Big upgrade for Adobe Flash!

I first read about the update to Flash on the Angry Animators website and I must admit to having a bit of panic when reading his headline RIP Adobe Flash.... Thankfully on reading on, it shouldn't be as bad as it sounds. If Adobe gets this right, there will be a lot of grateful animators out there! I am a bit scared that they could get it wrong, but this is me being a pessimist. I do have my reasons as I used to love Adobe Soundbooth it was a great sound editing programme... straightforward to use and edit in, but Adobe changed it to Audition which I do use, but it is in no way as user friendly as Soundbooth was. I really hope they don't do this with Flash.... or should I say 'Animate'.

There is going to be a name change - Flash will now be Adobe Animate CC - I really do hope that they focus on what animators really need and reflect on the new name!

It was hard to take when they upgraded Flash CS6 and they took away things that we were getting used to using, it seemed crazy that an upgrade came with less features than the old version?!? It is also quite annoying that when you import video to create some rotoscoping effects that you have to import an flv to embed into the timeline but that you cannot convert .movs to flv's in the Adobe Media Encoder! I really hope this is updated with the new version.

Below is a video from Adobe.com, discussing some of the new updates - nothing here to get too excited about apart from being able to import brushes.... that is long overdue I think.

Well, the update is supposed to be happening soon so we will wait in anticipation for what happens with the re-birth of good old Flash. It has its short comings but I teach it to my animation students and its a great platform to start learning 2D digital animation. You can do frame by frame, 2D rigging and rotoscope which are all the skills you need to learn at the beginning of an animation education.

Take from: http://www.angryanimator.com/word/ 

I love the illustration above - I borrowed it from Angry Animator because it illustrates the frustration of learning and creating animation :)

Angst....

I've had a few wobbles in the last few days... At the weekend, I downloaded a sound effect from a free sound site and Flash would not open it. It played in QuickTime and iTunes, so I tried to open it in SoundBooth, but that wouldn't open it and a dialogue box popped up saying that it was corrupt.  The next thing... everything crashed!! Flash, Photoshop, SoundBooth and Firefox closed - and nothing would open!  I tried to open Flash CS3 (an older version I have on the MacBook), but nothing would open... I sat there speechless having an absolute panic.  I had the work backed up on my hard drive, but the only other copy of Flash I have is on my PC and it is an old version (FLash 8) and my file would not open it.  Momentarily I was thinking..... I can't do anymore work.... what am I going to do.... then I took stock and thought that I could download a trial version of FLash for now, and I took a deep breath and restarted the computer - dumped the sound file, (just in case it was the casue of the problem) - then wonderfully I could then re-open all the software and Firefox!! Panic over, but it shook me up for a while because sheer panic sets in and the mind goes into overdrive!!

I have been testing the project on people as often as I can and one comment I received (from a male: 25 years old), was that he thought the users should be given more background information and this has been mentioned before, so I thought it would be a good idea to add some more text in the sliding panel within the section after the intro.  I did not want to use the scrollbar from the components panel as I thought it would be better to create my own to fit in with the overall design. I did some research online and found a few tutorials for creating a custom scroller in Flash and decided to create one based around putting the text in a MovieClip and using masking with script.  The script was quite complex, but I thought it would be worth the effort to take the time to watch the video tutorial and have a go.  The guy was very detailed in his explanation of the script and it worked very well - so I decided to try it out.

I kept the scrollbar design simple and then gave the text MovieClip and scroller movieclip instance names, so they could be linked to by the script and was really disappointed when it didn't work - then I realised that I had a colon instead of a semi colon at the end of a line of script and a couple of tiny discrepencies and then tried again.... no, it still didn't work.  I checked the script thoroughly and it seemed fine.  So I then wondered if it was too embedded within the symbols, so copied the frames up into the main movieclip.... but it still didn't work :( ..... I did not anticipate that this would take up as much time and then not to work - it was not a great result.  I did not want to give up on this, but knew it was wiser to continue with the main aspects of completing the interactive scenes, so had to make the decision to come back to this when everything else was complete.

