WEEK 9: Animation - Twas the Day of Halloween

Post Animation assignment along with Artist's statement
I created a digital animation of a house evolving into a 'haunted house' over the period of the day. I strived to create a fun animation that would be enjoyable for people to watch. I wanted it to be simple, but of course be challenging for me to create. I had about thirty layers within this animation, all containing different moving elements. I started off with just the basic houses on land, and slowly added in all the other motion tweens. All of my creations such as the houses, pumpkins, the sun and trees, are all made out of regular shapes that were tweaked in order to give them a certain look. I used text that I felt represented a Halloween font. It has rougher edges, and looked “spooky.” I took the sound effects and music from the beds in ITunes in order to add sound. I used sound effects for the bouncing pumpkins, for the cracking of the graves coming out of the ground, and the window panel falling off the house. Also, adding in the fun music for daylight and transitioning into haunted Halloween music for night was a nice touch.

The target audience for this particular animation would be children ages 3 - 12. I envision this particular age group because this is a short, simple animation that has fun music and cute characteristics. It contains many basic shapes that children can learn from and recognize at a young age. It is very easy to understand, and children would be able to depict the transitions and shapes. There are many different bright colours present, which children are very normally drawn too. Children at a young age are always into Halloween; therefore this is a simple way to interpret this event, and the stories of “spookiness” at night.

The challenges I suffered while creating this assignment were endless. I had the hardest time creating an animation that would be easy for me to create. I have never used this program before, and found it very stressful to create an animation when I had very little understanding of how to work the Flash program. I had several attempts with different drawings and pictures and ended up using this animation, with very basic shapes and motions. I had to have assistance in creating certain actions and motion within the program, several times. Despite my countless troubles with this stressful program, I am very proud of myself for working hard and making it work to the best of my abilities.

Overall, I think I did the best job I could with it being my first time using Flash. I was very pleased with myself being able to accomplish this much in such a short amount of time. The finished product of this piece is one I am content with. I think it is a fun animation and I had fun doing it, despite the rough patches. I trust I was able to successfully address the target audience as it is a basic cartoon animation for children. I am excited to learn more and possibly make another animation again!