D2- Justify the choice of animation technique for the frame rate and duration.

Justify the choice of technique for the frame rate and duration.

I decided that the frame rate for my animation should be 12 frames per second as I have been creating a very basic animation that does not need very fluent motion for it to be affective. If I had decided to animate at 24 frames per second, I would have needed to animate on 2s, therefore it was easier to create the animation at 12 frames per second.

The animation is also only 32 seconds long. I decided to make my animation this length as it is specified in the brief that the animation needs to be between 30-90 seconds. The brief also specifies that the animation will be used as a loading screen on the app and on the website, usually, when apps and website pages load, it does not take much longer than 30 seconds. Therefore, I made the animation this length so that it would fit the brief, but also be the best length so not to bore the audience while their app/web page is loading.

M3- Optimise the content for use in the final animation.

Optimise the content for use in the final animation.

After showing the animation to some peers, I was shown some ways in which I could improve my animation so that it could be made better.

One thing that was pointed out about my animation that could be improved was that the layer with the left hand arm is positioned on top of the layers with the juggling balls meaning that when they fly past it, some of the go in-front of the ball which looks weird. This was an easy change as all I had to do was to move the layer containing the left hand arm so that it was underneath the layers with the juggling balls in them.

Another way in which I can optimise the animation is to add music as the animation looks strange without it, especially as my animation features music notes. To do this, I imported the film into iMovie and added the music that I wanted. I decided to use the song Für Elise by Beethoven as not only is the song copyright free but it is also the music that I used in the animation. The notes that are travelling up the Steve is the music to Für Elise. 

Another thing that I was told about that needed improving was that the animation ended quite abruptly. To make this change, I added some more frames at the end of the animation, where nothing was moving to allow the audience to be able to realise that the animation had finished.

P6- Create and edit the animation content in line with the plan.

Create and edit the animation content in line with the plan.

I created the animation in Adobe Animate. It took approximately 10 hours to complete. After the planning stage, the first thing that I had to do was to create the character in animate.

The character is a man with a music note (quaver) for a head. The character is made out of several; different vector shapes on different layers so that they could be individually moved. One layer being the head, another being the body, one the left arm, another the right... The different parts of the body were created on separate layers so that they could they could be moved if I desired them to. The different elements of the man were created with vector shapes such as squares and circles and lines. Some parts of the body, for example the hands and the area of background that is seen between the legs, I drew with the brush tool as the vector shapes could not give me the shape that I wanted.

 For the background, I used a copyright free image from 'Vecteezy'. But the whole picture did not fit in the stage, so I positioned it how I wanted it and used the 'Clip Content Outside of Stage' tool so that I would only see the part of the background that I wanted to use. Which made animating easier as I did not get confused about what part of the background was on the stage and that bit wasnt.

 For layers of the animation that don't move for the duration of the animation such as the background and the man with a music note for a head, I copied and pasted each individual frame for that layer for the duration of the animation (just over 31 seconds) which is about 372 frames of exactly the same thing on the stage for that layer.

 For the music notes that crawl up the stave, each different colour of notes had to be on different layers, meaning I had one layer for all the blue notes, another for the pink notes, etc... Each time I needed to input a new note of a particular colour, I had to add a new keyframe and copy what I had drawn for the past bit of the note and draw on top of it. The average number of frames it took to complete a music note was four.

When animating the juggling balls, I used the onion skins tool, so that I could see where the ball was in the previous frame so that I could judge where it could go in the next frame. For each ball, I animated the balls moving at different speeds as a real juggler would have the balls moving at slightly different speeds. To do this, I used a fewer number of frames to get from one hand to the other for a particular ball. Another thing I did to increase the believability of the juggling was to have the balls turn as they flew through the air to give the illusion that they were spinning. To do this I rotated the balls in a specific way so that they would like like they were turning.

For each new frame, I would copy the frame from before it, and would then position the duplicate ball with the arrow tool so that it is in the position that I want it to be in. Then copy this frame and paste it into the next frame and repeat this until I had the ball flying through the air.

When it came to creating the musical wind, I used a similar technique to animate it, but it was slightly different. I would copy each frame, and paste it into the next frame, But instead of using the arrow tool to move my object to where I wanted it, instead, I used the brush tool to continue the drawing that I was drawing so that I looked like the wind was growing and wrapping around the man with a music note for a head.

I did the same thing when I was drawing the Steve, copying and pasting the frames and then continuing the drawings that I was creating with the brush tool.

When it came to creating the music notes, I used the brush tool and drew one part of the note per frame so that it took me about 3-4 frames to draw the note depending on the type of the note.

P5- Create the content for the animation.

Create the content for the animation.

I have created the animation and exported it in two different file sizes, one for a mobile device and one to fit on a website. I did this as the brief specified that I needed to have the animation be compatible on a mobile/tablet app as well as for the website. I also included an easily recognisable character as the brief specified that I needed to have a character that would be able to be on all the other promotional material for the festival. As the festival is for street performers, musicians and circus performers, I made sure I incorporated all of these into my animation through different elements of the animation; for example, I chose for the background to be in a park as this would be a location in which street performers would perform.