3. Features Of The Internet
Used:
Blogger
YouTube
Prezi
Google
4. What is Blogger?
Blogger is part of the google group and it is
where you can have an online blog.
Blogger is very user friendly to use with
hundreds of template styles to fit your
needs. With blogger you can post text,
pictures, videos, presentations and many
other things that support CSS and HTML.
Blogger is an international site allowing
people from any part of the word to either
view your blog or create one for them
selves.
5. How Have I Used
Blogger?
I have used Blogger to present all of my
work on. It has work out like a dairy as
you can go from my initial ideas back in
September and see all of my thoughts,
developments and ideas until the final
product.
It has been very simple to use with the
choice to personalise the web address
and backgrounds making it personal to
me.
9. What Is YouTube?
YouTube was founded in 2005
YouTube allows billions of people to
discover, watch and share originally-
created videos. It provides a forum for
people to connect, inform and inspire
others across the globe and acts as a
distribution platform for original content
creators and advertising large and small.
10. How Have I Used
YouTube?
I have used YouTube for many different
reasons over the time period that we have
had.
At the start of the year I was using YouTube to
watch tutorials on how to animate in Flash.
I was also using it to view already excising
short films to analysis the conventions of short
films.
More recently I have mainly been using
YouTube to upload all the different stages of
my animation. Once uploaded to YouTube I
could then put it on my blog.
13. What Is Prezi?
Prezi is a cloud based presentation
software and storytelling tool for presenting
ideas on a virtual canvas. Its uses a
zooming user interface which means that
the user can zoom in and out of the
presentations and allows users to navigate
there way through the presentation. It’s a
fun and easy way to make your
presentations more interesting as you can
also have pictures and videos onto it as
well.
14. How Have I Used
Prezi?
I used Prezi very early on in my planning
and research stage of this project. I
used it to show the different types of
animations. The capability of been able
to have pictures and videos to back up
my points made the software even
better. You can create a path for the
presentation meaning you can make
sure the audience sees exactly what you
want them to see.
19. Why Have I Used Creative
Cloud?
The most important piece out off of the equipment that I have is a new thing
that Adobe has released and that 'Adobe Creative Cloud' What Adobe have
done is, instead of making you buy one piece of software at a time for a lot
of money, they have instead decided to give you all of the products for a
monthly subscription. When I discovered this I thought it was the very good
idea. Because I am a student in full time education I get the monthly
subscription for less then half the price as a normal subscription. The main
four software's that I use out of the package is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe
Flash Professional, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere
Pro. Photoshop is an important piece for this animation as this is were
I create my backgrounds. I will create them in layers so when they are
imported into aftereffects I can add effects to them to make them look
better. Once the backgrounds are complete I will then import the
background into flash as a template to see where things should be
animated to make them match the background. Once the animation is
complete in Flash I will then export the animation as a PNG Sequence. In
After Effects I will then import all the background layer and the animation so
I can start the editing in blurs and zooms.
20. What Is Photoshop?
Photoshop is a very high tech image
manipulating program with features such
as the ability to crop, balance colours and
tones and format pictures. Its can be used
to edit photographs in a professional manor
with the aid of very sophisticated tools.
New modern features include 3
dimensional type and
shapes, the ability to add in
shadows quickly and the
quick selection tool making
editing and manipulating
images ever easier.
21. How Have I Used Photoshop?
Photoshop as been a very vital piece of software throughout my
project. I started using Photoshop at the start of the project as I
needed to draw the backgrounds for my animation. Once all of
the backgrounds were completed I then started to use
Photoshop to make my ancillary pieces. With Photoshop I made
my film posters and magazine film view. I personally really
enjoyed using Photoshop as I love working in a digital format.
Before I started creating the backgrounds I had a good range of
knowledge about using Photoshop but as I used it more and
more I learnt new skills and my skills developed hugely. This is
very noticeable in the different scenes as skills that I had learnt
from doing the previous scenes have been incorporated into the
new scene.
