely too much on the internet and when we finish our essays with a bibliography at the end, they will all be internet links. And I have found some very useful information in the library from a book called “Introduction to Film Studies: Fourth Edition” by Bill Nichols and Jill Nelmes. ISBN 978-0-415-40928-5.
Friday September 16th:
This day of the week is when we have a 1 hour lesson with Simon. As we don't enrol until later this afternoon during Harry's lesson, we spent the majority of the lesson in the library again. I found even more useful information which I wrote down in my notepad from the book I was looking at on Monday, “Introduction to Film Studies: Fourth Edition”. Then I found another useful book called "Film Art: An Introduction-Eighth Edition" by David Bordwell and Kirstin Thompson. However, there was no more time and we had to return to class so I made a note in my notepad of the name of the book and I decided that after I enrol this afternoon, I will take the book out of the library for the weekend (as I have not enrolled yet, I cannot take books out of the library either.
Monday September 19th:
Today had been the first lesson with Simon where we can now use the computers now we have our logins. So with all the notes that I have been writing in my notepad, I can now type it in on Microsoft Word. The task is to write about the history of animation in chronological order. While I typed it all up, I expanded on my notes by finding out additional information on the internet and pictures of animation and inventions such as the praxinoscope, the zoetrope and the phenakistoscope. This is my bibliography so far:
Friday September 23rd:
Today we have been told about doing a skills journal and have taken notes about Adobe Flash, the program we will be using to make our 60 second animations. Notes such as FPS which stands for Frames Per Second and we were recommended to do 25 frames per second, crossheads for the animation, F6 = end frame/new key frame, the enter button on the keyboard is a quicker way to press play. Also learnt about colour codes like Black being FFFFFF and White being 000000. Also noted about the library which like Photoshop is the files/images that are stored, we were also shown how to drag and duplicate objects.
Friday September 30th:
Today we had a tutorial on Adobe Flash on how to make a ball move from one side of the screen to the other. It reminded me of last year when I had a tutorial in Adobe Photoshop on how to make animation on that.
Friday October 7th:
Today was another lesson witth a tutorial on Adobe Flash. This lesson we learnt about importing audio and video into Flash and that for audio, only mp3 and wma files work and for video, only avi and mov files work. These are skills that I am certainly going to use when I make my 60 second animation because of what idea I have wrote about in my justification document and done on my storyboard.
Monday October 10th:
Today I have started on making my production schedule for the 2D animation project. Then I went to improve/expand on my skills audit.
Friday October 14th:
Today I have been looking at animation videos on YouTube for the task where I need to look at three animation analysis aimed at my audience. I will look at The Simpsons, Simon's cat and Futurama.
Monday October 17th:
Today at the start of the lesson I got feedback for the work I submitted a few weeks ago on the history of animation and the planning/pre-production for making my 60 second animation. . My action points in my improvement plan is to expand and improve a lot more on my mind map and Simon suggested that I could make it on the computer with Photoshop or Powerpoint or Word etc. and possibly do it in A3. My other action point is to reformat the bibliography section in my essay about the history of animation. I got a hand out about how to do it and before this I never realised that I had to write bibliography links and referrences in that way. I just simply copied and pasted the link to the website or (for books) write down the name of the book, the author and the ISBN number. So that's something new and important I have learnt today; how to refference in a bibliography. Simon also suggested that I write in the "I need help with...." section of the improvement plan "Lighting effect in Adobe Flash" for the idea I am doing.
I have been continuing to look at animation that is aimed at my audience, I am now writing about the "Simon's cat" short animated series on YouTube, The Simpsons and the "THINK Road Safety" adverts with the singing hedgehogs. I asked Simon for suggestions and he mentioned the "Charlie says..." adverts which were around in the 70's and are the equivalent to the Hedgehog Road safety adverts. Instead of doing "Charlie says" I found the hedgehog road safety adverts and I'm going to write about them. I am not going to write about Futurama now. Just The Simpsons, Simon's Cat and the Hedgehog Stop think go adverts.
