Evaluation

Evaluation of my work.
Keeping to the brief I chose to do my flash animation about a wizard who loses his staff. To produce this animation we had to look at certain criteria such as "the three acts of a story in a game", flash software which included a demo using a robot character and ideas generation.
The first subject I looked at was the three acts of a game story, by doing this I wrote a summary of three games and explained the story in three acts (the beginning, the climax and the end). For each of these games first I either revisited the game to remember the story or simply remembered the story but still checked on official websites for conformation. For each game I believe that I covered each game fully by naming all characters to importance and explaining the meaning and story and also including sequels and secrets left in the game for people who had never played or heard of the game. I had peers look at my research who had also known the game to ensure that i hadn't missed something of serious importance and had them give me feedback on the research, most feedback included positive feedback and one negative feedback about the mix up between a character which I then resolved. This research helped towards me understanding what I must consider when doing my flash animation. I akso did was research on previous flash animation, I looked at a animation called "Dead on Arrival" this animation showed me what sort of interactive buttons and speech to include in my own animation and how I should present it.
Next subject I looked at was the flash demo's. These helped a huge amount, simply because I wasn't very good at flash before hand. The consisted of all of us tracing over a robot with the line and then animating it in flash and considering each important tween and action script needed for our own animation. I found the demo's interesting and in some ways difficult to grasp but after a while of trying it I got the hang of it and began to progress in flash. The things we learnt we things such as classic,motion and shape tweens which i took into account I though of ideas to use them in my animation, we also looked at stop,gotoandplay, roll-overs and other action scripts which where essential for each scene of my animation, and then we finally looked at buttons and importing sound, buttons where simple but I found the importing sound much more interesting because using another soft ware(adobe audition) to make our own sounds out if pre-made sounds from a website call sounddogs.com. These demo's where very helpful and educational and I ended up using each demo in my animation.
The next subject was my ideas generation for this i looked at wizards on Google and thought about what style I wanted for my animation. I knew I wanted a vector based cartoon so I had peers look at my sketches and see which one they liked the most and then chose that one, I found this a good way to narrow down my ideas to a final product. I found that my final characters where in some ways unable to animate e.g. my eagles wings where not separated from the rest of the body, so to animate them i had go back over with the line tool to separate them so it was able to animate, this drained up my time on my animation later on. After my ideas where finalised into one product I began my animation.
My animation at first was a slow process because I was still a bit unfriendly with flash but as I  made more and more scenes I became more confident. Each scene I gave full attention and tried to keep to my storyboard as much as I could without changing a few interactive features, buttons and sounds. I found scenes 3 and 5 quite difficult because I had trouble linking the staff and wizard actions together for a swinging motion but was given help by other and soon had it working and also learnt how to do it for future reference. I also had my sound all in sync with the movements and actions that happened in the scene. For next time I think I will try to work faster to get my characters created and also I will research more into sounds that could maybe increase the amount in each scene. Overall I think my animation went as I wanted it to following my story board correctly and including interactions and fun for the audience when watching it such as speech.




Beta Test
I had Jordan Dunstall beta test my flash animation and putting into account that it wasn't finished yet with only three scenes. this is the feedback I got.

smooth animation
good interactivity
good sounds and speech
needs to include a motion tween and shape tween.

I took this into account and improved my animation.

Beta Test - Jordan Dunstall's animation.
I found that his animation had great artistic vector based characters and good animation with the waves. he needs to include more action scripts such as gotoandplay and maybe a button for next scene. he also need to consider adding some speech or sound with talking.

Flash tweens and demo.

Classic tween
This tween is the most simple tween to use when making things move in straight lines or to make objects or part of someones arm.

To do this first i create a shape etc and then make a key frame on the first frame and then add another frame say on frame 10 on frame i move the shape to the side then right click in the middle if the two frames and right click on create classic tween.
Motion tween

Motion tweens are used for animations that have a curve or a loop of some sort this how to do it with a simple shape. What i do is create a shape and then make a keyframe on say frame 15 and then move my shape where I want and I be sure that I have moved my shape before I create the motion tween and once moved right click inside the frames and choose motion tween.


Creating a shape tween

Shape tweens are made to change a shape to another shape in a number of frames. To do this I create a shape, then make a key frame at say frame 15 and then at the key frame on frame 15 create a shape over the previously made shape and then right click between the frames and choose create shape tween..




How to create a button for next scene.
To create a button first create any shape you want and then change it into a button symbol by pressing F8.

Once that's done jump into your button and add a key frame on the frames you want hit is what happens when you hit it, down is when you hold down the button and over is when you hover over the button. I have made my over green and my down black.