Final - Conclusion

So after few weeks and many hours, this is it.
I'm finally done with it.

The drawings are really basics, the animations too.
I just made sure that every button and links were working.
I wish I had more time however.

And for the sound, I just looped an instrumental Christmas song.
At first I wanted to have many sounds, like ambient sounds and music, but I just didn't know how to use more than one track at the time.

Anyways.
I think it is pretty good, if we consider the fact that I didn't even know how to use Flash.

Final

Ok so my final project will be about an interactive story.
So I chose the Little Match Girl story by Hans Christian Andersen and I adapted it to adults.

So I'm going to do all the drawings on Illustrator and simply connect them one with the other.
And I'll do buttons to go from one scene to the other.

Soooo basically that's it.

Animated characters

For my presentation, I focused on different type of animation and I was very interested in the characters.

Def.: Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement.It is an optical illusion of motion and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although several other forms of presenting animation also exist.

The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in specific colors or tones on the side opposite to the line drawings. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects.

Traditional Animation

• Full animation refers to high-quality traditionally animated films, which use detailed drawings and realistic movements. Realistic: Walt Disney studio ( Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, etc. Cartoon: Warner Bros. animation studio ( The Flinstones and Scooby Doo

• Limited animation involves the use of less detailed and/or more stylized drawings and methods of movement. Limited animation can be used as a method of stylized artistic expression, or as cost-effective animated content for television. Examples: Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly OddParents

• Rotoscoping is a technique where animators trace live-action movement, frame by frame. The source film can be directly copied from actors' outlines into animated drawings, as in The Lord of the Rings (US, 1978), used as a basis and inspiration for character animation, as in most Disney films.
  

• Live-action/animation is a technique, when combining hand-drawn characters into live action shots. Examples: Space Jam and Osmosis Jones.

• Anime is a technique primarily used in Japan but originated in USA. It usually consists of detailed characters but more of a stiff animation. A lot of the time the eyes are very detailed, so sometimes instead of the animator drawing them over again in every frame, two eyes will be drawn in 5-6 angles and pasted on each frame(modern times uses computer for that). Some example of Anime films are; Sailermoon, Sakura the Card Captor and Princess Mononoke.

• You can also use another method called Flip books
  

Stop Motion

Stop-motion animation is used to describe animation created by physically manipulating real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of movement. Computer software is widely available to create this type of animation.

• Puppet animation involves puppets wich generally have an armature inside of them to keep them still and steady as well as constraining them to move at particular joints. Examples: Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Coraline (Tim Burton).

• Puppetoon are puppet-animated films which use a different version of a puppet for different frames, rather than simply manipulating one existing puppet.

• Clay animation, or Plasticine animation or claymation, uses figures made of clay or a malleable material to create stop-motion animation. The figures may have an armature or wire frame inside of them, that can be manipulated in order to pose the figures. Examples: Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run.

• Cutout animation is a type of stop-motion animation produced by moving 2-dimensional pieces of material such as paper or cloth. Example: Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969).
  

• Silhouette animation the characters are backlit and only visible as silhouettes. Example: Princes et princesses (France, 2000).
  

• Model animation animation created to interact with a live-action world. Example: King Kong (1933 film).
  

• Go Motion uses various techniques to create motion blur between frames of film, which is not present in traditional stop-motion.
  

• Object animation uses regular inanimate objects in stop-motion, as opposed to specially created items. Example: Western Spaghetti

• Graphic animation uses non-drawn flat visual graphic material (photographs, newspaper clippings, magazines, etc.) which are sometimes manipulated frame-by-frame to create movement. At other times, the graphics remain stationary, while the stop-motion camera is moved to create on-screen action.

• Pixilation involves the use of live humans as stop motion characters. This allows for a number of surreal effects. Example

Computer animation
2D animation figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or vector graphics.

Examples: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera

3D animation consists in digital models manipulated by an animator wearing a digital skeletal structure to control the mesh. Simulating effects is also use, such as fur or hair, fire and water. There is also Motion capture, which is used when live action actors wear special suites that allows computers to copy there movements. Many 3D animations are very realistic and frequently used as visual effects for recent movies.

Here are websites I find really interesting:

St-Francis is Happy in Greenville: the website of an hospital directed at the origin by Sisters. Love the childish animations, very simple. Also, they are never the same. Very fluid, not too long to load.

Christian Sparrow: the website of this new media/ website designer. Very talented, very creative. You can see is diversified portfolio.

Get the Glass: A website hosting a game. you need to help a family to get back the glass of milk. Good 3D animation. The whole screen becomes the playing board. However, it is sometimes longer to load.

Goblin Creatives:A website of a multimedia/website/interactive applications company. I LOVE the way we see the site through an iPod. It's amazing how the rooms are loaded and while you're waiting, you can even play games. Two thumbs up!

Lexus GS: Actually, on this one it's the video that I love. However, the way things are loading, the animations are nice and clean. The main page is amazing and I like how you can decide the opacity of the windows. Quite helpful to navigate through the website even if I don't get a word of what they say.

MOD3000

The beginning of the semester had been quite stressful.
Last semester, I realized I was interested in fashion accessories design. So I talked with Martin Racine and he suggested me to take fashion design courses at UQAM.
So that's what I did. Then, the first day of school, I received a phone call from UQAM saying I need to change my course for this semester. So I harassed the whole staff at student affairs to get this case done before the due date.

Anyways, now I'm registered to MOD3000, a course called: Recherche de matieres, de thematiques et de tendances. I had my first class this morning and that's what I realized:

Fashion design is tightly connected to furniture design and interior decoration.
One influence the other. At the end of the semester, I'll be able to identify the future musts of the next year seasons. How helpful is this!

Productive Interaction

I think this article is very interesting and clarifies a lot of things that were still vague in my mind.
Even if this article is much more adapted to websites, the whole research process can be adapted to all kind of design.

It's incredible to see how a website can be way more interesting only by how interactive it is. It is way more entertaining than a simple unidirectional website. Also, as Van Allen mentions, interaction implies that the audience actually make choices, take decisions and do the big part of the job. That's how you create a complete experience.

Also, I think it's much more difficult to create this kind of interaction online, because it is abstract, non-tangible. Interaction is so easier when you can touch and feel the object in your hands, or at least see it right in front of you. This way, it directly talks to you and have an effect on you. Websites need to go over this boundary and take their place. Also, another difficulty that might confront web designers is that they don't know who's going to see, read or simply visit their page. However, they still need to interact with all these different persons and create a special experience that will be meaningful for all of them.

I really like Van Allen's idea of Physical Music I. The whole process of creating music makes me think of a certain DJ which I forgot the name who creates whole songs with small pieces of music joined together. This guy also make these kind of songs live in after hours or big events. I mean, to me it's a big deal, so I really like how Physical Music makes it easier so anybody could use it.

I think this article is very helpful and provides a lot of solutions and different ways to be interactive. Before reading this article I thought that an interactive website consists more in a flash animated site where the users could decide what they would do in this flash-animated space. However, the article clarifies many things and is a kind of mix-and-match guide to a successful interactive experience. Thumbs up for Van Allen.