Flash file evaluation.

I created an interactive animation using Flash CS5 / 5.5 using tweens, buttons and digitally drawn images using Photoshop. The story was about a hero who discovers an enemy has destroyed her city; she destroys him in revenge.

Learning outcome 1:

I think if I had more time to do my work then I would have given more effort during the end of my animation by adding sound and maybe more scenes. I feel that I have worked too much on the first few scenes without thinking what to do on my last few scenes. I think from the beginning I should have made all of the digital images before I started making the animation on Flash this way I would have split my time and planned to do my work better.

Learning outcome 2:

I chose this story line because I felt that it was un-usual. The mind map that I used to make my decision on the animation was the same mind-map that I used to make my decision in my Materials, Techniques and Processes class. As Flash was one of the methods that where mentioned and the only one that we were using in the Digital Story Telling this was the obvious method of animation. Like my stop motion animation I decided to make all of my images digitally and not with photographs. I felt that the nature of my story wasn’t really realistic and didn’t feel the need to try and make it seem real as it was an animation. The original images that I used were drawn by hand and then scanned to the PC so that I could use the paint brush tools on Photoshop to draw over the scanned images I think now after that I have made my animation, I wish that I had actually use photography as my method so that I didn’t have to spend so long on my animation. I like my final result of my animation and have included lots of interactivity into it but I do feel that the end of my animation could use some more sounds to liven it up a little.

Learning outcome 3:

My first idea originally involved a female hero trying to save her city and failing to do so also damaging her own city in the process; I scrapped this idea but have mentioned it in my blog, because I thought that there is no real story involved in it. I always feel that story endings have to be somewhat happy or winning, not so much happy because that is always so cliché.

I think that in my blog I have shown very clearly that I have developed my ideas and my designs pretty well as it involves my first sketches and the different designs that I have produced until I got one that made sense.

I did my story with just single images instead of literal stop motions or all tweened scenes because I like the simplicity in the story, this was what I was trying to aim for.

Be able to produce and finished digital story.

Interactive story production.

This first image was the first interpretation of my original sketches. I did this on photoshop. Using the line tool and the paint brush tool to photoshop over an original image that I had drawn by hand.

I changed the design so that the lasers where coming straight from the eyes... Rather than this image.. Because it just looks similar to an image that i saw and when asking a few people what this image looked like. They said someone crying blood. Which is not what i wanted this image to depict. So I changed the eyes to look more realistic and angry and made it so that there where lasers going straight from the eyes.

This is from one of the scenes from my interactive story.

I chose to draw my scenes of my interactive story because I like the style and it makes the animations look most realistic rather than just plain and simple stick men or something. I've liked doing everything in this style but I've learned that doing this can be quite time consuming.

In this image there is a scene to symbolize our character fighting crime. As in the next few seconds of this image in the animation lasers come from her eyes. I plan to use some sound effects like buzzing sounds from her eyes.. Maybe her growling in annoyance and the guys that she is fighting silently screaming in pain.





Interactive story Ideas.





Idea One.

Act 1- A hero. With a twist, The hero is female.. And she is REALLY annoyed.
Set in the modern days, in a really busy city.She starts to be really destructive in the city and starts destroying everything causing terror in the city.

Act 2- She runs into some villains that start to cause trouble.

Act 3- She discovers a new power and uses it to destroy the enemy.








Idea change.

Act 1. Hero is introduced in a comedic fashion basically introduced on the job..

Act 2. .. Hero gets relaxed then she spots trouble.

Act 3. she uses a LOT of her power to destroy enemy as well as destroying a lot of innocent people and buildings too.

What interactivity?

The interactive parts of my story have included buttons leading to the next scene and roll-overs to explain what the person is thinking saying.. Or to symbolise sounds that i will add after I've created the story.


FEED-BACK

Simplistic.
A common story-line.
Easy and straight to the point.


Maybe with the feed-back that I received that there should be some more elements to add to my story-line like if the hero and the villain has a history and simple things like why the hero was annoyed to begin with and what her new power does.





These images are scans of some sketches that I have done portraying first hand my initial ideas. Since these ideas my ideas have changed.

















Character profiles.

The hero in the story.
The hero is female.
She is called Gemma by day. But when she is being a hero she is called Gamma ray.
When she was twelve she discovers her powers and decides that she will put them into good use.
She is now 27 years old and has been fighting crime ever since she was sixteen.
When she turned 17 people started to recognize her so she hired an accomplice to help her change her identity regularly so she would not be recognized everywhere she went and so she could live a life.
In the story she is annoyed because of some man troubles and starts to destroy things in a fit of rage. Her enemies plotted against this and tried to bring her to the "dark side" in her moment of weakness. She chooses to stay in the good side and in more rage used a weapon of power on them that she never knew she had.



