Animation and all that Jazz
Our next task will be to look at the different forms of animation, and how animation can be used to communicate your ideas.
Our main task for this unit will be to use Macromedia Flash to create a 2D cartoon. Flash has lots of useful tools for creating animations, and can do a lot of the hard tweening work for you. Our next few lessons will be developing basic skills in Flash… it can be quite challenging! After that you will beworking on an animated cartoon of your own.
If you’d like to have a play with some stop-frame animation at home, grab yourself a copy of Anasazi Stop Motion Animator and see what you can do with it. You will need a camera of some sort (just a cheap webcam should do the trick, or you could try plugging your DV Camera into your computer). If you do end up making any short animations, please share them on your blog. (maybe upload to YouTube and then link to it)
For an overview of animation and different techniques, this site has some good basic information. It’s fairly basic, and admittedly it’s aimed at younger kids, but it’s still a useful place to get an overview of the basics of animation.
You can also get a free 30 day trial copy of Flash (for your home computer) at www.adobe.com/go/tryflash
