TASK 4

 

Provide a reflective conclusion, summarising problems encountered, achieved objectives, further work required, and your overall experience of working with animation software
Problems Encountered

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.

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.

Achieved Objectives

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.

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.

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.

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.

Further Work Required

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.

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.

Subjective Conclusion

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.