Objective: To become acquainted
with shape and motion animation along with simple interactivity in
Macromedia
Flash. To communicate through metamorphosis ("morphing")
or shape tweening in Flash.
Background: Dreamweaver gives
you control of image and text, certain properties of images, and certain
properties of text (font color, size, spacing). While this application
is an environment for putting all web elements together, the designer
must turn to other programs in order to gain control of the dynamic properties
of images. Another term for the dynamic properties of images would be
animation, and Macromedia Flash is a program for animation, among other
things.
The early days of the web are a testament to the development
on the one hand, of interactivity separate from animation. The film and
computer animation industry on the other hand, have developed single channel,
or only implicitly interactive animation (it influences our ideas, we
can respond to it). The future of computer based design and visualization
resides in a division of graphics called, "real-time", or interactive
animation.
Real-time graphics are graphics or animation that are
interactive, where the elements of animation are determined "live,"
by a user. Play Station or other game consoles offer this kind of interactive
animation. The user, by joystick, controls digital characters in simple
tasks, directs them through a game space.
While not 3-dimensional, Flash allows us to create animation
that can be interactive. For the purposes of this project, we will use
Flash to 1) Gain finer control of imagery and its temporal dimension,
and 2) create this animation and serve it on user demand (i.e. make it
interactive).
Some issues to consider:
--Communication is of the utmost importance and the articulation
of ideas through motion and metamorphosis based upon user action is the
level on which you want to deal with your projects in the conceptualization
phase.
--This can be restated as the fact that we work with
meaning through the material/electronic components of computer software.
The software is a tool for state of the art communication, artistic strategy,
and political statement.
--The learning of Flash in these instances will follow
from project-based tasks, that engage you in the visual, animated, and
interactive communication.
You should begin with the constraints on your production
in this instance: namely, morphing. What does it mean to "morph"?
Here are some ideas:
--Morphing can carry subversive political content as
dissimilar images change from one to the other.
--Morphing can refer to the future through science fiction
scenarios, i.e. the changeling, the film the Matrix, etc.
--Morphing can be "used as a weapon," in the
manner of the earliest photo-mechanical collages, to offer social commentary.
--Morphing can be used to refer to classical mythology
and tales such as Ovid's Metamorphoses.
--Morphing has been used to position issues of gender
such as in Virginia Woolfe's Orlando, in which the main character one
day changes genders.
The constraints on this project:
The project should have multiple shape animations linked together through
web pages and some buttons and clickable shape interactivity in Flash
itself.
The project should focus on the animations. Once you
have the procedure for basic interactivity in buttons and clickable graphics,
you should be able to implement this functionality in each of your animations.
With the use of what are called "shape hints",
you will control the types of forms/shapes seen in the animation of the
morphing visuals. The Shape Hint Demo.
An example of a flash morph follows. The circle in the
bottom, left corner activates the shape tween.
The morph deals with the notion of harnessing atoms,
or atoms or molecules that take on new shapes or transform into online
community culture, specifically the artifacts of slow connections to the
web or large files (the loading progress bar).
Assessment
10 points concept
5 points realization/execution/visuals
10 points visual effects and meaning together
Logistics of Turning in Your Assignment
All files necessary for your site will be copied to the server
in the folder, "BringmanAssignments". Name the main file
with your name and the project number as the title. A folder could
also be the main file for your project.