I have changed a lot of the story for it to make more sense .. So I'm starting the story of my hero fighting and adding some comedy by mentioning that it is just another day at the office for her.. Then when she is relaxing at home she hears screaming and has to fight a really powerful villain where it should be made clear that she uses a LOT more power than she ever has before. Then at the end I want make a slightly emotional scene where she realizes that defeating the villain destroyed near enough the whole of the city that she was protecting in the first place.



Introduction to her fighting crime and going home exhausted after a day of hard work. She falls asleep and wakes up in the morning to her city destroyed and loads of innocent people dead. She finds who is responsible and destroys them.



I showed three people in my room my Flash file to test/ watch and give positive and negative advise.


This is the feedback that I received.

Feedback from Salina
Good use of roll over technique
Perhaps state to the user that they can use the cursor to display the dialogue
Tweens work so far well.


Feedback from Jodie
Like use of images
Like the laser beams .. ~ Comes out towards you.
use of shading.. ~ Stuff like that.

Feedback from Connor

Uuum. I like the way you gotta kinda like a .. Uuuumm EEEerrrrr...
How the plane goes by the window
.. And uuuuhhhh..
Uuuuum, And also I like the way that it is unique and how it is designed.
Uuuum. The way to improve it is by..
uuuuh. Be more in depth with the characters..

Feedback from Jordan F

It's pretty God-Damn awesome.

Here is the scenes from my Flash animation.
Here so far it show at the beginning of my story, lasers coming out of my hero's eyes, it was suppose to be part of the humour that you don't actually see what she is doing. ... Because assuming from the text before.. She really is fighting people three times her size..

It was suppose to be an introduction to the character and the story base.. Which is.. She's a hero.. The image of her shooting lasers from her eyes is merely a symbol. Like this is just another day at the office sort of thing.

Be able to manipulate sound and visual material.

FLASH

04/10/2011

Today we where shown the basics of using flash by Marnie and we created an animation.

We where shown how to use the line tool to create the out line of the robot photograph that we got off of Google ( search engine ).



To create a curve in the line or to change where the beginning and the end of the line is.

You hover over the line and hold the Ctrl button and it gives you the option of changing that line whatever way you wish so that we knew that if we needed a curved line we where able to change it to needs be.


We then used the fill tool to fill the top of the head of the robot and changed it to look more 3D with the gradient tool.

To create a sense of shade and reflection.

We turned the robot that we created into a symbol by pressing short-cut F8.


We created an animation and made the light flicker when we pressed play.

The way we did so was by creating some form of extension to the eye and filling it green.

After we did so we made sure that we made sure that it was

the layer with the eye that is selected.

We then selected slide three and pressed F6 then we selected slide two and pressed F7 we did the same again but we selected slide five
and pressed F6 then we selected four and pressed F7.

We did the same with the side of the robot that we created with the line tool.

We selected the layer with the robot that we drew and selected the fifth slide and pressed F6.. This was
so that the robot still appears when the light in his eyes start to flicker.

When we played this back on Flash by pressing Ctrl + Enter the eye of the robot flashed three times.

We also experimented with motion tween and created some shapes to move in different directions using the motion path.

11/10/2011


Today we are working on our Motion Shape Tweens.
First of all we created a shape .. Mine being a Pink Square I clicked on slide 25 and pressed F7. On that slide across the screen I made a Blue Circle, right click the circle and selected "Create Shape Tween".

A Shape Morphing into Text. The way we did this was by creating a new layer and drawing an oval shape as you see in the image it is the the left side of the image and it is pink. Then clicking on a different slide ( Slide 25 ) and pressing F6. Then in slide 25 creating some text of a different colour and of a reasonably large size so that the transformation is around the same size. The text is still not an image though so you have to click modify at the top of the screen and Click on Break apart. This will separate the letter and make them become individual but we want to break it apart again. So we click Modify > Break apart, Again.




Creating a leg for my robot. I created a new layer above the body of the robot and hid the

layer containing the white square so that I could see the photo image that I started off with in the first place. I then used the line tool to follow the line of the image to create the leg to look identical to the starting image.

To create the two legs as a motion tween to look like they are swinging like real legs.

I changed the rotation point in the leg to the top of the leg so that when I rotated the image the leg would swing. I then went to slide 25 and pressed F6. on slide 25 I copied the leg and made it to swing the opposite way. In between the two slides I right-clicked and selected Classic tween.

Be able to capture sound and visual material

Be able to plan a digital story

Evaluation Research of the interactive story ‘Hotel’.

I feel that the narrative in this digital story wasn’t really clear in what was really going on till you start to watch.. Or read them all. In the first episode of the story I was a little confused as to what was really going on, but after exploring all the scroll overs and pressing all the buttons in the story I did get an idea.

I didn’t watch/read this interactive animation with the sound on as we were in the learning environment so I haven’t yet to know if there are any sounds in there to talk about. I would say that the animation in this digital story is well done and it is understandable once you get a grasp of the story-line . The animations do in a way help the story-line as it was about some form of drug a doctor gives to his victims and some of the animations in this digital story did seem to depict hallucinations of some form.

