Jessica Hirsch: Final Project

Link to Final Project:
http://sws.pcc.edu/student/CAS175_pdeangel_27343/jessicahirsch10/Final/finalproject.swf

Storyboard: Has been uploaded to the SWS server in my Final project folder. I changed it when I realized that a twist-a-plot was a little bit more than I could handle during finals week. (Thanks for talking me out of that, Patti!)

Major Tools Used: I used a lot of the shape tools (circle, rectangle, polygon, line) as well as the brush, fill, and pencil tools.

Kuhler: The major colors I used were: #006500, #0097FC, #303030, #990000.

Tweens:

• Classic Tween: Clouds
  
• Motion Tweens: Alpha for the over state on the play/stop buttons, Computer monitor zoom in, Moving the wizard and warrior in several frames, Dragon flight, Dragon’s fire, Hunter’s arrow, people jumping up and down, dragon knock out effects, text on last frame.
• Shape Tween: I just realized that I didn't include one of these. :(
  

Motion Editor:

• Simple (Slow) Ease on the wizard and warrior when they’re “walking” to the left.
• Simple (Fastest) Ease on the hunter’s arrow, along with a transform to make the arrow a little skewed and larger as it gets closer to the foreground.
• Stop & Start (Medium) on the spinning gems above the dragon’s head.

IK Elements:

• Shape IK: Banner flag waving from castle.
• Symbol IK: Caterpillar

Movie Clips and Graphic Symbols:

All of the symbols in this animation I created for this project, with the exception of the rabbit from my previous projects.

Audio Clip in Movie Clip Symbol:

The fire that the dragon breathes uses this effect.

Buttons:

My play and stop buttons are movie clip buttons shaped like rocks. The alpha changes for the over state and the brightness changes when the button is clicked to a dark grey. I added a bongo sound for the over state as well. The buttons gave me a really hard time…I spent more time getting them to work than I did animating this whole project!

ActionScript:

I used the same button from Project 5 to link to the class blog.

What worked well?

Staying organized with folders for my assets, as well as creating a list of all of the drawn elements I would need to create before I even started drawing anything. I used the back of my storyboard to list everything and it kept me very organized. When I was ready to start drawing, I knew exactly what I would need. When I started animating, all my objects were there, I just had to tweak them here and there.

What was challenging?

THE MOVIE CLIP BUTTONS! I honestly have no idea why they gave me so much trouble this time around, but I think I had to recreate them 10 times over the last 2 days to get them to work. At least they work now, sometimes anyway. ;) I’ve noticed that sometimes the movie plays perfectly and sometimes the buttons just blink the entire length of the movie. I tried fixing it, but since it said my ActionScript had no errors, I couldn’t find the culprit.

Hope everyone had a great finals week! Good luck on your grades!