and then move on to more ambitious projectsThose lovely little animations that punctuate many a web page from eye catching add ons to advertisements are all animated GIFS or Flash animations. They are usually small consisting of 5- 10 frames to save download time.
In this challenge you will learn the basic process of animation and then apply this to the design and construction of a GIF animation.
As you may recall the GIF (graphics interchange format) allows for animation and transparency. The GIF is also a very useful file format for the Internet and your file will be uploaded to your web site and viewed from your web page!!In this exercise will put into practice what you have learned about the potential for GIF animation.
Open up PhotoPaint and read over the tutorial on animating a GIF setting up as you go.
Process
First create a storyboard of your project. Keep it really simple but useful.
Create a canvas (drawing area) of 6 inches wide and 4 inches high.
(please do not produce a GIF that requires a scroll bar to view)Create minimum of 40 frames and use the default Frame Rate = 2000 ms or 1/5 second or 5 frames a second ( 12 frames per second almost creates the illusion of persistence of vision)
Some animations can be as high as 150 frames.
Change the frame rate for important scenes and also the Opening Title Block and the Closing Credits(rate at which frames change in milliseconds 1 millisecond = 1/1000th of a second. 200 milliseconds = 0.2 seconds or 1/ 0.2 = 5 frames per second.)
Here is a picture of how an animated worm moves (one of many ways) the main goal is to create a sense of realism inside the obvious fantasy of animation this requires CONSISTENCY and CONTINUITY in the string of cells that you make to create the animation.
Make sure that .....
Your animation has purpose ----- to lead you into the process of creating animations.
Your animation should also have meaning and tell a story ....... students often find a humorous approach is effective. ie. "Worms struggles out of apple, bird eats worm"Create a title page that is duplicated to last for 5 seconds ( ie. if the frame rate is 200ms then you would use 25 frames ( 5 x 200ms = 1000 ms = 1 sec ) or easier still set on frame to 5000ms = 5 secs.
Make sure to turn on Movie > Overlay Frame so that you can see the faint image on the preceding frame.
Finish with a "The End" frame and keep it "on" for 5 seconds (5000ms)Save as an animated GIF > set various frame rates (slow motion or fast) >
Save differences between frames (keeps file size small)
Set to loop (you might limit the # of loops when placed in a real web page )DO NOT SAVE AS AN .AVI >>>> save as a GIF
Make sure to check the save differences box this saves only the differences between frames and minimizes file size
Make the worm creep back to its original starting point so that on the LOOP it will seem to have no start or finishCreate the worms body in the crawl mode then when complete go back and adorn it with a head and whatever else.
You can resize your animation dimensions by >>>
Image > Resample > change the percent
while observing the change in file sizeFinally have an END caption that lasts at least 1 second and a credits page that lasts at least 2 seconds
you are probably the creative writer and director and producer.Now save your animated GIF upload it to your website and view it on the Internet.
Constantly uploading your files and maintaining an organized file directory will make finalizing
your web portfolio a very easy task at the end of this semesterStory board - keep it simple (5 marks) --- has a title ----- has meaning ----- tells a story------ neat------- imaginative
Save production as an animated GIF and then view it in your Internet Explorer for evaluation
Be able to calculate the time it takes your animation to loop.
SOME TIPS IN THE USE OF ANIMATED GIFS
> people often find animated GIFS a little annoying so perhaps set the loop # to less than 6 times
> animated GIFS should be kept small for web use so that they load fast and do not take up system resources
