Case #3

For our third case we basically have to combine the story, animation and characters into one. We have been told to create individual scenes where our story can pan out through the environment and backgrounds we see fit.

Heavily inspired by the megaman series I have included a lot of text and black frames in my storytelling. It seems kind of dull without the classic 8-bit styled soundtrack, but hey! chill, I'm working on it.

Despite being time consuming, I think this case went well. I just kept the animating simple and fast-paced. I messed around with some different effects such as glow and blur to give the different backgrounds some debth and focus. I have used six individual scenes but only three of them include enviroment with backgrounds moving at different speeds. So, to be able to give a proper introduction to the story I felt I needed som additional scenes.

In the first scene we are introduced to the world of Super-Chillmode-Town. Consisting of five backgrounds and forgrounds the "camera" moves vertically untill we see the evil lab of dr. Nastyface. I could make the fact that the tower actually is Nastyfaces evil lab more obvious by putting a logo on it or something.

The second and third scene shows us Nastyface pushing a button, unleashing his weapon upon Super-Chillmode-Town. Instead of animating explosions for scene four, I simply used drop shadow and color adjusting to create an illusion of one big bang about to happen. I tried using the same effect towards the end of scene five and the beginning of scene six, where we are introduced to the protagonist. The animation of the protagonist are copies of movie clip symbols from case #2.

I wasn`t sure about how i would draw the pixelated shapes for the backgrounds in scene six, but figured out rectangle tool and line tool was the way to go. Its not exactly pixels but it gives the feel of somthing less detailed.

Case #2 mostly involves animation. We were told to create a walking animation, jumping animation and an idle animation for our character using Flash.

For the walking animation I used animated footsteps as a symbol, mostly to reduce the number of layers and frames, but also to make it loop on its own. At first it did not look very fluent at all, but after some tweeking and editing it started to look better. I`m not saying it looks good, but it looks a lot better. I originally started animating with "bonetool" but quickly came to realize that I hate "bonetool", and ended up tweening the walk animation.

For the jumping animation I combined frame by frame with tween. The feet and the eyes are mostly done using frame by frame animation, while the torso, head and shoes are tweened. I have not done any inbetweens for this animation, hence the laggy feel of the jump.

The idle animation for the character may be a bit too simple. I am going to animate more than just breathing and blinking eventually.

Case #1

In my first "case" I have been asked to come up with an idea for my project, a project that eventually will form into an "interactive experience" In this case a computer-game.

I have also been asked to design and draw the main character for my idea and storyline. The design of the character will be done in Flash, and it will be designed in a way that will make it convenient for me when I start animating.

The Idea

The concept of the idea is to combine the simplicity, nostalgia and beauty of old-school pixelated gaming and the vector-based graphic we get from flash. I am not sure how this little idea of mine will turn out, seeing as it might get difficult creating a pixelated design in Flash. But I'll give it a try.

Story

the antagonist of the story, let's call him dr. Nastyface has finally figured out a way to drain the resolution from this world. By messing around in his lab as well as his giant head he has created a weapon with the capability of reducing whatever it points at into something much less detailed than its original form. Evil as he is, he decides to use this weapon (pixel-ray) on the entire world. What he plans to do with all this stolen resolution, I have not yet figured out, but I'm certain that it will be something incredibly evil.

However, one man, the protagonist of the story, let's call him Everydaynormalguy remains unaffected by this immoral act of wickedness. For some strange and mysterious reason Everydaynormalguy is immune to the (pixelray). It seems everydaynormalguy isn't just another everyday normal guy, it seems he is destined for greatness, it seems he is destined to save humanity by restoring peace to the world, pixel by pixel.

...Or something like that


Might have to make some alterations on the main character in terms of simplicity. "Less is more" You know what I mean