I continued to work with the scenes within one branch of the interactivity and generally was happy with most of the scenes.  My son was home for the weekend and fortunately for me lots of his friends were visiting throughout the weekend.  They were happy to test the scenes that had been completed so far and gave me user feedback.  The age ranges were between 22 - 28 and were male and female.  Comments were: 

• Love the colour scheme of the animated intro
• Affinity with the character in the intro, and wondered why she was sad
• Liked the styling of the intro
• Awesome...
• want to know more about the character - Kara
• I like the range of styles that change in each area
• It draws me in, as I go through it

One of the males (aged 26) said the he really did not feel the need to know about 'Kara' and just enjoyed moving through the scenes and loved the way it drew him in as he went through it.  When he was on the first scene he didn't quite understand what it was about, but by the time he went through a few scenes, he was immersed and just enjoyed the experience.  It is interesting as this goes against what others have said - but this feedback has made me feel positive about the overall aims of the end product as I really want it to be immersive, simply for the fun of it.  Having the background story is just an addition which will be beneficial and interesting for some users.

I asked one of our visitors to test the intro and realised as it was finishing that part of the poem animation was missing.... another moment of panic and bemusement - I had to get a breather before I could face re-doing it.  I had a coffee and returned to it and realised that I must have deleted the MovieClip from the wrong library, but I had it in the library of the main movie.  I had to place it back in synch with the sound and tween it, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been!

I then had more ActionScript troubles, as I wanted one of the scenes to have a moving panoramic that moved across the screen on mouse movement or swipe, but although I was sure I was putting the right co-ordinates in, it would not slide appropriately within the Stage.  I then changed it slightly and then tested a larger constrained area that could be moved around by the user in order to select a door from within it.  This worked in a Flash file, so I brought the MovieClip into the project file, but if I made changes to the background it put it out of its constaints!?  I persevered and got this to work, only to find that it just did not work in the context of the scene, it was not visually appealing at all.... another disappointment, but I quickly went back to the sketchbook and planned another scene with doors in that are held by long armed characters and  this it seemed to fit better within the penultimate scene.

Another problem I had was with adding a background sound.  I sourced an interesting sound track from soundsnap and felt that it would enhance the interactive section as although there are lots of sound effects, it needed the addition of a soundtrack. I thought it would be as easy as adding the track to the timeline and selecting stream, but when I played the movie, the background track kept stuttering and was awful.  I then did some research on adding background sound and tried linking it through using a variable and 'linkage' and giving the sound an identifier, but whatever script I tried, this just would not work.  There was no background sound at all.  I read on an online forum that a constructer can take a MovieClip object as a parameter, so I tried this.... to no avail.  Then I thought, why don't I simply put the MovieClip with the sound in onto the main timeline and see if that works..... and eureka! It worked.  I have learnt so much about using, creating, editing sound with this project.  I have used new software, improved my Flash skills, researched and incorporated interactivity and utilised ActionScript.  The self learning has been quite steep, but I am glad that I pushed myself in a different direction, rather than creating a straightforward animation.  I have found the topic of interactivity very interesting and will continue with my newfound interest in digital narrative.  I have been inspired by Donna Leishman's early explorations in visual interactivity and love the simplicity of Ed Bain's The Devils Tramping Ground.  I am excited about the whole concept of visual narrative and will continue to delve into the topic.

As the module comes close to its end, on reflection I feel that this has been a more solitary journey than I would have liked, but unfortunately due to work not allocating time for me to attend Uni this year and ultimately, the workload in general - it was the only option.  It was frustrating to be called into work last week and to have my application for 2 days academic leave turned down by the Head of HE, due to the Prinicpal stating that all staff must be in for enrolments last week, even though my work colleague said he would cover for me. Very disappointing, especially as this week is induction week and the students are in until Wednesday.  The last few weeks of August until now have been quite intense, but I did finally manage to switch my brain off from work and get focused on the module - although this has the consequence of not me not being prepared for the start of the new academic year at work.

I am happy with the prototype that I have developed and feel this not the end, but just the beginning.  There is currently one functioning branch, but I would like to make this much larger, with branching links (aome are shown in the larger sketchbook).  I would also like to consider collaborating with other animators and incorporate their scenes.  Some scenes in 3D and stop motion would enrich the mixed media style.

