Describe the creation process you followed. (PART 2)

29th of March 2012
With only one more day until the assessment is due, I have decided that I will erase some of the ideas I had planned for my assignment. I have decided that I will remove both sections of my animation where storm clouds will appear and also that I will not add a girl into my animation, as I think that creating these sections of my animation will be time consuming not only for me, but also for my animation. Even though I had no IST lesson today, I managed to get a few frames and a post on my blog done at home.


Here are some frames I managed to get done today:

30th of March 2012
Today, our assignment is due at the end of the day. I managed to get all of my animation done today, as well as all my posts on my blog. I wish I could have managed my time better, but I am relieved that I have completed it satisfactorily. 

Final Product.

Here is my animation to submit for the assignment:

Overall, I'm proud of my final product, but I wish I could change some things such as managing my time better so that I was able to add more detail and frames to my animation.

What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

During this assignment I did not encounter any major difficulties, but mainly minor ones.


Some of the problems I encountered included not being able to open Inkscape at times, difficulties in erasing bits of the animation that weren't needed any more, learning to find the locations of some functions that were needed, managing time, choosing the proper tools to suit the part of the animation I was creating, deciding what format to save my frames in, difficulty in drawing objects, moving objects equally so that they flowed smoothly when they were animated, changing the position of objects so that they suited, etc.


I solved these problems by trying my best to manage my time, asking the teacher when I am troubled, asking for the help of my peers, spending time at home to try and fix these problems and also by referring to the internet's sources for assistance.


I managed to solve most of these problems, and I'm overall proud of my working skills and finished product.

What is the final size of your animation in MB?

The final size of my animation in MB is 1.89MB.

What frame rate were you aiming for?

The frame rate I have used for my animation is 0.10 seconds per frame. 


The reason why I have chosen this frame rate is because if I was to put my animation at anywhere above this rate of seconds per frame, my animation would be at a very slow pace and therefore take up time just to view. Another reason I have chosen this rate to process my animation in is because it flows my animation smoothly and makes it look more effective and quick. 

What image format did you save your frames as?

The image format that I saved the frames for my animation as is PNG.

PNG stands for Portable Network Graphic. This type of image format has many factors similar to GIF and JPEG images. It is unique though, as this format supports an alpha channel/ RGBA colour space. This alpha channel is added to the three standard colour channels (Red, Green and Blue) and can provide 256 levels of transparency. Therefore, a PNG is a better format to save images in than GIF or JPEG format, because it benefits by letting an image fade into a transparent background than a specific colour. 

The reason why I have saved my images as PNG is not only because Windows Movie Maker does not accept the provided SVG format, but PNG images are high in quality.

Describe what software you used and why you chose it.

The software I have used for creating my animation for this assignment is Inkscape. I have chosen Inkscape as the program for creating my animation because Inkscape is very resourceful and provides many different applications and tools that I can use for the various frames I need to create to present my assignment as a whole.

These tools and applications are divided into many categories such as Path/Drawing Tools, Text, Extensions, Layers, Filters and many more. Many of the tools I have already used while creating my animation which I find very useful and are only on Inkscape include:

• The calligraphic stroke tool, which has helped me draw nice brush strokes for the various components I need to draw for my animation.
• The gradient tool, which I have used to create the background of animation.
• The extension tools, which have also been very useful as they have assisted me in creating a better effect to my frames for my animation.

Describe the creation process you followed. (PART 1)

16th of March 2012
Today in class, we were given the opportunity to work on our assignments. Last lesson we were assigned our task, which is to create a 15 second, or over animation of our choice or creating an animation which relates to our house symbols - the Dobson dolphin, Cartias lion, etc.
For my assignment, I have decided to create an animation of a little seed turning blooming into a big flower, which then gets cut off by someone. After that, process will restart again.
Last lesson I managed to get two frames done. This is what they look like:

19th of March 2012

Today in class, I managed to add more to the progress of my animation. This is what it looks like so far:

So far, while progressing through my animation, I have remained strong and have not shown any weakness.

28th of March 2012

Today in class, I worked some more on my animation. Here are some more examples of frames I have created for my animation.





After finishing this part of the animation, I am planning to create storm clouds which will then discharge some heavy rain and will cause the flower to finally blossom, I will draw some puddles on the grass to indicate that rain has come. Then I will create a girl who will come in with a pair of scissors after the rainty day and cut the huge flower down. Another set of rain clouds will come and then the animation will repeat over and over again.

2nd of March 2012.

Creating an Animation.
Today in class, and for the past few lessons, we learnt about Animations. We were also taught how to create these animations and had to put what we learnt into practice.Using some samples left in Student Net, we extended upon the dropping of a ball from a high platform. Here was the result:

Strengths:

Overall in this task, I think that I did very well when creating my animation. I managed to get it done in a short time period, even though there were plenty of difficulties that came my way.

Difficulties:
While progressing during this task, I was met with many difficulties. One for example, was that the link to my sequenced images was broken, and therefore left a blank in between my animation. Also, I was disorganised and my files were scattered everywhere, making it hard to locate them and add them onto my animation. I also did things the slow way, and I changed the time setting of each image independently, instead of in groups, which slowed down the process.