My homework that I am setting myself over half term is to complete this and do a detailed storyboard for my idea. That way, when I come back to college (Monday October 31st) I can start straight away in Adobe Flash on my animation as the deadline is Monday December 5th and I want to get it done by Monday November 28th so I can use the last week of this project (monday November 28th - Monday December 5th) to do sample viewings and my evaluation.
Monday October 31st:
Today I got feedback for how I should do my detailed storyboard and what is missing with my skills audit. For my skills audit, I need to add some more screenshots and a lot more detail, and when I write the detail I must write it to explain how everything works, as in if someone was to have a copy of my skills audit, they could follow the steps easily in doing things. Being told that, I know exactly how I will now word this as I write about it. I have been told that for my storyboard I need to
1. decide how to split the storyboard up
2. Drawing - either drawn hard copy or in Adobe Photoshop
3. Add colour - and/or annotate
4. FPS, flash transitions, masking and techniques
and 5. Identify how many particular key frames in the sequences - light switch sound effect.
Missing skills:
Rolling ball
Motion guides
Easing
How to group layers to folders
Timeline effects
Importing images
Masking
I spent the lesson doing my detailed storyboard, the teacher suggested the idea of making my storyboard using Adobe Photoshop or some other program to make it but I thought I'd be better off doing it hand drawn. I printed out a storyboard template but then I just thought to myself that I might as well do it in Adobe Photoshop because I am terrible at drawing so I feel that if I did do the detailed one hand drawn, It would just be a copy of the original storyboard. It'll also be much easier to edit and manipulate/change the size of the text and colours and content etc. My plan is to now get these done and printed, then I will add some annotation wherever it is needed so it is easy to follow and I am going to write the text below the images on the paper when it is printed and the duration of that shot.
Monday November 7th:
Today I brought in my detailed storyboard that I have been doing for the past week. I finished doing it on Adobe Photoshop. printed it out and I am now annotating it and writing detail on what is going on in the storyboard like the transitions, the colours, the images, the duration of each shot etc. I have started making the first shot in Adobe Flash.
Friday November 11th:
Today I made a beginning title sequence saying "A history of Animation by Danny Barry". It was suggested by the teacher that I make one. So I did. I also learnt a new skill I should put in my skills journal - that you need to use the "static text" option if you want your text to have a transparent background - which is now gonna be more than useful for half of this animation. After this I started to make the first slide. My background is now red curtains with three lights shining on the screen in the middle of the curtains like a theatre.
Monday November 14th:
Today I had finished with the first slide and had both the text and the image of the phenakistiscope turned into a transition of it entering. I made sure the duration was long enough and to make the effect of the lights switching off and back on - showing a new slide - I Copied the layer of the curtains in the theatre with the three lights at the bottom, I photoshopped it by removing the lights & making the screen black. Now I have added this layer into Flash, I will have this up for 10 FPS and then cut back to the next slide about the zoetrope. Now I need to add the sound effect of a light switch turning off & on but I will add the audio at the end.
Friday November 18th:
Today I have got up to 20 seconds into my animation so far. I am now 1 3rd into finishing it.
Monday November 21st:
Today I have been doing my aniumation and have got to 30 seconds of the animation and I am now half way there from finishing my animation.
Friday November 25th:
Today I have got up to 45 seconds of my animation - my target is to get this finished by the end of Monday and have the audio added.
Monday November 28th:
By the end of today's lesson I had finally got the animation up to 60 seconds long precisely. However I have not yet added the audio and I might rearrange the duration of some parts - make some bits longer and some bits shorter.
