Rich Media Advert

Today I finished the mock up for the smaller part of my ad, my client (my uncle) runs a business where he breeds different snakes to try to get different variations. He is looking into going into selling supplies to look after reptiles in general, food, medication, vivariums so on and so forth.

The History of Animation

Animation is a graphical representation to show movement within drawings. A series of drawings are linked together with a slight differ of position or posture of a character or object which are changed between individual frames, so that when they are played in rapid succession, usually 24 frames per second (fps), there appears to be movement.

Since animation was created it has never stopped advancing, this is most probably due to the fact that technology has increasingly got better at a much faster rate.

Believe it or not animation is thousands, if not millions of years old, sounds bizarre right? But in fact it's true, this is because way back in prehistoric times in the age of dinosaurs and cave men, the cave men used to make things called cave drawings, these cave drawing were their way of telling stories to the people around them. Most of the drawings would be of glorious battles and triumphs that the cave men had been involved in, when thought about, this doesn't differ much to the ideas of animations nowadays. It could be argued that these early cave drawings are the very foundation that todays concept of animation was built on.

 

Later on in time it could be said that the Egyptians murals in the burial chambers were also very early forms of animation, although there are multiple images of the men it still tells a story. The image shows what looks like two men wrestling, it could be telling a story of how the person who died, died or even what the persons interest was.

Another example of early forms of animation are seven drawings by Leonardo da Vinci extending over two folios in the Windsor Collection (Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest and Arm) show detailed drawings of the upper body, illustrating the changes as the torso turns from profile to frontal position and the forearm extends.

Even though all of these early examples may appear to be forms of animation, the lack of equipment and technological knowhow to show the images in motion, meaning that these image series are predecessors to animation and can't actually be called animation in the modern sense. They do however show the creators intensions and interest in showing images in motion.

In the early 19th century along came the Thaumatrope, this was arguably the very first form of true animation, the Thaumatrope was a disk with an image on each side, when twirled the two images superimpose on each other, therefore creating a two frame animation.

Shortly after came the Zoetrope, the Zoetrope was a series of sequential images in a revolving drum, when the drum was revolved the slits in the drum created the illusion of motion. This subsequently became one of the first movies, similarly film creates this illusion by having one image then black then another image then black once again. This was arguably the first form of multi-frame animation.

In 1895 technology for recording sequential images on a flexible film base was invented, this was achieved by the two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, this was huge at the time because this meant that animations could be viewed in more places, and if you were rich enough at the time to own such technology you could even watch them in the comfort of your home. Even though most of the films were undoubtably French, they were released in America, which i must imagine that very few people would have been able to view them due to knowing a second language was uncommon.

Cel and Paper animation was next and by the mid 1910s it dominated animation production in the US. Cell Animation was most appropriate to the assembly-line style of manufacturing because it took numerous people working on a very specific and simple repetitive duty. However, in Europe where assembly-line styles were less encourages, different types of animation like clay and other forms that required only a few individuals working on the set at a time was more popularised. This was because budgets were more limited due to smaller sets. This form of animation was also used by Disney in its early days.

 

Records were broken by Disney on the 18th November 1928, this was because they created the very first animation synchronised with sound, which was Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie. After failed efforts to record the soundtrack with bigger companies Disney then finally managed to seal a contract with bootleg Powers Cinephone process and in a session recorded the soundtrack with a 15-piece band and his very own Mickey squeaks.

Then just under 70 years later another massive progression was made in animation, Toy Story was released November 22, 1995. This was considered to be a first animated feature ever generated completely on computers. Disney and Pixar partnered up to create this film. It was also the very first animated film created virtually in 3D.

A significant factor in how most animation are created today was the development in CGI, this was first introduced with the film Dinosaur which was released in 2000, this introduced a next generation of computer graphics which gave animation more realistic characteristics. As small as it sounds the CGI was that good you could even define hairs on a lemur.

As you can tell from reading this article, animation didn't just appear overnight, it was developed over thousands if not millions of years dating right back to prehistoric times.

Bone Tool

Today Julian showed us a tutorial in which he showed us how to animate a person using the bone tool, which basically gave them a skeleton so you could move their joints.

This is what it looked like when i connected all the joints:

Flash for Computer Games: What You Need to Know

Adobe Flash, formerly known as Macromedia Flash, is a software program used to create and manipulate graphics and animation. It is one of the most common programs used for creating animated web pages, video players, and audio streaming applications. Flash files are traditionally in the SWF format, or ShockWave Flash, though many other types of files can be viewed or manipulated with this software.

