unit 31 assignment 1 task 1

By Josh Gibson

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 1 Josh Gibson

This eBook has pages regarding animation types (movement, masking and morphing), uses of animation (used for entertainment, used for advertisement and used for education), software tools (consisting of frames, layers, controls, tweening, libraries, symbols, media and preloaders.) and a description of the persistence of vision.


This section covers the three main types of animations:

Moving

Masking

morphing


Unlike still images which don’t move animations will often move which makes them a lot more interesting than still images.

For example old video games used what are known as sprite graphics which are a series of images that are rolled into one animation.

(there is an example below)

(Start frame) (end frame)

(Middle frame)


In some animations there are masks that block out parts of an image. For example in so films when a character is looking through a device and the part is set to be looking through the charters eyes the screen will have parts removed to create the illusion that your looking through the same device that the character.

(there is an example below)


Some images have an animation that allows the image to morph into another image. (this is an example bellow)


This section covers what purposes animations can be put to, the three most common uses are:

Using animations for entertainment

Using animations for advertisement

Using animations for education


Animations can be used for a large amount ends and one the areas it’s most heavy used in is for entertainment, from films to videos games animations used virtually every ware. For example in most of todays video games almost every action that your character preforms has it’s own animation, e.g. pressing the jump button in a game will course you character to play their jump animation as well as actually moving up in the air like they would in real life.


As was mentioned earlier animations can be put to a large number of uses and as you would expect they are used in advertisement frequently because they are worlds more eye catching than a simple image, mainly because most animations move and sometimes make noise which is attracts a lot of attention.


As was mentioned earlier animations can be put to a large number of uses and they are sometimes used for educational purposes because people often find moving images worlds easier to remember than plain text or a still image, especially if the animation in question is amusing or interactive.

For example the website www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesize uses a lot of animations for educational purposes.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesize

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesize

This section consists of software tools available with pages on: Frames Layers Controls Tweening Libraries Symbols Media Preloaders (please note that all the software tools mentioned are relative to adobe Flash)

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 Josh Gibson 11

As was mentioned earlier animations consist of multiple images that are played at speed, the individual images are called frames. also the speed animations play at is measured in FPS (Frames Per Second), which as it’s name suggests records how many frames are played in a second.

Most animations on the internet play at 15 FPS and most feature length films play at 24 FPS.


In the case Adobe Flash, Frames have multiple layers (like images in Adobe Photoshop). This is very useful when the animation requires one part to appears as if it is closer than the part that would be behind it in real life.


Controls are actually part of the flash animation you create and they are used by the person who views your animation to interact with your animation. For example you may wish to allow your viewer to pause your animation, this would be done with a pause button that pauses / resumes the animation when clicked. Because the button allows the viewer to control what is happening with the animation it is considered as a control.


In Adobe Flash you can tween images so that you don’t have to draw every frame, this works by creating a start frame for the tween and an end frame that has the state of the final image, put simply the tween fills in the blanks slides in-between the start slide the end slide carrying out any animations in-between the start slide the end slide.


In adobe flash the library is where all of the unique items (referred to as symbols when they are added to your library) used in your animation are stored. For example if you create a shape in your animation and set it to be a graphic in the animation, it will be stored as a graphic in the library.


In adobe flash the term “symbols” refers to an animation component that can be either a graphic, a movie or a button. All symbols are stored in the library.

A graphic is a simple still image, a move is a small animation that can be placed inside a animation And a button is a still image that can be programed to do something when clicked.


In adobe flash the term media refers to certain components of the animation consisting of: Audio, videos (inside of the animation it’s self) and pictures that are in the animation.


A preloader is a small simple animation that shows the loading process another larger animation. This helps the audience keep track to how long it will take for the main animation to load. Preloaders are often found for large animations websites.

For example a lot of the animations found on the website www.newgrounds.com contain preloaders due to the large file size of the main animation.


http://www.newgrounds.com/

Persistence vision refers to a part of human memory that temporarily stores the last image seen by the human eye for a fraction of a second. Because the last witnessed image is stored in human memory animation is made possible, because the frame that was last seen is stored in the viewers mind the remembered image remains as what is seen by the viewer (for a very brief moment), until the next frame appears for the viewer to see, this process repeats its self for every frame in the animation from start to finish.


unit 31 assignment 1 task 1

Documents

josh gibson animations

purposes animations

lot of animations

videos games animations

main types of animations

jump animation

animation types movement

example old video games