Week 13...Getting to Work!

Last week during class we learned how to incorporate movie clips into our Flash animations. We created an animated butterfly, and then we attached our animated butterfly to a path. After connecting our butterfly to a guided path we were given time to incorporate additional scenery into our newly created animation. I choose to add a sky background and clouds.

Last week we also learned how to make a frame by frame animation. Frame by frame animations are extremely tedious. They require a lot of drawings as well as the use of onion skins. The frame by frame example that we looked at in class a week or two ago had a very different style then those animations created using only shape and classic tweens. The example we looked at showed a lot of movement and fluidity. I could tell that it required an extreme amount of time and lots of thought. Frame by frame animation is definitely the way to go if you want to create a walking sequence or show how parts of an object move.

I spent a lot of time in the Steel Plant this past weekend working on my animation. I created a monkey character and scenery in Illustrator. I am pleased with how my animation is coming along so far; however, I want to take it further by incorporating movie clips and possibly frame by frame animation. I think that my animation will prove more successful if I am able to figure out how to make my monkey character appear as if he is jumping by making his legs move. I also want to add more to the storyline that I created and possibly add a few more monkey characters.