This is a link to a video of me using Photoshop to draw a tree:
http://jameswestonisthebeston.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/drawing-
tree-for-second-background_18.html
22. Whilst making the scenes in Photoshop I
saved my work at different stages so I
could reflect on the development of my
scenes. As you can see from how I started
off with very basic shapes with simple
shadowing and I ended up with a detailed
birds house with a background all digitally
drawn in Photoshop
26. What Is Flash Professional?
Flash is a 2D animation software created by Adobe. Flash is
considered one of the best 2D animation software’s still out
there and has been for a very long time. Due to its user friendly
layout and how easy it is to use, Flash has managed to beat off
it completion because they can offer the same thing. With its
multi functions such as animation and web development, it
makes this software even more popular. Due to the current era
of animations been so advanced with the detailed 3D animation
Flash does lack some things that animators may want to include
in the animations. But if you want to create simple 2D cartoons
then Flash provides the ideal experience for you.
However it is not the cheapest with a price tag
of $699 it is used for more professional use rather
than just for fun however Adobe have brought out
Creative Cloud which allows you to download all of
their software’s for a monthly charge which makes
it a lot more popular.
27. How Have I Used Flash?
Flash has been the most important piece of software that I have used. As flash is an
animation software, I decide to create my animation on it. Flash was a completely new
pieces of software to me and I had to teach my self how to use it from trial and error
and watching tutorials. The first things that I started to do in flash was to make a man
walk as that was my first idea. I drew the person and backgrounds in Photoshop and
then imported them in to flash were I started to animate them. I abandoned that idea
as it was far to complex to do. So I came up with the bird idea. I started off by drawing
the main bird in Flash (link to a video of me do it:
http://jameswestonisthebeston.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/blog-post.html ) All the birds
used in my animations were all drawn in Flash. As Flash is an animation software not
a drawing software, the drawing features are very basic, that's why the birds a very
basic shapes and colours. I did learn a few tricks from the tutorials that I watched on
how to rig the birds to have all the expressions and different body parts fluently. Then
of course the next thing I did was use the software to create the animation. That was
a very tedious task as if I made any changes to the time line then I would have to
change lots of different parts. But overall I got the hang of the software and I got some
good results form it.
Link to a video of me animating in Flash:
http://jameswestonisthebeston.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/animating-girly-girl-scene.html
30. How I Have Used
Flash:
All these images of Bernard above are things that I have drawn in Flash. I drew the main out
line for Bernard (the bell shape) and then to get all of his different expressions across with out
the use of speak I have drawn different eye shapes and wing shapes that can all change. I
drew these with the paint brush tool in Flash . I found it a lot harder to do then it would have
been if I could do it in Photoshop but the results are still good.
31. KeyframeCaddy In Flash
KeyfameCaddy is a plug-in for
Flash. I learnt about this plug-in
form a tutorial I watched online.
What this allows me to do is
when I have created the graphic
symbols for the individual parts
such as the eyes, within that
symbol I can draw lots of
different variations of eyes for
example sad, happy or what ever
expression you want. So all I
have to do is click on the graphic
symbol and all the different
options for the parts show up to
just click on allowing me to easily
change there expressions
32. Graphic Symbols In
Flash
Above is an example of a graphic symbol. What you can see is a picture of Bernard. Bernard is
actually made up of around 12 different layers. There is a layer for each main body part such as the
beak, pupils, eyes, wings and many more. Within these layers there are lots of different versions of
that layer for example I have around 10 different eye shapes for Bernard alone. This is good because
it makes it very easy to give Bernard expressions. Another bonus of using graphic symbols is that if
you don’t click into Bernard to open up to the different layer, you can move him as one unit but when
you do click inside him you can move his wings and other layers away from his body making it a lot
easier to animate with.
33. What Is After Effects?
After Effects is a digital motion graphics
visual effects and compositing program. It
is used in the post production process of
film making and television production. It
can also be used as a basic non-linear
editor and media transcoder. The reason
why After Effects is so popular is because
its allows users to animate,
alter and composite media
in 2D and 3D space with a
variety of built in tools and
third part plug-ins.