I was inspired by the ustwo studio and their work and feel positive that my product has a niche to fit into and could be effectively used on the web and portable devices.

Holiday

I went away to Cornwall last week - but took the laptop with me in order to do some work while I was there - apart from the days that I drove to get there and back. It was 5 hours to get there and 7 and a half to get back due to problems on the M5.

Here are some pics to show where I was working - all very different to the environment at home.  Great view out of the window!

I re-drew Kara in Illustrator and she looked better than the quick sketches that I created in Flash (shown in the previous entry). I worked on making her look wistful and pensive. I finally decided on the art direction and chose to use a limited colour palette for the intro scenes.  Her skin is grey to symbolise the limbo land that she is trapped in and to portray that she feels soulless.  

As previously mentioned in a past entry, I have been inspired by some of Hans Bacher's pre-production sketches where he uses tones of one colour to great effect.  I will use this style for the intro scenes and then use a range of styles within the interactive scenes to hopefully keep the interest of the user - as they enter a different portal, the styles will change.  Nina Paley incorporates a range of styles effectively within her animation: Sita sings the blues (2007).

Nina worked on this for 3 years and is happy for people to copy, share and distribute the film, although it has caused some controversy in India regarding the topic of the ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana.

Back to the topic of Kara - here is the updated digital sketch.

Kara drawn in Illustrator

Upon returning, I have created the Cat-Bot - Baz.  The name derives from an Egyptian God of home protection, who protected women and children above all others.  You can see from my entry dated 11th August, that some of the 'cat' sketches were becoming very Egyptian - I tamed this down for the final character drawings and just hinted at the Egyptian link.

I found it more beneficial to draw Baz in Flash due to probems that I had with working with the illustrator drawing of Kara within Flash.  Every line that I drew within Illustrator was grouped and when I needed to break the groups apart, they broke up and made it a nightmare to try to do even the most simplest of eye blinks!  I worked until the early hours one morning trying to sort it out - an absolute waste of my time (which is so precious right now as the deadline looms).  My foray into Illustrator is not over, but I have found that by using the pencil tool in Flash, I can get the same result and I am able to seperate the character body parts much more effectively..... why have I used the Painbrush tool in Flash for so long and not the Pencil!!

Here is Baz - drawn in Flash

As you can see, the effect is similar to the Illustrator drawing, but far easier to work with!

Subtle additions to animations

I have been trying to upload the updated version of the non linear animation since last night (was up until early hours of the morning trying to be patient, but now I have spent too much time again this afternoon and it will not upload).... I hate to submit to defeat, but currently I cannot put the updated version on here. The original version is on a previous post. I think I will continue to develop it as although it is now submitted I have ideas of adding short, repetitive looped walks moving around as if they are in another dimension completely and I could also add more animation within it. It will continue to evolve :)

Jarah woodland creatures

As mentioned in the previous post, this animation was primarily used to develop masking techniques with 2D and real footage. I have added some hands for the smoke blowing character to hang on with, so very subtle changes made here.

2D Digital Animation Developments: Evaluative review

The experience of developing the animations for this module has been a huge journey for me. I encountered many problems, but eventually found solutions and ultimately gained more knowledge of using video and masking techniques within Flash. I facilitated self directed learning with Premiere Pro in order for me to achieve my aims and also improved software skills within After Effects. Even with Flash, I initially encountered a fairly steep learning curve due to using an updated verstion of the software (from Macromedia Flash 8 to Adobe Flash CS4), but now feel that the overall experience has helped to improve my skills and knowledge vastly.

During 2009, I viewed an animated music video created by Kristofer Strom, Minilogue - Animals (2009), which won a silver prize at Kolla.se in the same year. I had previously been impressed by Strom's whiteboard animations that were used for the Carphone Warehouse campaigns, but when I saw Minilogue - Animals, I was captivated. It inspired me to think about using masking in Flash in order to combine 2D animation into live footage.
 

Minologue - Animals. Directed by Kristofer Strom

The simple, but lively animations blend into the footage and although the whole animation is pretty abstract and non-narrative – it successfully captures your attention as each scene jumps out at the viewer with intense vibrancy.

