P5 - Describe factors that need to be taken into account when creating animations for the web

Introduction

Animations are used in lots of web pages and are saw all over the web. Animations can be used as animated buttons with rollover effects and adverts. Animated buttons with rollover effects are when for example there is a heading on a webpage and you hover over it, it will change how it looks depending on what the webpage wanted it to look like for example the writing could change colour or the text could be highlighted or the box might get bigger. Here is a video on how to create a rollover effect on Flash and also an example of what one would look like.



Small File Size
When creating animations for the web, you need to bare in mind that there are people watching the animation with both fast and slow internet connections. If you want more people to watch it, it's important that you have a small file size so people on a slow connection can watch it as well.

Easy To Load
Having an animation on a web page, it is vital for it to be easy to load with no buffering during it and being able to download it in the correct format. This is why GIF's are good because you don't need to download them, they just pop up on the screen.

Accessibility
Not everyone will be using a computer/laptop. Many people would be looking on their phones. Therefore, the animation needs to be compatible to be able to work on smart phones and tablets.

P4 - Describe the software tools available for animation.

Layers

A layers is a separate element of an image. For example, a leg. When using animation and making a person move the arms and legs are separate to the body so they can be moved.

A layer is also when two images are seen together and they appear as one image. 

Using layers works like cel animation for hand drawn animation like Disney Films.

Frames

A frame is a single image in an animation. 

There are 24 frames for every single second of footage in the animation. Frames are played in a sequence at a specific rate, frames per second (fps). This creates an illusion of animation.

Key frames are special frames where an animation starts and finishes.

Motion Tween
A motion tween is a simple animation movement where one image is moved between two places. In motion tweening, you can either position, scale, shape or rotate an image.

Controls

The controls are different tools available to animate your animation (e.g. paint, shapes, pencil)

The common controls are usually contained within a toolbox on the sides or top of the application.

Symbols

Symbols are reusable objects.

There are a few different types of symbols which are Graphics, Buttons and Movie clips. 

P3 - Discuss the advantages and limitations of animated GIFS

Introduction

An animated GIF is an individual edited image or short video which has been tampered with. GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format which basically means changing an original picture/video slightly and 'GIF' is what it is saved as. I'm going to be identifying the perks and faults of using an animated GIF when advertising.

Advantages of using GIFs:

The piece of work/webpage becomes much more appealing and attractive to the person viewing it. However, it cannot be pixelated otherwise it would just become annoying. There cannot be too many of them because they will be distracting. Overall, GIFs are a good thing to use because they attract people to see your animation and you will get more views.

GIFs support a transparent background so instead of using a plain background you can edit it to match your background so it wouldn't look out of place and would make the website look better.

GIFs appeal to a younger audiences eye so depending on the age group your web page is targeting, GIFs may come in handy to attract younger people because they are into animation (e.g. video games).

Because GIFS are usually very short, they have a very small file size. Therefore putting them on web pages isn't a problem.

Disadvantages of using GIFs:

Once the GIF is made and finished, you cannot go back and edit it.

There is no interaction for the person watching the GIF. they can watch it and that's it.

Some people watching may become frustrated because they are distracting on the eye and may confuse them with pop up ads.

Conclusion
In my opinion, I think animated GIF's are a good idea, but to a certain extent. Using the odd one here and there isn't harmful at all but if there are too many all over the place then there is a problem. Especially on a website. If there's too many then the viewer would become annoyed. 

P2 - Uses of animation

Introduction

In this section, I shall be explaining what different uses animation is promoted by and used in and how it becomes effective to the members of the public and viewers.

Advertising : In many businesses and organisations they would use animations within advertisements to represent a certain product. Which will draw an audiences attention to hopefully make them purchase the product the company is marketing. There are different ways to advertise in the modern day. The most useful for large companies which attract many customers is by television. But for local, smaller stores banners and posters are just as successful. On children's television channels, they will always have cartoon adverts of new toys and sweets which are flooded with colour to make the product look more appealing.
Banners/Pop Ups - These will appear on a webpage and will flash up so they get noticed. Once the pop-up is clicked on, a new web page is opened and it goes straight to the product.

Creative art: Many different artists use animation programmes to produce creative art which may draw an audiences attention. People in the graphic design sector use programmes like photoshop to develop creative art posters for their projects and work. Creative art is where creativity is shown and people must use their imagination to think of new ideas. Producing animated films by photography and sequence drawings so people can see a change happening.

Education: Animation can be useful for teaching young students for educational purposes. Most young people today are drawn to anything with animation (especially video games). So using animations for teaching and solving puzzles becomes very useful for schools, colleges etc. There are plenty of educational websites which have animated games on to helps school kids with their learning. For example, Bitesize and MyMaths. This way, kids can interact with their learning instead of being lectured in a class room. This is proven to be a good way of educating school pupils. An education game can cover a whole wide range of school topics such as Science and Maths. However, it does not always have to be school subjects, it could be based on life skills and healthy eating .

Introduction

 

In this unit of work I will be acting as a trainee animator that has been asked to produce an animation for a health and fitness company. My target for this animation assignment is to promote healthy living and to aim this at teenagers and younger people.



 

P1 Explain the different types of animation.

 

 In this essay I'm going to be including these different types of animation by describing what they do and how they have been used in the past and how they are being used in the modern day.

•       Flip Book

•       Cell Animation

•       Stop Motion

•       Cut out

•       Rotoscoping

•       Skeletal Animation

•       Flash Animation

•       CGI

 

Flip Book

Flip book animation is usually produced by starting off with a picture then gradually changing it each time so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion. It would take a long time to complete one of these because you have to draw the same picture which is pretty much similar to the other ones but slightly change it.

Stop Motion
Stop motion is a way of animation which makes it look like still objects are moving. Clay animation is a good example of how stop motion is used. Stop-motion requires any camera that can make single frames (or photos). It works by shooting a single frame, moving the object a little bit, and capturing a frame again. Cartoons use a similar way; one of the main differences is that stop motion uses real objects instead.







Cell Animation
Cell animation can be defined as a method of creating cartoons using sheets of transparent cellulose acetate for drawing cartoon frames. The sheets are transparent so that they can be laid over other cells or a painted background and then photographed. Cell animation is highly complicated and time consuming so it has been phased out by computer generated graphics.







Cut Out

Cut out animation is a method for creating animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs.

Rotoscoping
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device was eventually replaced by computers.














Skeletal Animation
Skeletal animation is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character


Flash Animation
A Flash animation is an animated video that is created by Adobe Flash or a similar animation software. The video is usually distributed in the swf file format. They are often distributed on the Internet.


CGI
Computer-generated imagery is using computer graphics in movies. These images are used for special effects, simulation, and commercials, amongst others. Sometimes the technology is used to produce a static background, which is then merged into the image; at other times it is used to produce animations in 2D or 3D.