Day 4 (animation) - Goals and Understandings (discussions)

A review of last week included our efforts at establishing 'keyframes' (an 'A' and a 'B') and then 'tweening' movement by allowing the computer to take over.  This is what software does - it makes things happen.  Just as Photoshop (after titling our layers) was able to be brought into Flash and the software 'retained' the titles of each of the layers.

Last Week (week 3):

- Revisited the 'Lava lamp' movies (with the introduction of 'morphing' shapes over 'time').

Generated a two ball movie that morphed in its shapes using the following steps/vocabulary:

1) Establishing a shape (a ball) and creating a gradient to give it a sense of form (illusion)

2) Establishing an 'A' keyframe and a 'B' keyframe for each layer (10 second movement)

*Make the two shapes intersect at some point in the animation

3) Allowing the 'shape tween' (Shift 'select' + Control>'shape tweening')

4) Inserting additional 'keyframes' in the 'shape tween' to respond to a collision

- Re-rendered in Flash our Quicktime exports (.mov) file for uploading to YouTube.com (still)

- Discussed (introduced) Photoshop: When scanning an object into the computer for layers

- Made our turkeys (and layers) in Photoshop - saving as a 'native' .psd file (file types)

Imported layers into Flash for establishing keyframes (sorry, tried too many layers)

*Go back to your turkey movies and work with just one element for movement (Save as .mov)

(This completes the review portion of Day 4) - Take a quick 'break' (at 7pm)

Today - We are going to take our characters into Photoshop and generate 'layers' for use in BOTH Flash and later (tonight) After Effects.

- You can generate (paint) or find (Internet) a background image (show examples of student work from last summer).  Lava lamps had 'no' background aside from color (stage).

Introduction of After Effects (around 8pm) - Save a simple movie (.efx and .mov)

Next week - adding sound to our movies using Garage Band (bring your CDs and MP3 players.

(file types include: .aiff, .mp3, .mp4/video and .mov)