CONCEPT

So in regards to my animate project, I was originally going to attempt to do something based off another IP but I can’t really  exactly do that unless it’s interpreted in a way the owner of said IP would generally never do.  So in the end, I decided to do a simple fish swimming in the ocean.  But the challenge in planning was how exactly to make the fish stop as this animation has to stop after the user preforms the basic action of clicking, or to be specific, clicking on a particular object. Reflecting this to a fish in the ocean, I had to ask the question, what would make a fish in the ocean stop moving.  I was originally thinking of the idea of a predator, like a shark. But in reality that wouldn’t just stop the fish it would also make it disappear since a predator would eat them. But it popped into my head, what about an electric eel? Electric eels are always full of electricity, and the electricity in an eel can obviously shock you if you touch them, and it’s even worse since in water, electricity goes crazy.  Would this also apply to if a fish were to touch them? Likely because they are organisms with water in their body.   And since a fish is so small, it is pretty much positive they wouldn’t really survive a shock from an electric eel. They would stop moving which would be exactly what I’m looking for in regards to what would make a fish stop swimming.

ITERATION

Development is going pretty smoothly. Between the process of starting it and the time I’m meeting up with the professor to animate it, knowing that I already have the sufficient skill, I feel that this whole animation can be done within the meeting itself.  In this scenario, prior to the meeting, the main stage I had to do was create assets, and set them up in the main file. I also knew I had to set each of them under a movie clip, which wasn’t hard as it was basically labeling them to efficiently animate them. However, there was a suggestion in regards to the fish asset having two halves make one animating object. That I had no idea how to do real well because I mainly only animated individual objects, not animating two individual objects to make one.

Here’s what I have so far.

SYNTHESIS

As predicted, the animation project was completed by the end of the meeting. The final result of it was ready to be uploaded and I am actually pleased by it. Especially since there was a little bit of game element going on with it as the the mouse needed the eel to click on the hook for the fish to start moving again but the hitbox more or less was actually small and moving at the same time making it pretty tough to actually click on it for the action of the fish moving again to be triggered.  I know full well that to apply even more to actually have sort of an actual gaming vibe, the eel could theoretically grab the hook and drag it around, and when the eel dragging on the hook touches the fish, then the fish would start moving again.  However, that is not going to be happening for this project obviously since that will require ALOT of coding to execute the process.

Link for final result:

http://personal.psu.edu/tva5277/animation%20final/fishTA.html

Exercise Reflections

Well obviously this exercise is to help prepare for the project in 3.3 regarding an animation box. Designing and maneuvering around here for me personally, is not that big of a deal, because more or less I used to have field days with Animate and Flash back in high school, this was more or less just trying to wet my feet again after having not used it for 4 years when writing this. Between then and now was me trying to get all the requisites from a community college to transfer with the most efficient cost path possible.  Though the interactivity section of the exercise turned into a little challenge. I actually made a little game simulation back in high school and won 3rd prize at a computer fair(though I feel I was one of the only 3 to entered an animation so … sometimes I feel it didn’t count). Though I did learn something I didn’t really learn regarding the script, as when it came to maneuvering the script for the computer fair project back in school, I played with a ton of tutorials, and I never really realized there were links to just insert pieces of code directly into the script in the first place. Maneuvering the script back in high school was entirely self-taught actually, I messed around with it myself, the course didn’t really provide a tutorial on it. So I guess this exercise helped give me a little of concrete knowledge on the script in Animate at least.

http://personal.psu.edu/tva5277/animation%20exercise/3.1/rhythm.html

http://personal.psu.edu/tva5277/animation%20exercise/3.3/interactivity.html

https://pennstateoffice365-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/tva5277_psu_edu/ElkHXroJf29IrizPwDalgn8Bfp0wHHbOZ3R1FwNdgGe_1Q?e=p6Ld2E

Reference Reflections

That was exhausting doing all those lessons at Code Academy.  But wow I feel like I am going to forget about most of the stuff I learned even if I got plenty of exposure. What did I learn was probably the fact I could make math equations essentially through different kinds of code. Thinking from a video game programming perspective, that could easily be applied to a health bar of sorts like for a role-playing game. But still, I am more of a designer then a programmer. But I needed exposure, and I was exposed. Though this post happened a little late along with other stuff I already posted for grading, I am not really bothered because when it comes to video game production, delay is never really a bad thing. If a game gets delayed, it usually means it’s going to get more extra time to be really good. If it turns out being released rushed, it will likely always be bad. As Shigeru Miyamoto(creator of Mario) said, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” I should also know that this blog should not be rushed either so I will continue writing this.  What I basically learned from Code Academy for me is that JavaScript feels a lot more different then HTML. HTML felt more easier for me mainly because the main structure with the webpage applied almost if not through the same structure as the HTML code is laid out. JavaScript on the other hand is less about laying out the design and structure but rather the actual programming itself. To put it simply, you are trying to program the software and AI itself rather than the layout of a webpage. Brackets easily tell where everything gets coded when it comes to HTML, so stuff is laid out at least in some sort of particular fashion as previously stated. JavaScript on the other hand utilizes terms to tell the software what action it should do.  However, they aren’t exactly the easiest to understand as the programming doesn’t really portray the code in any particular structure even if the programmer were to try to do so.  It’s just how JavaScript is typed. The programming structure for JavaScript doesn’t need much structure as it really only cares about the actions, not the interface itself.

https://pennstateoffice365-my.sharepoint.com/:i:/g/personal/tva5277_psu_edu/ESti_zJ0zmFJmPuhzvQYCdEB5-OQMcbb619XW8ulnV2XQQ?e=LZiG5n

SYNTHESIS

The outcome of my project turned out pretty decent for me.  Well, the animation turned out to have white bleeding and I haven’t really learned from the tutorials on how to remove that. Gifs are notorious in animation quality as they are not supposed to be heavily invested animations for a tv show or movie but just a simple animation to deliver a certain message to a viewer. Jokes and memes posted on social media obviously works wonders with these. Though I do feel some letters should be redesigned differently as they don’t come off as particular letters in mind.  P doesn’t really scream the letter P and looks really just like a normal plant. There’s also Q which turned into a challenge figuring out what object that starts with Q to correspond as the theme for Q.  I also wonder about coloring them with a scribbling texture like how kids will generally be drawing and scribbling with crayons which makes it easily more translatable to them. So looking back despite this being complete, I still feel there are othr options I could’ve utilized. I feel game designers and perhaps animators might end up feeling the same way perhaps, or in certain sceneraios they are satisfied. I don’t know. It is pretty normal for artists to not feel their work is completed despite it officially being completed and precieved as complete.

https://pennstateoffice365-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/tva5277_psu_edu/Ekv3_LmE9CZGjMWGW1wlSRYBD4s7y7Lut71Pi0xC5nOr0A?e=JwuovE