The interactivity in this story in a way gave you something to do while you read and it also had small tangents that let you to other animations and some of which were quite funny to watch at times. All-in-all the animations themselves were quite weird but that was the story-line and I find that that it fits criteria really well.

Evaluation Research of the interactive story ‘Dead on arrival’.

I liked this interactive story, because it makes sense and it has stages to get what is happening. The other one that I researched " Hotel " made no sense at all to me. But in this interactive story it is very explanatory and there are also separate scenes in between to find clues and basically get a grasp of the story and understand the small things that make this story, well... the story.. There where somethings that where a little off with this interactive story but they where not crucial in my criticism. And that was when the scene changed there where some scenes that started as soon as they where clicked on and this was a little awkward for me to see as I wasn't aware that moving the mouse changed the view in the screen also when I did move my mouse it didn't always move the view of the screen. I liked the panoramic scenes because they where interactive and by moving your mouse you could navigate from left to right on the image.

This is an explanation of a three part story. ( Beginning, Middle, End )

NARRATIVE STRUCTURES

ACT 1
The beginning (also known as the set-up or exposition) which introduces:
•The setting (the place and time)
•Some or all of the main characters
•The general conflict that the story focuses on
•The tone of the narrative (humorous, suspenseful etc.)

ACT 2
The middle of the story which is driven forward by conflict or complications:
The conflict arises from the plot point and force the main character out of the “normal” in order to solve the problem or issue
As each problem is solved this should lead to a new set of complications which keeps the action rising to the climax of the story

ACT 3
(known as the resolution or denouement)
•In this section the meaning of the story is revealed
•This section is usually shorter than the others
•Here, summarize the lessons learnt/the moral of the story
•The main character returns to “normal”
•Tie up loose ends as quickly as possible
•A story twist or a suggestion of a sequel can be introduced

Halo 3 Narrative Research.

ACT 1

Place and Time

Halo 3 is set in a science fiction setting during the years 2552 and 2553.

Halos are big ring-worlds constructed by forerunners as a weapon to destroy the flood. The rings were designed to destroy all life in the galaxy so the flood could not feed. After these rings were activated the forerunners disappeared.

Main characters

Master Chief Spartan 117

Arbiter

Cortana

Johnson

343 Guilty Spark

Names above include links toWiki Character profiles.

ACT 2

Plot/Conflict

In the year 2525, a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant discover humanity spread across dozens of interstellar colonies. The Covenant declare humanity an affront to their gods and begin destroying colonies by bombarding the planet with a barrage of plasma, turning its surface into glass. Despite efforts to keep the Covenant from finding further human worlds, a Covenant fleet discovers Earth during Halo 2.

In Halo: Combat Evolved, a small human ship fleeing the Covenant stumbled upon one of these ring-worlds, Installation 04. The humans manage to destroy the ring, stopping the Flood; the Covenant, unaware of the destructive nature of the rings, attempt to fire another ring during Halo 2 in order to fulfil their religious prophecy. One race in the Covenant, the Elites, learn the truth about the rings, and join forces with humanity in order to stop the firing of the ring. Though they are successful, the unexpected shutdown of the installation triggers a failsafe protocol—all the rings are ready to fire from one location, referred to as the Ark. Still oblivious to the true nature of the rings, the Covenant High Prophet of Truth and the remaining loyalist Covenant proceed to head to Earth, where they believe the Ark is buried.

Halo 3's protagonist is the Master Chief, a surgically-enhanced super-soldier known as a "Spartan". The Chief fights alongside the Arbiter, a disgraced Covenant Elite commander. Supporting characters from previous games return, including human soldiers Avery Johnson and Miranda Keyes. The Forerunner artificial intelligence 343 Guilty Spark, who tries and fails to stop the Master Chief from destroying its ring-world. Also playing a role in the story is the Flood entity known as the "Gravemind". In Halo 2, this leader of the Flood escapes from confinement on Halo, invades the Covenant mobile city of High Charity, and captures Cortana, a human-created artificial intelligence.

NARRATIVE

I would say the narrative in this game would give a little suspense because there new things that you discover all the time as the main character Master Chief or .. You ( The Player of the Main Character ) you do lots of different tasks or missions as a part of the story, at the end of the mission you get to see more and more of the story. It makes you want to complete the mission so that you get to watch more.

As the player you are met more suspense after passing a mission as you are met with more things. In Halo Three you go up against Brutes and Grunts nearer the beginning of the game while being supported by your human soldiers and Arbiter the Elite. But Cortana gets captured by *The Flood and the player has to face the flood to get her back. *The flood are a parasitic species.

ACT 3

At the end of the game after fighting The Flood and Save The A.I Cortana There is a driving sequence and you have to avoid the platforms that are falling so that you can pass the levels and enter a ship with Cortana.

This information was written with researched information from Wikipedia and also my own general knowledge of the game.