A3 - Basic Animation

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Assignment 3
Key things to think about
What to Do
Pro Tips
How to Submit Your Work

Assignment 3

In this assignment we’ll use Adobe Animate to create a 10 second long animation of fish in an aquarium. Here's a sample with a sound track added (note that adding sound is optional but it really makes your animation awesome!).

Warning

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Key things to think about

Use shapes to create your fish and other objects instead of trying to draw them with the mouse
Tell a simple story with your animation

What to Do

Create a new HTML5 Canvas in Adobe Animate, select the size of the Stage from the default size – 1920 px by 1080 px works well.
Create your fish using the shape tools (rectangle and oval), then use the selection tool to manipulate the shape the way that you want it (pull corners, bend lines). Note that you could use your A2 - Creating Multiple Objects assignment as a starting point for this assignment.
If you haven't done so already, save each fish as a symbol using Modify>Convert to Symbol (be careful to select only the object that you want to convert, watch out for selecting parts of other objects or not selecting the entire object). Once an object has been converted it is stored in the Library so you can create multiple copies of it simply by dragging from the Library to the Stage.
Once you have enough fish to start, work on your background scene. Use separate layers to create water, sand, seaweed, rocks, etc. Reorder the layers to create a sense of depth. When you finish a layer, use the lock to protect it from being edited. At minimum you should have sand, water, and some seaweed.
Set the length of the animation using the time line. With one of your background layers selected, scroll to the 10s point on the timeline, right click on the frame in that layer and “Insert Frame”.
Create additional layers for your fish. You can create different stopping and starting points for the fish by right clicking on a frame in the layer and “Insert Blank Keyframe”. Decide how long your want your fish to appear in the animatoin and right click on a frame in the layer and "Insert Blank Keyframe" to set the end point of the motion. With the starting blank keyframe selected, drag your fish from the Library onto the Stage.
Create motion by selecting the object that you want to move and using Insert>Motion Tween. Animate usually then automatically creates a set of frames that is 1s long. You can change the duration of the animation in the timeline by changing the position of the end frame making it shorter or longer. Important - make sure to check the position of the Scrubber (blue rectangle and line above the timeline). Move the Scrubber to the point on the timeline where you want the animation to end and then simply drag the object to its end point. Animate will create a path of movement which is shown by a line with dots on it.

Pro Tips

Label your layers so you know what is on each layer.
Name your symbols so that they are easy to identify – red fish is easier to figure out than symbol 1.
Start your animations at different points in the timeline and have objects move from off stage, onto the stage, and then exit off stage.
To create more natural movement, move the blue Scrubber rectangle on the timeline, move your object, then move the Scrubber further on the timeline, move your object, repeat. Then bend the animation line into a curve.
Create multiple copies of the same fish in different colours by duplicating the fish in the Library and then editing it. You can edit your symbols by double clicking on the gear like icon beside the name of the fish.
Animate the size of your objects/background to create a sense of movement – convert your background to a symbol, add a tween and instead of moving it scale it to make it bigger or smaller. The object will increase or decrease in size over the course of the tween.
Add sound to your animation – create a sound layer(s) and then import an .mp4 file to your stage. Note that the audio should be edited to a 20s sound clip. Check the M: [INGRAM]/[INGRAM – Resources] for sound effects.
Add a title sequence and credit sequence.

How to Submit Your Work