Animation Interactive

Follow this link to my Flash video:

http://kzlee123.x10hosting.com/leeflashproject.swf

After completing my animation interactive assignment, I am happy with the final result. I feel that I was able to meet the standard of work that I set out to accomplish, and despite minor setbacks throughout the production process, I was able to overcome these obstacles.

My original plan was to have two sections in my story that required viewer interaction, firstly: choosing the food from the fridge, and secondly, choosing each ingredients as the sandwich was assembled one layer at a time. Once I began work on my animation, I found that using Flash was much more time consuming than I originally anticipated, and that I would have to cut some things out of my original story idea. I dealt with this by removing the second interaction segment, and just having the girl construct the sandwich herself.

I wanted my animation to appeal to a younger audience, so I decided to utilize Flash’s cartoony feel, and use vector images made within the program for the images of my story. At times drawing my images was frustrating, especially when it came to using the fill tool. The fill tool would only work when an image was fully closed, which made sense, however even when an image appeared to be completely closed, it would not always work! To deal with this, I often had to retrace boarders, which would often make my lines appear thick and messy.

The last major obstacle I encountered was importing music files into Flash, and using them within my assignment. The audio files from iTunes worked well enough when I imported them, however editing them to the right length was a pain. Because Flash does not allow for the user to edit music, every time an audio clip was too long, I had to edit it in audacity, export, and re-import the file to Flash. It was like editing in the dark, because I would not see the animation as I was cutting down the file. The second obstacle came when I tried to import the audio files I had recorded in Protools. The original wave files I had bounced from Protools were not compatible with Flash, and had to be rebounced as Quicktime videos.

Despite the obstacles I encountered along the way, overall I think I’ve had a love hate relationship with this assignment. I really enjoyed working in Flash and creating my animation when things weren’t going wrong, and working through every problem I encountered left me feeling accomplished. I am happy with the final product, and by working through this assignment, I am now much more familiar and comfortable using Flash.

After seeing the Flash assignments of other students in the lab class, I realized just how talented many of my peers are. After using Flash, I know just how difficult Flash can be to work with, and I feel that everyone was successfully able to overcome these obstacles. I was also able to witnessed just how versatile Flash can be. Although Flash vectors are associated with a very cartoony look, they are not limited to this style. Many students were able to create various visual styles and moods in their works using Flash vectors and/or imported images. Many students also utilized buttons in very creative ways. After witnessing the work of my peers, I realize that Flash is much more versatile than I once thought it was.