Storytelling Through Computer Animation
Assignment A9 on looping and dummy objects
Objectives- Learrn to create repetition through looping
- Use dummy objects to control the movement of the camera
- Gain practice with concepts for the upcoming exam
Repetition
One of the things in our animations which does not look very realistic at this point is having the creatures "sliding" around on the ground moving their legs or "shooting" through the air without flapping their wings.In this assignment, we will learn to animate walking and flapping as well as to move the camera!
For this , we will learn to use the Loop control structure, which is used for repetition.
Your task: (which is to be completed individually, though consultations are encouraged...)
Your primary new tasks are:
- Implement walking or flapping to improve one of your earlier animations or to create a new animation with walking or flapping.
- Some of the Alice characters actually have a built-in method for walking or flying. Obviously, it would be silly to write a new one for such a creature, so you must create your walking or flapping on a character which lacks it.
- You must use the loop control structure to animate the walking or flapping.
- Hint: the use of poses can speed up the process of creating something like a walking function.
- Make use of the dummy object to move the camera.
The requirements are:
- Storyboard: You are required to create a several panel storyboard to plan your animation. This should be hand drawn (not screen shots) and submitted on paper. You do not need artistic skill in drawing--this is just a plan.
- Alice World:
- Built-in Methods: Be sure to use a variety of the built-in methods so that you gain practice with using them.
- Loop: You must use the Loop control structure to animate the walking or flapping. It is recommended that you do this as an object-level method as we did in class.
- Camera movement: You must make use of the dummy object to move the camera in some artistically interesting fashion.
- Comments: For each of the above Alice World bullets, create a brief comment line in the animation to indicate why you chose to do what you did.
- Please save this Alice scene as yourusername-A9.
- Write an artist's statement which will help the audience to understand what you believe to be the most important aspects of your animation and the techniques used to make it. A paragraph of three to five sentences should certainly suffice which answers the following questions:
- Why did you decide to tell this short story?
- Who is the intended audience of your animation?
- What mood have you chosen to try to depict and specifically, what have you done to try to set the mood?
- Are other tools are employed: symbols? exaggeration? analogy? irony? If so, why are they used?
- How has your camera movement been used to enhance the scene?
- Export the video and add a title sequence and closing credits.
- Post this video and save a link to the posted video in the artist's statement.
- The paper storyboards, labelled with your name and A9. You may submit the storyboards at the beginning of our next class before the exam.
- The virtual world, yourusername-A9.a2w submitted to Moodle.
- The artist's statement, yourusername-A9.doc including a link to the uploaded youtube video by the beginning of our next class.