In finishing my city, I forgot to include my thought-process for my beginning and end credits. This was something that the class was asked to think through, to be creative, even though it seemed like such a simple addition to the overall story. I did some research and looked at examples to see what large hollywood productions were using for animated credits. This was one that I really liked. While it was much more complex than I was willing to tackle, the end credits to Kung Fu Panda literally took the audience through a scene (and almost ended up creating another story, just within the credits). Although my project didn't end up having credits quite this elaborate, it did spark the idea to somehow incorporate my scenes into the credits -- trying to make them seamless For example, in my video, the background color (black) is the start to my piece...it's complete blackness/darkness. Same with the end of the video, it again goes to darkness, and all we can see are eyes (of the character). So instead of just having the eyes disappear and the credits role, I kept the eyes, and had the credits literally carry the eyes up the screen. This was similar to how some of the text in Kung Fu Panda traveled with the scenery.
I was a bit ahead with finishing my city. I got feedback in class about it and so now I can move on and work on some other minor projects I may have left behind while developing the city. This week, we began to learn how to take projects in illustrator and bring them into flash. This isn't just a technique to know how to export; sometimes projects will be easier to design in illustrator and then brought into flash. We looked at some videos online of elaborate examples of this. This one, When Humans Ruled the Earth, stuck out to me when watching:
At first, I was sort of turned off to the idea of using illustrator to create projects because it's definitely one of my weaker "adobe programs," although I was willing to try. My first project where I used this was the "walk cycle." This project gave me a really good idea of how beneficial using illustrator can be. It would have taken me triple the amount of time in flash as it did using illustrator. Below, I will post my "walk cycle" project (I need to tweek a few things before posting).