Another example of utilising mixed media and 2D animation is a trailer for the 2009 East End Film Festival, directed and designed by Lucy Izzard, an animation director and illustrator based at Slinky Pictures. Photographs were taken around the East End and were used within the animation to depict changing scenes, and as the foundation for the animated characters. 

  East End Film Festival trailer. Directed by Lucy Izzard

This trailer is a variation of the theme as it is an example of blending 2D animation with photography rather than film footage, but the simplistic style of the animation fits nicely within the photographic image.

This fusion of real footage and 2D animation communicates effectively within a wide range of mediums: music videos, TV idents/stings, web and TV Flash series’, TV and web advertising, educational animations, documentaries, film and TV intros, corporate training, animated shorts, viral YouTube promos, TV gap fillers, flash banners, film/TV/festival trailers; the opportunities are endless within our visually frenzied culture. There is still a place for 2D at the forefront of animation, particularly when used within a hybrid blend of mixed media. Immediately, this brings 2D into the 21^st Century and it can look fresher and more stimulating than some of the mainstream, synthetic and hyperreal 3D that has now become the norm. In 2003, there was talk of animation being dead (Ryan Ball, 2D Animation: Dead, dying or Just Napping), but if 2D was caught napping; in 2010 - it is wide awake within the medium of mixed media. In the words of Lev Manovich, we are using ‘the language of hybridity’.

My first foray into experimenting with hybridity was by using film and masking within Flash - it worked out quite well and I did not encounter many problems – this was with Flash 8. Flash CS4 changed quite dramatically. One of the changes was that you can no longer directly import Quick Time movies – they have to be converted to FLV’s in Adobe’s Media Encoder, this was not too problematic, but adds to the overall timescale. Embedding a Quick Time movie into Macromedia Flash was very straightforward, I don’t know why Adobe have changed this.

There is currently an ongoing argument with Apple & Adobe due to the lack of support for Flash in the iPad, iPod Touch or the iPhone. Adobe rectified this with CS5, but Apple blocked that too. It was reported that Adobe were going to sue Apple for ‘restraint of trade’, and also rumours that Apple are developing their own version of Flash. There have been no official statements from Adobe or Apple, but the rumours are still ongoing.

There was talk of Adobe improving the importing of movies within Flash, I do not feel this is the case because when you import a movie and embed it into the timeline, it does not always import the sound effectively. This only happens when the movie was embedded into the timeline, not if the FLV was a player. Fortunately I did not need the whole of the movie’s sounds for the animation in which I was developing the masking technique and I also did not need any background sound kept with the time lapse footage, but if the sound had been needed throughout the movies, it would have meant that the sound would need to be stripped from the original footage and added separately, which would have lengthened the procedure.

I was pleased with the masking techniques used within the first animation. It was time consuming, but it was worth the effort. I had a few problems initially when I nested animations within movie clips and then masked them, because the nested animation would not work at all, but I realised that if I changed the mc’s to graphic symbols within the Properties Inspector, everything functioned again. I used the bone tool for the cloud carriers that hang from the ‘flying island’. The bone tool is new to CS4 and incorporates inverse kinematics, which uses an articulated structure of bones to create movement, this is more sophisticated and complex than using the hinge rotation technique. By focusing on the techniques, I felt that although I had a range of problems with the video camera that I used and consequently the quality of the footage, I managed to improve my knowledge and skills within Flash with this animation. Below are examples of some of the nested animations.

                             'flying island'

                               

For the topic of Non linear time and space, I researched non linear dynamics, better known as the chaos theory: 

www.encyclopedia.com/topic/nonlinear_dynamics.aspx (accessed: 15.6.10) and  Topotransegrity – Non-Linear Responsive Environments – Robert Neumayr (accessed: 15.6.10).

The research led me to think about time lapse photography and  speeding and slowing down movement and putting different time levels into the same space.

My original thoughts for this animation were based around: 

• the ebb and flow of the wind
• Non linear urban environment - jumping from scene to scene in a non linear fashion - voyeuristic views into windows of high rise flats... jumping backwards and forwards in time.

