New Digital Colors!

I'm pretty happy with how this assignment turned out; I was supposed to create a piece of 'digital art' in Fireworks using a pallet of colors I created using hue, saturation, RGB, etc. I was going to make a piece describing the city sky at night, with a tree in front of it. An image that always strikes me, color wise, is this kind of tree with smooth, pale bark, which is covered with little leaves, such a bright green, with a paler underside. They contrast stunningly with the sky at night. So that was my inspiration for my pallet. I made the sky, and even clouds with some devious copy-and-paste-and-fill-and-smudge trickery. But the tree eluded me, so I skipped it. Instead, I did some more copy-and-paste-and-fill-and-smudge.
I learned a lot about using Fireworks, by trying NOT to use their pre-made art tools, as cool as they might be. Mostly, that it's nowhere as usable as Photoshop, but Photoshop isn't nearly as compatible with Flash nor t3h internets as is Fireworks; I've found that the latter has an almost pre-made quality to it, like a 'that came from fireworks!' effect, whereas Photoshop leaves it up to you, which is more challenging. So for a vaguely artistic website layout design, I'd go with Fireworks, especially since I also discovered that when exported to Flash, your Fireworks document's layers remain intact.
I was not taken particularly unawares by any other challenges in this project; I only wish the program was a little more user-friendly. I like how it turned out, though I wouldn't consider it a "piece of artwork."
Riggidy Roll!
-Stella

Garage Band

I have just completed my Garageband song. I have learned a lot about the basic concepts of the program, and I have to say, it doesn't interest me as much as I'd thought it would. It might be that I just don't have the knack for it, or something...Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with my "Summertime Interlude;" I enjoyed sampling the Billie Holiday and Louie Armstrong version of "Summertime." I don't really have the kind of patience necessary to become really involved in a little song; partly I suppose because I don't feel at all related to the song. It wasn't like I was writing a song, it was like I was just screwing around with loops. Which I was. I suppose if I ever got really into Garageband, I would try to do some more original things. I spent a long time trying to match up the tempos of my sample and the Garageband loops, and a couple of days wasting time trying to sync two samples from separate songs, which is virtually impossible. My final product is pretty crappy, and hurts the ears if listened to too loud; listening to someone like Kate Bush (which I am right now), I can understand a level of competency necessary for electronic music. I think that it's hard to make good music with something like garageband, because you can't develop a real sound. Anyway, it's done.
Stella

Garage Band

I have just completed my Garageband song. I have learned a lot about the basic concepts of the program, and I have to say, it doesn't interest me as much as I'd thought it would. It might be that I just don't have the knack for it, or something...Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with my "Summertime Interlude;" I enjoyed sampling the Billie Holiday and Louie Armstrong version of "Summertime." I don't really have the kind of patience necessary to become really involved in a little song; partly I suppose because I don't feel at all related to the song. It wasn't like I was writing a song, it was like I was just screwing around with loops. Which I was. I suppose if I ever got really into Garageband, I would try to do some more original things. I spent a long time trying to match up the tempos of my sample and the Garageband loops, and a couple of days wasting time trying to sync two samples from separate songs, which is virtually impossible. My final product is pretty crappy, and hurts the ears if listened to too loud; listening to someone like Kate Bush (which I am right now), I can understand a level of competency necessary for electronic music. I think that it's hard to make good music with something like garageband, because you can't develop a real sound. Anyway, it's done.
Stella

Tweening

I made my first flash animation this week; a "tween animation," where I used a motion tween, shape tween, and frame-by-frame to make a 3-second animation. It's a maroon teddy bear rotating through the sky and getting sucked into a hole, with text running along the bottom as per The Pixies' "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven;" "Creature in the skyyyyyy...Got sucked in a HOLE! Now there's a hole in the sky!"
I didn't learn much, besides that animating is slow and complicated and definitely an area for perfectionists. Of which, luckily, I am one.
The frame-by-frame animation of the spinning creature is pretty choppy, so if I were to make an animation as something other than an exercise, I would definitely spend a lot more time on that aspect. I can see the usefulness of tweens, but I do prefer the frame-by frame, if I can learn to do it smoothly. I dislike the permutations a shape tween makes; it's so formulaic, no matter which shapes you're changing. I am glad that I thought of making multiple consecutive tweens instead of one long one, because the program was doing some pretty funky things trying to turn a maroon teddy bear into a black circle.
No indentations, all the time,
Stella

Alright, first post.
This is a blog to commemorate my high school animation class, including projects I've completed, which I will post about.
My first animation project was a flipbook drawn on a post-it note booklet.
The 'story' is this: Dog-critter approaches apple, and prepares to munch down. Apple, of course, grows arms and legs and runs away. Critter sits down, confused. It's not all that complicated, but hey, it's only supposed to be 50 pages.
What did I learn?
Well, it was like a crazy game of telephone. My dog-creature slowly morphed from an exoskeletal doodle to a gummy-style Fleischer Brothers thing, to something that actually looked like an animal, but much smaller than the original. And also more adorable. I've decided that it was an unintentional sequel to another student's flipbook, which was a stick-person growing and shrinking, saying, "Remember to eat fruits and vegetables." Then they left and came back, asking, "Did you remember? To eat fruit? Or you'll shrink!" And then they shrunk away. So Mr. Critter shrank because he didn't get his fruit.
It was interesting to try and make the movements similar to a dog's, but I think it only resembles an actual animal if the animal is drunk and has a bad leg.
It turned out basically like I expected; re-drawing the dog every page was more time-consuming than was warranted by the project, but I think I learned more. I don't think I would change anything; more accuracy on the drawings is nigh-on impossible without thinner paper, and otherwise would take WAY too long. I might use simpler shapes next time, but on the other hand, I'm glad I tried to do something complicated to start with, because I enjoyed really exploring the animation process.
Later on, I think it would be cool to scan each image into Flash as a keyframe and maybe fill in the frames a little, but otherwise leave it alone as a digital record of this project.
'Bye.
-Bug