Animation and Game Development
In order to teach us the skills we needed for the animated comic, we got a chance to try our hands at a few different animation and game software before being introduced to the program we're using for the final piece.
'Adobe Animate'
It's Flash
While practicing with flash we went back to basics, it was a really sleek and easy to use software for the most part and making a bouncing ball animation was a nice simple exercise. I especially enjoyed customizing it.
My only real challenge with it was I don't like how all the lines made in flash feel inorganic and are always made into a vector that's hard to move around without accidentally editing it. Hopefully, I can figure out some workarounds for that over time
Motion artist
Motion artist was the tool of choice for making motion comics, we had two classes learning how to use it. In the first class, we were making a haunted house animation and made out assets in Clip Studio Paint. It was interesting to get used to the system since you had to make sure to set not only when you want objects to move but when you want them to stay still since the software will automatically make in between motions.
The first time went a little wrong because while I animated I kept messing around in the file the assets were in and it accidentally switched the new ones for the old ones in the final animation which looked very strange.
I had much more luck the second time around and practiced how to make objects move, spin and how to move the camera between panels.
Visual Novel Games
We were introduced to visual novels and the market for them in class. They're a form of visual storytelling that uses choices to drive the story which can lead to some interesting stories as well as making a product that can be read multiple times. Many popular games like this don't actually have that many different stories but make the players feel like they're making important decisions anyway.
The basic structure of these multiple choice stories is something we were then asked to use to make a short multiple choice game. We were asked to base them on the same fairytale as the motion comic we're making and to use this website as a way to publish it.