Friday December 2nd:
Today I have now officially finished with making my animation and I have added the sound to the video. The audio that I have used is the song "Rods and Cones" by Blue Man Group - the instrumental version of the song - and the sound effect of the light switch. I had to make seperate layers for the sound effect of the light switch and the music as it was complicated to have them on the same layer. Now that it is officially finished, I will save it as an mov file and upload it to YouTube. I will need to create an account to upload it and send it to my teacher. I also found a website called surveymonkey.com
where I shall make my questionnaire. I have been told by the teacher that the minimum number of people I can ask the questionnaire to are 6 people. These people must be my target audience - ages 14 - 16. I know enough people who are that age, they are mainly from my school and half of them are my friends brothers/sisters who I can ask the questions to. I will ask them over Facebook. Also as the deadline is getting closer and I need to write my sample viewing feedback and evaluation, I will have to start pestering these 14-16 year olds into viewing my animation and filling out the questionnaire as soon as possible. I can get the evaluation done on Monday. The deadline is 5pm.
Today had been the first lesson with Simon where we can now use the computers now we have our logins. So with all the notes that I have been writing in my notepad, I can now type it in on Microsoft Word. The task is to write about the history of animation in chronological order. While I typed it all up, I expanded on my notes by finding out additional information on the internet and pictures of animation and inventions such as the praxinoscope, the zoetrope and the phenakistoscope. This is my bibliography so far:
The Cinema Book Third Edition by Pam Cook ISBN 978-1-84457-193-2
Introduction to Film Studies 4th Edition by Bill Nichols and Jill Nelmes
ISBN 978-0-415-40928-5
Monda
Friday September 23rd:
Today we have been told about doing a skills journal and have taken notes about Adobe Flash, the program we will be using to make our 60 second animations. Notes such as FPS which stands for Frames Per Second and we were recommended to do 25 frames per second, crossheads for the animation, F6 = end frame/new key frame, the enter button on the keyboard is a quicker way to press play. Also learnt about colour codes like Black being FFFFFF and White being 000000. Also noted about the library which like Photoshop is the files/images that are stored, we were also shown how to drag and duplicate objects.
Friday September 30th:
Today we had a tutorial on Adobe Flash on how to make a ball move from one side of the screen to the other. It reminded me of last year when I had a tutorial in Adobe Photoshop on how to make animation on that.
Friday October 7th:
Today was another lesson witth a tutorial on Adobe Flash. This lesson we learnt about importing audio and video into Flash and that for audio, only mp3 and wma files work and for video, only avi and mov files work. These are skills that I am certainly going to use when I make my 60 second animation because of what idea I have wrote about in my justification document and done on my storyboard.
Monday October 10th:
Today I have started on making my production schedule for the 2D animation project. Then I went to improve/expand on my skills audit.
Friday October 14th:
Today I have been looking at animation videos on YouTube for the task where I need to look at three animation analysis aimed at my audience. I will look at The Simpsons, Simon's cat and Futurama.
Monday October 17th:
Today at the start of the lesson I got feedback for the work I submitted a few weeks ago on the history of animation and the planning/pre-production for making my 60 second animation. . My action points in my improvement plan is to expand and improve a lot more on my mind map and Simon suggested that I could make it on the computer with Photoshop or Powerpoint or Word etc. and possibly do it in A3. My other action point is to reformat the bibliography section in my essay about the history of animation. I got a hand out about how to do it and before this I never realised that I had to write bibliography links and referrences in that way. I just simply copied and pasted the link to the website or (for books) write down the name of the book, the author and the ISBN number. So that's something new and important I have learnt today; how to refference in a bibliography. Simon also suggested that I write in the "I need help with...." section of the improvement plan "Lighting effect in Adobe Flash" for the idea I am doing.
I have been continuing to look at animation that is aimed at my audience, I am now writing about the "Simon's cat" short animated series on YouTube, The Simpsons and the "THINK Road Safety" adverts with the singing hedgehogs. I asked Simon for suggestions and he mentioned the "Charlie says..." adverts which were around in the 70's and are the equivalent to the Hedgehog Road safety adverts. Instead of doing "Charlie says" I found the hedgehog road safety adverts and I'm going to write about them. I am not going to write about Futurama now. Just The Simpsons, Simon's Cat and the Hedgehog Stop think go adverts.
