Eric's Final project

This animations shows a simple construction of a diode and a circuit. The point is to show how a diode works. Eventually it will do this, but for now it has the elements required (I think) and I will finish this up on my own time.

I am still fighting with the sound - the green atoms make no sound, and I don't want the mc symbol sound to replay when the whole thing loops. I'll update as I work on this.

Play


Here is the Storyboard. It reads from top to bottom. To the right of the drawings are the explanations of what is happening, in pretty technical language and shorthand, so a bit tough to follow. To the left of the drawings are my planning notes of how to draw the elements. On the far left I list the criteria for the assignment, filling in how each requirement is met.

Drawing tools: fairly obvious use of oval and rectangle. The play button triangle is a poly/star, all the wires are drawn with the pen. The Voltage signal is also with the pen and a bit of bezier pulling. I used the spray can to make the little pinwheel in the buttons' over state. The depletion zone in the middle of the diode uses a gradient fill, but the gradient is really only alpha, not color.

Kuler: I searched for terms like "Semiconductor" and "Voltage" and found some that fit what I was thinking. Some primary values I used: FF2F2B, 597C0D, BFBFBF, EFEFEB.

Tweens: a lot more than 5. All the atoms and the mask that blocks some of them are motion tweened. The "silicon", electrodes that attach to each end of the silicon and the tinting in the silicon are classic tweens. There is easing on all of these: tinting, easing in/out for the moving items... Note that the voltage wave uses a tween with a mask just like we did the heart pulse. I got tired of tweening all the electrons and holes, so some of them stop moving occasionally. Something else to finish up later, but I think it looks pretty good at first glance.

IKs: the wire is a shape tween. I drew it backwards so it would end up nice and straight and then reversed the frames after animating it. The voltage supply connected to the resistor is a shape IK.

Symbols: lots of those (>17 excluding sounds). They are all new. Pretty much everything is a symbol since just about everything is animated (and I don't do shape tweens if I can help it!)

Sound: I tried to add sound but had a lot of trouble making it do what I wanted (play at specific moments). That is easy to do on my main timeline but not when it is attached to an mc symbol. The atoms have a sound as they are shot at the silicon. (I expect to add a lot more (simple) effects later.)

Buttons: three new buttons based on one, which I duplicated and only changed the up state symbol. (this is another place I tried to put sound, and also use a mask layer, but they didn't work right.) Note that stop button is affected by action script.

Action Script: Stops on frame 1 on load, waits for the click event on the play button. In frame 2 action script makes the stop button appear. Script in the last frame loops back to the beginning of the voltage cycle, and I used frame labels instead of frame numbers to direct Flash. The replay button sends back to the "silicon" frame (2) to watch the building sequence again (and avoid the stop in frame 1.) And there is the URL text in the bottom right corner of the stage.

What worked well: most of the drawing and tweening was straight forward (I think it helps that I don't want to make complex details - they would obscure my learning intent). Basic action script works well for me.

What was challenging: I wanted a gradient effect on the silicon tinting, but not spherical or linear. I just didn't see how to do it so didn't fight it. As I mentioned, getting the mc sound to work the way I want is still fighting me. Also trying to figure out some action script to help with this - but I know this is beyond this course. It did get hard to keep track of all my electron tweens so that they would all align, particularly where the animation loops back.

Bonus: I think I got this with my stop button appearing.