Now a days Adobe Flash can be used for a number of different things, animation, websites and flash games are just a few of them. One animation that was made in Flash was the bobinogs, this was a popular kid’s show not long ago and was broadcasted on the BBC, this proves how big Flash is if a huge corporate company such as the BBC are broadcasting animations made in Flash.
More and more websites are being made in flash now as well pure and simply because of how easy it is, if you know what you’re doing of course, arguably one of the best websites of the year was made in flash, http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/, the website is ingenious, it’s so easy to use and looks amazing.
As well as websites and animations, a lot of games now a days are being made in Flash, my favourite Flash game, http://www.tankionline.com/en/, has quite good graphics but addictive gameplay and now has over 5 million users, which is astonishing considering the game hasn’t been out all that long.
But Flash hasn’t always been this good, so far we know what can be made in Flash now but where did the idea originally come from? Who made it? And how did it become as successful as it is now?

It is said that Flash started life as an idea that came from playing with Lego, this might sound bizarre, but is it really? Yes I’ll admit I thought it was when I first discovered this but when I sat down and thought about it, the two do surprising have a lot in common seeing as one is physical and the other is virtual, with Lego  you can start with the vision and work out the details of the design as you progress. With patience and persistence, John Gay developed the following LEGO-based design process. It's more or less the same process Macromedia ultimately used to develop Flash.
- Choose a problem: Build a LEGO ship.
- Develop a vision: What sort of ship will it be? How big will it be? What will it carry?
- Build: Build the framework of the ship.
- Fill in the details: Design and build the details of the ship, ramps, doors, etc.
- Test: Drive the cars around the ship and sail the ship while exploring the house.
- Refine: Take parts of the ship apart and make them better.
- Learn: Take what you learned from building this ship and use it to build a better one next time.

It’s insane to even think that such a hugely successful piece of software was developed from such a simple looking method as the Lego-based design process. But this was all triggered by the creator, John Gay, wanting to be an architect as a young teenager, but soon after he realised that there wouldn’t be much opportunity to build the houses that he had designed, not long after John got an Apple II computer and started programming near enough straight away, he quickly discovered that with computer software you can design something, build it, and see it work and respond to you. Although bits of Apple II Basic were not as impressive as building houses, he could complete a project and see how it worked. To cut a long story short after he got the Apple II and programmed his first piece of software and entered it into his school science fair which it did pretty well in, short after that his dad took him to a Macintosh users-group meeting where he bragged about his sons programming ability to the group organiser, Charlie Jackson, Jackson wanted to start a Macintosh software company, owned the necessary $10,000 Lisa computer, and didn't have much money to spend paying programmers. John wanted access to a Lisa computer and, as a high school student, didn't need a pay check until after the software started selling. It was a perfect fit, and part of the beginning of Silicon Beach Software. After the summer of 1995 John and Charlie Jackson wrote a simple animation player that used Java but was also horribly slow.  The duo stubbornly kept at it and in the autumn, Netscape came out with their plug-in API. Finally, they had a way to extend the Web browser with decent performance, this was the ancestor of Macromedia Flash Player. As it grew close to shipping time, John and Charlie Jackson changed the name of their software to FutureSplash Animator to focus more on its animation capabilities. Not long after they grew tired of running a company that didn't have much money to spend, and began trying to sell their technology. After an unsuccessful pitch to Adobe and turning down a bid from Fractal Design, they shipped FutureSplash Animator in May 1996. The pairs success then came just 3 months later, luckily for then Microsoft started developing MSN where they wanted to create the most television like experience on the net, Microsoft then became huge fans of FutureSplash and adopted its technology. They also struck success with the corporate giant Disney, who used their FutureSplash software to build animations and user interface for their Disney Dailey Blast, luckily for John and Jackson Macromedia had a very good relationship with Disney, who also used Macromedia’s Shockwave, which lead to the pair selling FutureSplash to Macromedia. FutureSplash Animator then became Macromedia Flash 1.0.

After being bored to death by that huge chunk of technological genius later on after a little more research, rather ironically actually, I found out that Flash is now used by Lego to sell their rather creativity inspiring pieces of plastic.

Test

Just testing to see if mobile posting works:)

Drag and Drop Game

We have been set a task to make a drag and srop game in AS3 in flash, so far i've completed my proposal and treatment and started my scope of work and have an idea of what i want my game to be.
Will update soon but am going away for the weekend.

Research

In the Media Industry there are many things that need to be taken into account:

• The average hourly pay for a web designer can range between £20-£50, it can be a lot more depending on the client and the media they are asking for
• For a student it could be from £5-£10 but this can also depend on the client and the media wanted but also how generous the client is being
• Set a fixed price from the beginning and stick to it otherwise the client could end up taking advantage and you could end up losing money
• Research a target audience in depth to make sure you are pitching the correct product
• Never turn down a job, if needed bring in professionals and learn from them so you can expand your knowledge for future clients
• Negotiate deadlines that you are comfortable with and can stick to because if the deadlines aren't met, you could end up losing money and reputation
• Budget for software and equipment must be negotiated or else you could end up losing money
• Make sure the budget is negotiated before work has even started as you could forget to include something and lose money and waste time
• Be sure to include travel arrangements, food and accommodation in the budget or you could end up having to pay for it yourself and lose money