The development of this animation also enabled me to learn new skills, but in a different software (Premiere Pro). I wanted to speed up and slow down the footage and searched for this technique and found a very good tutorial, which helped me to achieve my aims by using keyframes to set points within the timeline where I could speed up and slow down. I also experimented with time lapse photography, which I had never attempted before, which I found intriguing, but less easy to manipulate. I imported the edited footage into Flash, and used some masking within this movie, but not on the same scale as the first one. I also used nested animations, frame by frame, masking and rotoscope within this movie. 

Overall, this module has helped me to develop and enhance a range of skills in Flash, develop skills to take Flash into After Effects and to learn new skills in order to use software that is new to me in order to achieve my aims. 

It's been so long!

I was shocked to see the last time I had posted an entry! It has been crazily manic at work since Christmas & the time has flown, but still, that's a shockingly long gap!


I'm still ploughing through the MA. Currently I'm working on an animation based on: Non linear time & space. I went to Spitalfields on Sunday (a few weeks ago) for a recce and took some time lapse photography with a lovely camera that one of my students lent me (Panasonic HDC-HS700) - it was on a beautiful, sunny & hot day but was a nightmare travelling on the train... I got some footage, but it was only 3 seconds long even though I took the photos continuously for around 40 minutes (by then the battery ran out). I went to Spitalfields again last Sunday (another hot one), and on the suggestion of a fellow tutor I took an hour of film with a College camera, so that I could speed it up & slow it down in Premiere or Final Cut.


During my venture to Spitalfields, I stumbled across an excellent artist/illustrator, his name is Tom Lewis, I asked him if he had ever thought about animating his characters & he told me that a studio was currently interested in doing that, so I will keep a look out on his website for the animation (www.tomlewis.co.uk). I also thought he would be a great person to come in & talk to the students about character design. See a couple of examples of his illustrations below:

........Back to the filming - I had found a pub on a corner (the previous Sunday), that had real character, but I took it from a different angle this time and got a bit closer to aim more at the passers by in more detail. I had a bit of trouble with Premiere, as I have not used it before. I couldn't work out how to capture the footage as I am so used to using digital rather than mini dv tape. I spoke to Suzanne from Media, at work and she explained how to capture the footage and I finally got somewhere. I did a search on the Internet for how to speed up & slow down the footage & found a good video tutorial: http://layersmagazine.com/time-remap-in-premiere-pro.html  - after viewing the tutorial, it was straightforward to speed up and slow down sections of footage. [I will put the footage up here at some point, so that the before and after can be viewed]. I am now working on the characters that I want to place into the animation. I was pretty lucky with the footage as there are quite a few appropriate moments that I can get the animated characters to interact with the passers by. This makes a refreshing change as prior to this I was working on a mixed media animation that just would not go right.....


I had a digital video camera bought for me for Christmas (with a hard drive), so I ventured out just after the snow cleared to take some footage - while I was filming, I slipped and hurt my dodgy arm - then I had sooooo much trouble getting the footage from the camera, I spent most of the Christmas hols trying to sort it out, then when I did get the footage, the quality was awful :( I then took it into After Effects...... another new venture for me...... and I tried to enhance it as much as I could and tried to keep going with making this animation. In the meantime I took the offending video camera back because I was not impressed - but kept persevering with creating some characters and experimenting with the masking techniques in Flash to incorporate the 2D with the live footage. I had such a mare with that as well. I was making movie clip animations and could not work out why the masking wasn't working????? It took so many hours of wasted time to realise that I had to turn the movie clips into graphic symbols as for some reason masking will not work with those movie clips!!! Aaaaaagh.... so much time wasted on that! Another thing I found out from working with this animation is that Flash couldn't cope if I put the footage into a movie clip. It went comotose and kept spinning the little circle for eternity - I had wanted to zoom into the film within Flash - but Flash Said NO!! Anyway, suffice to say that even after so much time and effort the animation was as flat as a pancake - so I am now relieved to leave it behind and move on with something new! The only salvation is that some of the masking is good and it has helped me to develop the use of masking, so I'll be brave and put the animation here, even though it is dire - it shows the techniques I was working on.

Here are some ideas that I had for this; from my sketchbook:

 

 

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