Spike's Digital Media Blog

My Final Animation along with Project File can be found here: https://ca-net.herts.ac.uk/~sp22aby/InteractiveStory/ 'Bear Blue Default' Evaluation Positives Firstly, I managed to finish my animation and it came out exactly as I envisioned it. This is because I knew my limits when it came to creating assets and didn't make them overly detailed and so they can easily be animated with the Bone mesh for multiple scenes rather than having to create multiple vastly different sprites for each character, eating into the time I had to create the animation.  I also got all the interactive elements to work in the animation with no bugs or errors, moreso on  the developmental side I think my assets and symbol management was helpful in creating the animation as everything is named and foldered. Overall, for the planning I did, the outcome is exactly as I wanted and I feel that knowing my goals and limitations created the outcome which I wanted. An early version of Father Bear The sun bu...

  All scenes are complete now for the animation and dialogue boxes have been added for each one. All that remains for the animation itself in the project are last minute tweaks. The story itself also slightly changed from the idea discussed in the first Blogpost 'Animate 8'. The robot only steals data from each of ther Bear's phones and nothing else as this is the device that is most likely to have data stolen on public wifi networks or networks with little security. I haven't really covered what the futuristic/ technology related message of this story is but it is about preventing data theft over internet. Though I do not yet wish to show many of the sprites yet as I am waiting for the final evaluation post, here is a preview of all the symbol folders. this includes all the characters as well as scenes and objects. The amount of symbols in each folder varies from about 2-11.

Today, I have created nearly completed 4 more scenes, the title and Scenes 3, 4 and 5. Overall I am happy with the title and scene 3 but my issue with 4 is that there is not enough time to read the text on the Phone screens on the first loop of the animation for the scene. The first reason is that I believe the animation is too fast and without enough frames. The second reason is the amount of textboxes which the viewer will need to read. As of now there is only what is on the Phone Screen and what the Robot is saying but there may also be the narration text which still needs to be added to each scene, but that will be done after each animation is complete. For the two Final scenes that i am yet to animate, I will have the robot being destroyed by the bears with Baseball bats and then for the final scene it will be the data stealing robot in pieces on the floor. The title graphic itself was made in photoshop instead of Adobe Animate or Illustrator as I wanted to use a stroke layer on t...

  Today, much progress has been made on the game, to begin with, all the menu screens have been completed and now have functionality. This includes: a start menu, Controls Menu, a menu which explains the story before the game starts, and a game over screen. The enemy model is also finished now but does not have any AI. That will be added later on when I add UI and Damage. That will probably be last however as I want to focus on completing the note collecting and keypad mechanics before making the enemy as that is central to actually competing the level as opposed to the enemy which is an additional obstacle. I'm also considering cutting the random code and position of notes throughout the level due to time constraints and lack of knowledge. I think for the sake of simplicity, have a fixed position for each aspect of this level.

https://ca-net.herts.ac.uk/~sp22aby/Keyboard/ After experimenting with the keyboard on March 23rd, on April 20th I began working on my final animation. To begin with, I decided to code in the scene change feature to navigate each of the seven scenes, as well as that I have also completely animated the first two scenes without any dialogue.  Though it was initially difficult to set up a canvas to facilitate interactivity and seprate scenes with the buttons, once I got over that hurdle, I began to work on the scenes in the animation, which was much quicker than the scripting and allowed me to take a more creative approach to buttons and was certainly a welcome change in the workflow. The Plan: Concept: My idea is to do a futuristic spin on Goldilocks and the three bears. I wish for it to target families and act as a Public safety awareness warning about the dangers of data sharing. As such the navigation of each scene is simplistic but there is going to be interaction in each scene. ...

 Over the past few weeks, I have been doing tutorials for DaVinci Resolve from the Training section of the Website. This has helped me familiarise myself with the Fairlight and Fusion features for visual and audio effect editing. This has helped me gain a greater understanding of these features for my 3 screen project.  Though I do not intend on using 3d models to make animations or transistions, or layered masks, aspects such as the greenscreen and Audio editing will certainly come in helpful. I also feel more familiar with resolves basic tools now, which will make the editing process in Resolve more smooth than it was for my music video.