1. Parallax scrolling animation evaluation:
Method:
To start off with this project, I downloaded a cartoon running panel, which looked like this:
I then traced over each image but changing it to look like my character. When I had
finished this, I made a background which would be used in my animation. We needed to
use 5 different layers for this background, e.g. Grass in the foreground, trees in the mid
ground, hills behind the trees, clouds and then the sky. For inspiration when doing this, we
watched a video narrated by Walt Disney, explaining his invention, the multi-plane
camera. He explained that the different panes/layers needed to move at different speeds
when the character was moving across the screen. So the foreground would move fastest,
the mid ground would move a bit slower, the background would move slower, the clouds
would move very slowly and the sky would not move at all.
As my character was an alien, I made the background look as if he was on the moon. Here
are my five different layers:
This is my foreground.
This is the mid ground:
This is the background (after the mid ground):

2. This is what I used as clouds, but because it is on the moon, I used asteroids:
This is what all my background layers put together look like:
When I had finished the background and the images of my character running, I grouped all
of the layer in each of the documents, by selecting all of the layers and pressing command
G. I then went to the long road media blog and downloaded a “Safety Cage” to put on
Photoshop. When I had done this, I dragged the background layer onto the safety cage
document and put the safety cage in the middle of the page. When animating it, I wanted
the character to run past most of the background, So instead of moving the safety cage, I
dragged the different background layers to the right of the page. I then dragged the
running images onto this same document. I wanted to make the character run to the
middle of the safety cage before making the background move, so it looked as if the
character was running onto the page. To do this, I got the first running image and put it just
inside the safety cage, I then made a new frame (before starting this I went to Window-
animation and convert to animation), when I had made the new frame I turned on the
visibility to the next image and put it further into the frame, and I then turned off the
visibility to the last image and made a new frame. I repeated this until the character was in
the middle of the safety cage.

3. When it was in the middle, instead of moving the character, I moved the different layers of
the background. On each frame, I changed the running image and stacked them on top of
each other, so it still looked as if it was running, but it wasnʼt moving across the page.
When moving the background layers, I did not move the sky (stars and Earth). I moved the
asteroids 10 pixels across, The U.F.Oʼs 20 pixels, the mid ground 30 and the foreground
40. To make this easier, I held shift and pressed the left arrow, which moves it 10 pixels
each time. I repeated this until it was near the end of my background, and when it was I
did what I did at the start, which was move the character instead of the background and
make it look like it ran off the page.
When I had finished this, I changed the canvas size to 1920 by 1080, which is the HD
preset. I then saved for web and devices and changed the size on that before saving and
changed looping options to “forever”. At first, it did not work when I had uploaded it to
tumblr, so I had to save it again and change it to a lower size.
Am I happy with the outcome:
I am pleased with my final product, but there were some problems on the way. One of
these was that I had made the file too big when I had uploaded it to tumblr. I then had to
open it again and re-size it, but the computer was being slow so this was a long process.
When I had saved it again, I realized I had not changed the looping options to forever, so I
needed to save it again, which took long. However, it eventually worked and I managed to
get it onto tumblr working fine.
I am also pleased with my background. As it was on the moon, I could not use the normal
things for a background e.g. trees and clouds etc. I think it looks quite good using the
asteroids instead of clouds and U.F.Oʼs etc, and I think adding the American flag was quite
a good idea.
I think it could be improved if I had placed the images very close to each other so it looked
more smooth, but apart from that I am very pleased with it.
Comparison with other animation techniques:
Out of all the animation techniques we have used, this is my favourite one. Although it
takes longest to do, I enjoyed doing this more than the others.