My homework that I am setting myself over half term is to complete this and do a detailed storyboard for my idea. That way, when I come back to college (Monday October 31st) I can start straight away in Adobe Flash on my animation as the deadline is Monday December 5th and I want to get it done by Monday November 28th so I can use the last week of this project (monday November 28th - Monday December 5th) to do sample viewings and my evaluation.
Monday October 31st:
Today I got feedback for how I should do my detailed storyboard and what is missing with my skills audit. For my skills audit, I need to add some more screenshots and a lot more detail, and when I write the detail I must write it to explain how everything works, as in if someone was to have a copy of my skills audit, they could follow the steps easily in doing things. Being told that, I know exactly how I will now word this as I write about it. I have been told that for my storyboard I need to
1. decide how to split the storyboard up
2. Drawing - either drawn hard copy or in Adobe Photoshop
3. Add colour - and/or annotate
4. FPS, flash transitions, masking and techniques
and 5. Identify how many particular key frames in the sequences - light switch sound effect.
Missing skills:
Rolling ball
Motion guides
Easing
How to group layers to folders
Timeline effects
Importing images
Masking
I spent the lesson doing my detailed storyboard, the teacher suggested the idea of making my storyboard using Adobe Photoshop or some other program to make it but I thought I'd be better off doing it hand drawn. I printed out a storyboard template but then I just thought to myself that I might as well do it in Adobe Photoshop because I am terrible at drawing so I feel that if I did do the detailed one hand drawn, It would just be a copy of the original storyboard. It'll also be much easier to edit and manipulate/change the size of the text and colours and content etc. My plan is to now get these done and printed, then I will add some annotation wherever it is needed so it is easy to follow and I am going to write the text below the images on the paper when it is printed and the duration of that shot.
Monday November 7th:
Today I brought in my detailed storyboard that I have been doing for the past week. I finished doing it on Adobe Photoshop. printed it out and I am now annotating it and writing detail on what is going on in the storyboard like the transitions, the colours, the images, the duration of each shot etc. I have started making the first shot in Adobe Flash.
Friday November 11th:
Today I made a beginning title sequence saying "A history of Animation by Danny Barry". It was suggested by the teacher that I make one. So I did. I also learnt a new skill I should put in my skills journal - that you need to use the "static text" option if you want your text to have a transparent background - which is now gonna be more than useful for half of this animation. After this I started to make the first slide. My background is now red curtains with three lights shining on the screen in the middle of the curtains like a theatre.
Monday November 14th:
Today I had finished with the first slide and had both the text and the image of the phenakistiscope turned into a transition of it entering. I made sure the duration was long enough and to make the effect of the lights switching off and back on - showing a new slide - I Copied the layer of the curtains in the theatre with the three lights at the bottom, I photoshopped it by removing the lights & making the screen black. Now I have added this layer into Flash, I will have this up for 10 FPS and then cut back to the next slide about the zoetrope. Now I need to add the sound effect of a light switch turning off & on but I will add the audio at the end.
Friday November 18th:
Today I have got up to 20 seconds into my animation so far. I am now 1 3rd into finishing it.
Monday November 21st:
Today I have been doing my aniumation and have got to 30 seconds of the animation and I am now half way there from finishing my animation.
Friday November 25th:
Today I have got up to 45 seconds of my animation - my target is to get this finished by the end of Monday and have the audio added.
Monday November 28th:
By the end of today's lesson I had finally got the animation up to 60 seconds long precisely. However I have not yet added the audio and I might rearrange the duration of some parts - make some bits longer and some bits shorter.
Friday December 2nd:
Today I have now officially finished with making my animation and I have added the sound to the video. The audio that I have used is the song "Rods and Cones" by Blue Man Group - the instrumental version of the song - and the sound effect of the light switch. I had to make seperate layers for the sound effect of the light switch and the music as it was complicated to have them on the same layer. Now that it is officially finished, I will save it as an mov file and upload it to YouTube. I will need to create an account to upload it and send it to my teacher. I also found a website called surveymonkey.com
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