Assesment ; Creating an Animation

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Describe what software you used and why you chose it:

In the actual process of creating each frame I used Inkscape because it was simple and had all the tools I required on the side bar instead of me having to search for them. I tried using shapes on Microsoft Office Word to make some shapes but I found it easier to use Inkscape. To create the actual animation I used Windows Live Movie Maker and used 91 frames.

Describe the creation process you followed:

I first copied an image of Manaphy (Blue Pokemon) as a PNG file and pasted it onto Inkscape. Using the Circle tool I created a circle for its head, body and 2 ovals for it's arms. To shape the head and the body I clicked 'Object to Path' and stretched the cirlce to shape it is now. to create it's ears I used the Bezier tool and smoothed the object path. To make the eyes I made 4 different circles. One yellow for the outer eye, One blue for the eye colour, one black for the pupil and one white for the eye moving it on top of each other to make it look like an eye. To make the stars I used shapes and filled them blue, to make the swirls of water I used the Calligraphic Brush Stroke tool, the Letters I used the Font tool and the bubbles I used the Circle tool. To create the flashing effect I changed the background colour to black and white for different frames. After each frame I exported the Vector image as a PNG file to use on Windows Live Movie Maker. I adjusted each frames time period so some were 0.03 seconds, 0.2 seconds, 0.11 seconds and others 0.15 seconds. When the frames were together I saved it as a movie and FINISHED :)

What image format were you saving your work in during the development of the frames/ What image format did you save your frames as?

While creating the frames I saved them as a Vector Image, then exported the all to PNG files so I would be able to use them on Windoes Live Movie Maker. When the animation was finished I saved it as a WMV file.

What frame rate were you aiming for?

I was aiming to be able to have around 10 frames per second. At times I made that goes and at other times I had it more than 10  frames a second, this was when I had the bubbles coming into the image saying M E R C E D E S.

What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

Difficulties I had included not having Windows Live Movie Maker on my home computer and the fact that Inkscape always stopped working while I was in the middle of my frames making me delete those frames and start again. I ended up just making the frames at hom and doing the animation work at school and to overcome the problem with inkscape I saved the file each time i made a frame.