Flash: Shape Tween

[Direct Instruction Day]

What is Animation?

Traditional animation (Disney cartoons, Spongebob, anime and manga) is an illusion of movement.  You don't actually see things moving -- you see a series of drawings placed one after another [around 24-30 images per second] which makes your brain believe it sees movement.  That phenomenon is called Persistence of Vision.  Traditionally an artist draws/paints 24-30 drawings for every 1 second of animation.  With computers as tools, artists have the luxury of having computers complete the "in-between" frames automatically.  For example, you draw two shapes: a circle in one corner of the screen on frame 1 and then in the opposite corner around 10 seconds later -- and then you tell the computer to figure out the "in-between" (or "tween").

The nice thing about computerized "tweens" is that image one can be a tiny red circle and image 2 can be a large green square, and the computer will gradually morph them from frame to frame.

Here is a sample video:

Over 100 years ago "arcades" were full of machines that people would put coins in and look through the viewfinder as they turned a crank which would flip through a series of photographs on a big spool.  More modern examples of this technology is a "flip book".  Typically these are done by rapidly flipping through images to create the illusion of motion.

Here's a great example of using Post-It notes to create a flip book movie:

Here's an example of animation using a MUCH slower "frame rate": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=783uWoSqdX0

Bryce: Organic Shapes (Horns, Shells, Etc.)

Today we will be creating some natural looking shapes by using the Multiple Replicate function of Bryce.

Shape #1:

1. Add a Torus (doughnut) Shape
2. Rotate (hold Shift) the Torus so it's flat/horizontal
3. Click on the A button and select the "Show Origin Handle" checkbox and click the checkmark
4. The green dot in the center of the Torus is the "Origin Handle".  Drag that to the right... outside of the bounding box
5.  Now go to EDIT > Multi-Replicate
6. Set your Quantity to something like 50
7. Set your Offset to 0,0,0 (no offset when replicating)
8. Set Rotate to 10,0,0 (that rotates it 10 degrees for each replicate)
9. Set Size to 97,97,97 (which is the percentage of the previous replication for this replication)
10. Click the checkmark to create your shape
11. Give your new shape a texture

Shape #2:

1. Add a Torus (doughnut) Shape
2. Rotate (hold Shift) the Torus so it's flat/horizontal
3. Click on the A button and select the "Show Origin Handle" checkbox and click the checkmark
4. The green dot in the center of the Torus is the "Origin Handle".  Drag that to the right... outside of the bounding box
5. Now go to EDIT > Multi-Replicate
6. Set your Quantity to something like 40
7. Set your Offset to 1.5, 0, 0 (this will help the shape extrude out a little)
8. Set Rotate to 10, 0, 0
9. Set Size to 97, 97, 97
10. Click the checkmark to create your shape
11. Give your new shape a texture