Midterm - Jeff C.

Midterm

I came up with the theme of my midterm project when I was out riding during one of our 15 minute sun breaks in the last few weeks. Getting a couple miles from home it started raining on me... and then hailing. Most Northwest motorcycle riders will understand that when you get that itch, you take those 15 minutes every time. Obviously we don't get tornadoes in Oregon (other than that freak one that hit Vancouver a couple years back), but it turns out that making a good rain animation in Flash usually involves action script which I think I could have pulled off but required the use of tools that we haven't learned yet and I decided against it.

I looked on Kuler for an appropriate color theme that would work with the poor weather riding idea, more specifically wet pavement. Sure enough, there is a color theme called 'wet pavement' so that is what I used, though I did not use every color in the swatch as some of them did not contrast enough to use where I would have liked to. In any case, here are the hex numbers for the colors of the swatch: 002930, 8A945D, FFCC5C, 0A0A0A, B64926.

For tools, I used the gruesome pen tool to create the motorcycle body and frame. Turns out the pen tool worked really well for this. I basically just created a general shape for the motorcycle and then used bezier curves to round out the ferrings. Line tool was used for the handle bars and forks, slightly curving the lines when need be. The rectangle tool was used for the rear subframe and some of the motorcycle accents, the shapes were changed using the curve tools on the selection tool and a few anchor points were added when needed. The oval tool was used on the headlight and taillight. The oval tool was also used on the wheels, I used the object drawing button to create a circle for the tires and wheels then another circle to cut out the middle. Simple lines were used for the spokes. The rider was built using the rectangle tool for the torso and curved. The line tool was used for the limbs, curved. And the helmet and visor were built using the circle tool, and curve tools. The clouds were built with a series of ovals and then a gradient color in line with my swatch theme and create a deeper texture. The sky and pavement was a simple rectangle with gradient on sky and solid color for pavement. The lines on the pavement were just a drawn line converted to symbol and copied.

Multiple symbols were created for this project and one was used from an in class exercise and then modified slightly for this project. The rider was a created symbol, the motorcycle frame and body was a symbol, both wheels were symbols, the paint lines are a symbol, the trees are a symbol, and the twister that comes across the stage was a previous symbol. All of the symbols but the twister were newly created. The twister's shape, color, and alpha were altered form it's original form for this project.

My frame by frame animation is the text that says 'Northwest Riders', the first animation that appears. I decided to make this animation the frame by frame so that I could effectively control exactly how the text appears at each frame. Specifically when the second text set enters. I wanted to have control over the alpha and the blur filter instead of having Flash try and help me with my timing. By using frame by frame I'm able to get the timing exact so that it appears as if the second set of text disperses the first set. Also, I didn't feel that any of my other animations would have been better off by creating frame by frame.

There were multiple motion tweens created in my project. The tornado that comes across the stage is on a motion path and timed with the rider symbol that flies off the motorcycle as the tornado that comes through, which is of course on its own motion path. I thought that it would have been difficult to get the timing just right on this but I was able to simply click on each key frame and match the rider position to where the twister was until they were both off of the stage. The motorcycle body and the wheels are also a motion tween. Because I created a nested animation with the wheels to make it appear as if the motorcycle was moving along the road, I had to create separate motion paths for both wheels and the bike frame when twister takes the rider and the bike goes off screen. I again thought that this would be a challenge to make sure that neither moved slower or faster than the other. Turns out again this wasn't that difficult, but the key was to use the shift control to make sure they both stayed on the same line.

I used custom presets for the second text animation to have it fade into view and appear to knock out the first set of text. Which was my intent of that preset action, so that the two texts seem to interact.

I created three different nested animations. The first of which was the wheels on the motorcycle, in the nested animation I used the rotation tool to spin both wheels in a 24 frame loop to make the motorcycle appear to be moving. Also to give the perception of moving I created a nested animation of the paint lines on the street moving, also on a 24 frame loop. Lastly the trees were converted to one symbol, then starting them half off stage and at the end of the nested 24 frame loop the trees moved to the other side of the stage to complete the 'illusion' of movement. For the trees and the paint lines the shift key was invaluable.

Again... I know there are not tornadoes in NW Oregon, but I didn't have any other symbols I had created that would fit into my idea, and I like it. The trees complimented the NW theme. I threw in some clouds and lighting for added effect and fun. I also changed the frame rate to 18 frames per second because I felt the animation happened just a bit too fast when I was finished with everything, 12 frames per second was a bit to slow and some of the nested animations were choppy. Surprisingly I just didn't really run into any real big problems with this one.