34. How Have I Used After Effects?
After Effects was used in my project to do all of my cinematography
with. When creating the animation in Flash, the way that I did it would
have made it almost impossible to add in all of the close ups and the
different camera shots. So what I did was I made the animation in Flash
on the full background with no camera shots in it. I then imported just
the animated bits separately and I imported the different background
layers separately as well. I imported them all in separately so that I
could add blurs in the further away parts of the backgrounds to give my
animation depth of field. If you look closely at the backgrounds you will
find that they get blurrier the further back the layer is. Another key
feature that I could do with After Effects was to be able to add in zooms
and camera tracks with the use of key frames. All the features allowed
me to get all the interesting effects that you can see in the animation
now, including the wide range of camera shots
This is a link to a video of me using After Effects:
http://jameswestonisthebeston.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/editing-girls-
scene-in-adobe-after.html
36. What Is Premier Pro?
Premier Pro is a timeline based video
editing software application. This software
is very high tech and is used by large
media industries such as the ‘BBC’ and
‘The Tonight Show’. It is a very high
resolution video and audio editing
program and can support 3D editing with
3D material using 2D monitors. Even
though this is very high tech software, it is
still very user friendly meaning armatures
can quickly pick up the skills to
be able to edit there videos.
37. How Have I Used Premier
Pro?
I have used Premier Pro in my final stages
of my animation. What I have used it for is
to add in the music and sound effects for
my animation. Another thing that I have
used it for is to add in the credits at the
end
41. What Is Word?
Word is a word possessing program that
enables you to write up documents. It is
a very basic program to use with special
and helpful features such as spell check
many different templates for letters and
other things you may require. It is
considered the most popular word
possessing program to use
because of its user friendliness.
42. How Have I Used Word?
Throughout this project I have used word
countless times. What the main things I have
done in word is write either what I want to put on
my blog or in Photoshop. I do this because
Blogger is American so the spell check is set for
American spellings not English. Photoshop
doesn’t have spell checker at all so when I want
to add text into my work, such as the magazine
film review, I can check all my spellings and
punctuation in word to limit my mistakes. I have
more recently used word to create my
questionnaire for my audience feedback
44. What Is Power Point?
Microsoft Power Point is mainly used as a
presentation software. It is a very useful tool at
making presentations as it offers a range of
styling features such as colourful text and
photographs, illustrations, drawings, tables,
graphs and movies. You can also make it even
more personal by adding in creative transitions
in-between different slide to make it more
interesting. Another key feature is
that you can print off the power point
in hand out form so you can also
have hard copies to hand out as
well as the presentation
45. How Have I Used Power
Point?
I have only used Power Point in these
evaluations and in my planning a research
part of my project. I have used this software
there because its is a really fun way to
present your work rather then just having a
page full of writing which looks boring. What I
like to do is put my work into sections so that I
doesn’t look to over whelming. Were
appropriate I also put pictures to reinforce my
points to add a visual aid
46. How I Used Power Point:
This is a Power Point
presentation on the
conventions of
magazine film
reviews
48. Graphics Tablet
One of the first things that I bought to help me out was a Wacom
Bamboo Graphics Tablet. What this is as a tablet were you get a pen
and you draw on the tablet like you would with pen and paper. However
when the pen is touching the tablet the pen then turns into a mouse.
This means that I am able to do more fluid lined drawings and shade
faster and more realistically then I would have been able to do with just
the mouse. In my animation, everything you see in the scenes has
been drawn and coloured in was all done by me, and to aid me to do
this I used my Graphics Tablet.
49. All-in-one Pinter
The next thing that I have to aid me with my animation was my all-in-
one Epson printer. This printer doesn't just print but it also as the
functions of a photocopier and a scanner. It was the
scanning capability that has really helped me out with
this piece of equipment. This is because when I have sketched out one
of my designs it means I can scan it into the computer and post it on
my blog. It also means that I can use the drawn images as
a template when I starting to draw my images in Photoshop.
50. Computer
Just because you have the equipment doesn't mean that its good
enough for the job. For example you may have a computer to make an
animation one, however if it has very low specification then it wont work
very well compared to a high specification computer. This is the
computer that I use to make my animation. Its a Lenovo H530s. This
computer has an 8GB RAM meaning that it can handle big tasks and
work with high end software such as Abode After Effects and is able to
render the videos without freezing or crashing.
