Provide a reflective
conclusion, summarising problems encountered, achieved objectives, further work required,
and your overall experience of working with animation software |
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Problems Encountered |
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| Using the colour white on background
transparent sprites: Whilst putting together my movie I found that there was a problem
with sprites that had the colour white in them. When I converted these images to
background transparent the white in the sprite also became transparent. I overcome this
problem by using a very light cream colour instead of white within the sprite so when it
was converted to background transparent, the image maintained its appearance.
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| Rogue global 'go to
frame': I encountered a problem in that whenever I clicked any part of the stage at any
time, my movie would automatically jump to a particular scene. I overcome this problem by
carefully looking through my score and eventually discovering a global 'go to frame
"marker name"', which should have been locally assigned rather than globally.
Once I removed this rogue go to frame the bug disappeared.
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Achieved Objectives |
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| Higher quality graphics:
By using MacroMedia Firework version 4.0, I created a canvas the size of the Director
stage and drew all the background images, saving them as PSD files. I then created the
individual sprites that would be interactive once placed on the stage, using magic wand
tool to give them all transparent backgrounds. Once I imported them into Director, the
quality was maintained and even when I converted the movie to HTML, the quality of the
images still stayed high thanks to me giving them transparent backgrounds in MacroMedia
Firework.
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| Labels make it clear
where to click: The idea of creating labels to show the user where to click solved a major
fault of my first coursework where it was quite difficult to know what parts of the movie
were interactive and which were not. The labels were extremely easy to implement as I
could just drag the cast member on to the stage as many times as I wanted and place them
in the relevant places.
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| Improved navigation: One
of my biggest objectives was to improve upon the navigation I had implemented in
coursework 1. I experienced problems with the back button in my first coursework so
implemented the feature differently this time around, and although it was a lot better
unfortunately it was still not perfect. However, I did manage to integrate more features
for my second coursework that were all fully functional, including a home button, and a
exit button.
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| More emphasis on sound:
In my first coursework I did not include a lot of sound, apart from a siren that warned
the user of their baggage being too heavy. My second coursework can be considered
multimedia in that I have incorporated sound to accompany the images on the stage. Effects
such as speech and realistic sound effects mean that my second coursework is a big
improvement over my first effort.
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Further Work Required |
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| Improved sound: Although
compared to my first coursework, the sound I have included into my movies is a huge
improvement, I still feel it could be better. It would have been a good idea to visit an
airport and capture some sounds on tape and transfer them into Director. Again, time was
the reason that I did not implement such a feature and it would have been a lengthy
process of getting the sound from the recorder onto a computer in WAV format.
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| Background movement indicates the more
realized world especially when a man is walking on the street. Moreover, another
cast member like poster, car, are acting as important role of realizing the real world.
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Subjective Conclusion |
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Now that I
have finished the artefacts for coursework 2, I am able to draw several conclusions on the
principles of Hypermedia and animation. This course has enabled me to extend my knowledge
of Hypermedia, has taught me the good practices that so many theories, although I have
been required to carry out much more in-depth research. This module has also taught me a
lot about animation and web site design theories. I think all of the learning from
the module I can apply for many different envionrment, lives, and work. It makes me
pay more attention of the things which is around me and I ignore before. |