user feedback p4, m4, d4

click here to see my trailer questionnaire design
here I planned out all the questions I was going to ask in my questionnaire and then justified why I was asking each question.

click here to answer my trailer questionnaire

click here to see my web banner questionnaire design

click here to answer my web banner questionnaire

click here to see the analysis of all the feedback I received

click here to see my trailer production schedule

web banner p3, m3, d3

game trailer p3, m3, d3

game trailer Development log P2, M2, D1, D2

click here to see my production schedule

click here to see the characters and backgrounds I have used in my trailer

click here to see my dope sheet

Formats

The format I have chosen to export my game trailer as is FWS. This is the traditional file format that is used in flash. It is a vector format. I have chosen this format as it supports sound. This is important for the trailer because one of the main things that are required to be in our trailer is sound. The style of animation I am using is traditional 2d key framed cell animation. The reason I have chosen this style is because there are certain effects that I want to implement into my trailer that will look better if they are digitally animated. I considered using  

Audience

The target audience for my game is people aged 11 to 65. It is important to consider the age of the audience when developing my game trailer because I do not want to add anything that is inappropriate for the audience that will be viewing my website. The audience affected the final design of my web banner a lot as I had to make sure the style was enjoyable for people of those ages; I also had to make sure there was nothing that would scare the people in my target audience e.g. blood.
 

Below is a list of all the people my game is targeting

· 

•          English speakers
•          Students
•          School children
•          Potential employers
•          Lecturers
•      Teachers

Style

 the style of animation i have chosen is digital animation. i chose this style because it gave me more control over the effects i used. an example of this is the glowing effect i have used for the eye at the end of my animation. because i was using digital animation i could change the opacity of layers. this allowed me to make the eye appear to be glowing. another reason i used digital animation is because it allows me to use layers. this meant i could easily animate a specific object such as the eye without having to redraw a new background for every frame. i considered using cell animation for my trailer. the reason i considered cell animation is because i thought it would be the best way to show the cartoon style that i originally wanted my banner to look like. i also thought it would be very interesting to see what the banner would look like if it was hand drawn on paper. the problem with using cell animation would be that it is difficult to put it on the computer and export it as a format that would be suitable for my website. it would also be very hard to get the same effect in cell animation then i would get using digital animation 

Ideas

Video links

When I was thinking about my initial ideas I did some research into game trailers to get an idea of what they should include. Below are the links to the video trailers I watched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXllEwrhc8s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0B9mDXCijQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3E4nFtjxyU

when watching these trailers I noticed that they were all about 40 seconds long. I think this is a good length because it is enough time to tell people about your game without them losing interest . another thing I notices is they all have a very limited amount of gameplay shown.  

Initial ideas

1. Knight walking up to the hydroclops, getting ready to attack (1 2 3)

2. People preparing to attack the hydroclops (2)

3. Camera moving up the hydroclops’ body. (Gives the player a sense of scale) (1 2 3)

4. Arial camera moves around the world showing all the evil creatures causing havoc

5. Animation of all the good creatures turning into the enemies of my game

6. Dwarf drinking ale with happy music playing in the background. There is a crashing noise and the music stops (1 3)

Developed ideas

Once I had finished thinking of all the initial ideas I asked three people which ideas they liked the most. The most popular ideas were 1, 3, and 6. After finding out which ideas were most popular I developed the three most popular ideas

1.       The animation starts off in a first person view from the perspective of the knight. The knight will slowly walk up to the hydroclops. As the person gets closer the view will slowly aim towards the hydroclops, slowly moving up his body. every few seconds the view will change to an image of evil sheep. Every time the view changes the sheep will get closer and by the time the view has reached the hydroclops the view will change to a close up of a sheep and the trailer will end with the words killer hydroclops

2.       This will be a basic animation. It will start at the hydroclops feet and will slowly move all the way up to his head. When it reaches his head the hydroclops will roar and it will change to the name of my game

3.       This will start in a tavern looking at the dwarven knight. The knight will be laughing and drinking ale. The music in the tavern will be cheerful and there will be sounds of people laughing. A few seconds into the trailer there will be a loud roar and the music will stop. The screen will go black and there will be crashing sounds. As the crashing sounds go on the name of my game will slowly fade in

    story boards

click here to see my first story board

click here to see my second story board

 

click here to see my animation layout
1, 2, 3, 4

software

i used three different pieces of software to make my animation. Photoshop, flash and sound booth. i used Photoshop to create certain effects such as the glowing effect i used on the eye at the end of my animation. the reason i used Photoshop for this is because it had a large amount of different tools that i could use to get the effect that i wanted. i considered using gimp because it was free and had a large amount of tutorials online, however i decided to use Photoshop because i had more experience with the software and found it gave me a  better effect compared to gimp. i used flash to create the over all animation. the reason i used flash is because it used vector graphics which helped to emphasize the cartoon style of my animation. i considered using visual effects instead of flash because it had a large amount of tools. however, i did not feel like i could get the same cartoon effect that i could get when using flash.

history of animation timeline P1 M1 D1

here is a link to my timeline click here 

click here to see an extension to the timeline. here you can read more about animation and learn different animation techniques such as celluloid animation

praxinoscope

the praxinoscope was the first device to overcome the distortion that was caused by viewing the moving images through a slot. because of this, the device quickly became more popular then the zoetrope. as the praxinoscope continued to grow in popularity, Emile reynaud discovered a way of projecting these images. this allowed more people to view the animations and also allowed the animations to be longer. this device was called the Theatre optique. if you want to learn more about the theatre optique you can find more information on my timeline 'History of animation'

sources
http://www.earlycinema.com/technology/praxinoscope.html

zoetrope

although William Horner invented the Zoetrope in 1834, a device was found in china which dates back to 180AD. this device was invented by Ting Huran.
the zoetrope is still used today but has been slightly modified. below you will see an example of this.

  if you are interested in creating your own zoetrope, the video below will give you detailed instructions on how to create one using basic materials.

sources

http://zoetrope.org/zoetrope-history