What I chose to do with my project was ambitious, the reason why it was ambitious was to incorporate a rotating 3d box with several movie clips coming out of the box which I did find difficult to achieve. I did have a few promblems creating the box as everytime I went to rotate the box on its axis it would end up in a scew position when I would play it back, eventually with several attempts it reached a 3d, 4 sided box effect which spins round perfectly. The step by step guide I found on a website which tells you how to make a 3d box in flash cs4 helped me alot, every step was clearly written and easy for me to follow.

The next step was to create a button for the key to work along side with the spinning box, this was easy to do as following on line tutorials that give you a step by step guide which are  easy to follow. The animated images which I converted into movie clips were achievable, messing with around with motion/classic/path tweens to create a variety of moving animated movie clips, the movie clips I selected to represent the following from Pandora’s box was: Anger, Chaos, Disease,old age,death and hope.

I have found flash cs4 difficult to navigate as entering and exiting keyframes which I have found when you remove or alter one keyframe it disrupts the time line and can mess up your animation when you play it back, you have to be careful about details and where you are placing certain objects and remember what object need which specific tweens. Spending quite abit of time on flash you soon pick up on how to navigate the system and come familiar with certain function codes and your knowledge progresses. As not attending every lecture I did find myself being a little behind due to not knowing about tools with in flash and how to use flash which is my own fault, however, I did manage to catch up by viewing/reading and watching online tutorials that helped me make my animation piece, I learnt and developed alot of skills whilst working on this project which I hope to continue to use and develop more skills as having skills in flash is great for your CV.

Watching Pandora’s Box visually it is engaging because of the spinning box and the movie clips that come out of it, the interactive part has an appealing factor to it because their is a voice over speaking directly to the audience drawing them into listen to the story of Pandora’s Box. The strength of project is the idea itself, I think that an interactive story telling for an audience telling them about the greek myth, the animation supports this by the visual aspect of it. What I would do differently would be to spend more time on the project and spend more time on the movie clips, possibly make the movie clips abit longer actually showing a mini-movie of how that thing let out the box has had an effect on the world. As the movie clips I have created for my animation are only 2/3 seconds.

Overall, I think the work I have produced I achieved my proposal I set myself to do and that was to create an animation telling the story about Pandora’s box which the audience can understand and easily follow the story.My first attempt at producing a my first animation was a success.

created by Rebecca Ioannou & Ally Mersharem

AUDIENCE: 13+

The animation is finally completed and the link below will take you straight to the website page where it is embedded.

http://megaswf.com/view/3e8ebf0e619f83dac96793b760142d7b1.html

I have 3 more images to animate and convert into movie clips, I have to record my voice telling the story about Pandora’s box and the poem which will be at the beginning of the animation, and finally to add music to the piece.

First step is to polish what I have done so far and that is to make the key fluid and make the key to disappear when soon as you have clicked on it which will indicate to the audience that something is about to happen.

TO MAKE THE KEY DISAPPEAR:

To make the key disappear I set the key as a function on the main time line, a function is a block of codes that once clicked on the event of the key it will tell it to disappear, the function code is set to visability to false.

I have just finished animating and converting the images into movie clips and put them on the path tween line to come out of the box.

MUSIC/AUDIO

The animation will begin with a voice over talking directly to the audience to influence them to open the box, at the same time there will be an underlay of music. I have chosen two pieces of music for the animation. The first piece of music is beautiful and chilled playing on the theme of romanticism because I wanted to make the box luring and draw the audience in to think “it is so beautiful I bet there are beautiful things inside the box”.  This is the song selected:

The next song selected is a dramatic and dark piece of music, this is used when the box opens and all the evil things are released, I wanted to give a contrasted and dramatic effect to demonstrate that the box has opened. This is the song selected: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVJiWaUNsHM

Stage one development:

http://megaswf.com/view/4313df7b069997cfe9b0e08f2382b2b4.html

Going along to the tutorial gave me feedback on what to work on and how to improve the project. Reflecting back on my production notes, I have completed stages before the actual deadline I gave myself.

The feedback I gained was solutions to overcome issues with the project, the key is currently bouncing up and down which visually does not look engaging, I want the key to stop once been clicked on which will then indicate to the audience that something is about to happen.

An idea was risen in the tutorial to contribute to the project, is in every movie clip the audience click on, there will be an interactive voice over telling the story of  Pandora’s box, this way it will be more interesting and the piece could be based on an interactive story book.

So far I have the foundation of my animation but need to build upon it and make it visually interesting and engaging. My next step is to finish the images and make the movie clips that are coming out of Pandora’s box.

CREATING A BUTTON FOR THE KEY TO OPEN PANDORA’S BOX:

To create the key as a button I set the key (object), go to modify and select symbol type and click on button and set it as ok. For the key to move up and down to show the audience to click on the key I created a motion tween and once clicked the key will stop  moving up and down.

