Scientific Animation
In this exercise you will learn to create an animation of your favorite Dynamic Earth event. Although they are not meant to be humorous I am sure they will be educational, entertaining, and humorous.
Animation is becoming an increasingly important aspect of scientific communication and education after all a picture tells a thousand words.
In this project you will produce a Dynamic Earth theme animation in Corel PhotoPaint (or Flash if that's your style) .
                              evaluation 

Possible topics

- cross section of an emerging stratovolcano
- the emergence and crashing of a tsunami
- how mountains are created
- how earthquakes occur
- tectonic plate movement  .......one  the various types and their resulting events
- what to do in the event of some type of natural disaster

Use the tutorial  for Corel PhotoPaint to build your animation.

Its good to start with a storyboard first and then proceed

If you want to have a background that is continues in all frames then set it up in frame 1 and then copy frame 1 for how ever many frames you want it to appear in (this can save you a lot of time and creates a stable background)

Your teacher will demonstrate how

  •  to set up your project
  • set up your movie in PhotoPaint
  • how to organize your movie stage and desktop
  • how to save your file
  • how to export your file for use on a web page

Points to remember

  • Corel will default your file to an .avi type file format you will want to change this an animated GIF  if you are interested in putting it on a web page.
  • Corel defaults the frame speed at 5 frames per second (read as frame delay of 200 ms or 1/5 s) this can be changed (for example you might want credits to last 3 s so set the frame delay to 3000ms)

Expectations

  • your animation will be at least 7 s long (35 frames @ 200ms frame delay) and include opening and closing credits.
  • appropriate (limited) scientific labeling will appear where needed
  • do not get carried away but focus on quality
  • your production will impart scientific knowledge and understanding and might also be somewhat humorous
  • have fun and welcome to animation in science a new way to communicate ideas
  • hopefully we can get your files onto the class computer

YOU might also want to use FLASH instead of Corel I can help you but I would prefer you only use it if you are an advanced computer user.

Have Fun Remember that

IMAGINATION IS THE FUEL OF THE FUTURE
 

"imagination is more important than knowledge"
Albert Einstein