The next step is to make the movie clip/images to come out of the box, this is to be created using path tweens.

Import all images through ‘import to library’, convert images to symbol type then select graphic, the code is gr because it is a naming convention which can read and understand what type of symbol it is, then convert to movie clip once created the animated image.

TO MAKE PATH TWEENS:

Any tween has a beginning and an end, the tween follows a specific path. To create a path tween you create two layers, one layer contains the path, and the other path contains the object you want to tween, right click and set it to guide to the path layer then drag the object into it so they belong together and work side by side.

So far in my project, I have created Pandora’s box, the box rotating, the key to open the box and 3 of the 6 movie clips that come out of the box, stage one of the development is completed and will go along to the personal tutorial to gain feedback on my work so far.

March 22nd-April 4th

1.Make Pandora’s Box using the 3D rotation tool:

2. Make Pandora’s Box open

3. Insert the Key  on the side of the box

April 4th- April 12th

4. Create Images to appear out of the box

April 12th-April 19th

5.Create movie clips for each image when audience clicks on the image

April 19th- May 17th

6.Record voices reciting the Pandora’s poem

7.Insert Music

8. Test/improve

Researching on how to use the 3D tool I came across a online tutorial which gives you a step by step guide on how to make a 3D rotating box.How to create a 3D Box and animate it using the new 3D Tools and Features in Flash CS4.

http://pixil.info/downloads/create-3d-box-in-flash-cs4/

Step 1: Create a square shape

Start by drawing out simple square. Hold down the shift key to constrain the proportions. To change the solid fill to a gradient by going to the color palette, Next  remove the stroke, just goto the stroke color picker and choose the None option.

Make sure the square is in the center of the stage, go to the align panel and click on the horizontal and vertical align buttons.

Step 2: Position & Convert into a Movie Clip

Next convert the shape into a movie clip, just right click and select Convert to Symbol… the symbol inside another movie clip and  name it 3D Box. Inside the 3D box movie clip is where we’ll the setting up of the 3D layers.

Step 3: Duplicate Layers for Each Box Side

Now copy and paste a few of these squares on some new layers and name each copy after a side of the 3D Box such as top, bottom, left and right so you know what you are working with.

Step 4: Rotate Each Side 90º & Position in Place

Convert all the frames into motion tweens by selecting them, right clicking and Create Motion Tween. Now start with the top layer and rotate the X axis 90 degrees. You can hold down the shift key to constrain your rotation. Next go inside the motion editor to ensure the rotation was a either a positive value, or a negative one just to make sure everything is set the same.

Now  move the top layer up about half of the way , calculate half the height of the square and move it up so it sets on top. Repeat  this process for the bottom layer but this time move it half way down, so again just change the value in the 3D Position and View Panel.

Starting with left, lets rotate the Y axis 90 degrees and shift it over to the left about half of the width of the square now repeat the same process for the right square.

Step 5: Test 3D Box Rotation

Finish all rotating and positioning should be left with a picture frame looking set of rectangles.  jump out of the movie clip and goto scene 1. Now  select 3D rotation tool and watch the  box rotate on its Y axixs

Step 6: Add Drop Shadow

Lets select our bottom layer, and lets goto the filters section in the properties panel and licks pick drop shadow to create a illumination of the box.

Step 7: Animate 3D Box Rotating

Now using the motion editor to animate the 3D Box and have spin on it Y axis convert it the frames into a motion tween by right clicking on the frame bar and selecting convert to motion tween, So just rotate the box spinning from left to right, can simply change the Rotation Y value to 360 degrees.

http://megaswf.com/view/a55f75996fc227e96a3899cbbfe26311.html : This piece was made to experiment with text, I used a quote from shakespere’s play The twelfth Night.

http://megaswf.com/view/eb7ebb20ee5ef8284d0f71b7477ae807.html : The two short animations was to experiment using Motion/classic Tweens

http://megaswf.com/view/df1123e03bc41762e03685be8010557c.html

http://megaswf.com/view/cfcdfd55443c69680c3a4b1dfe6f0e5d.html:

Working and developing the animation the aim of the project is to make a interactive animation piece. So far, the animation is interactive with the audience by the voice over influencing the audience to open the box, then they click on the key which will then open. One by one, there will be a picture to represent what was in the box which then the audience has to click on the picture which will then show a short movie clip instead of having one by one, to make it more interactive and get the audience involved is by having all the pictures come out all at once which then the audience have a variety of pictures to choose from and do not have to go in choronoligical order.

OLD SHOT:                                                                                           NEW SHOT:

As you can see above the difference there is with in the interactive piece, I think the new development is a better interactive for the audience reason being that they can now choose from a multiple selection of images and can start where ever and when ever they want.