Assessment 2 & 3 – Animation

Stuart Matthews
Assessment 2 & 3 – Animation
Animation can be used for giving instructions, catching attention and can be 2d and 3d. As with graphics and images animation can be used to convey information without language barriers. Animation is the display of a sequence of images with small changes which creates the illusion of movement. The most common animation media is motion picture and video. Software can be used to create animation using key frames, score and cast and is created by playing a series of still images in sequence. There are several types of animation, the first animations were flip books which is a book with a series of pictures with slight changes drawn on each page and when the pages are turned quickly it creates the illusion of motion. Frame-by-frame animation or stop motion is the process of making a manually moved object to appear as if it moving on its own by moving an object small amounts and photographing each frame. Tweening, or in-betweening, is the process animation software uses to key motion frames between key-frames. This process allows helps the user to create motion animation. In the past this process would have required a team of animators to manually draw the frames between the keyframes.
Animation is often also used other mediums like films, TV and all cartoons where it is also referred to as CGI (Computer-generated-imagery). To create these complex animations there is often many animations within the main animation. This allows more life-like movements for example in a walking motion the legs and arms need to be animated while the animation move across the stage. 3d rendering is the final process in creating complex and realistic animations. 3d rendering is the process of adding photo realistic graphics to a model, this can take many computers a long time to complete.
Animation software includes Flash, Pencil and 3d Blender and can be used to automate to process of creating animations. These programs have many tools and features to help the user create animations. Tools available include 3d transformation which allows 2d images to be moved through 3d space, motion tweening to allow the automation of creating frames between keyframes and frame-by-frame animation. Many of these programs allow the user to export the movie as many different file types meaning the final animation can be used on many types of media.

Assessment 2 & 3 – Sound Software

Stuart Matthews
Assessment 2 & 3 – Sound Software

Audio can be used for entertainment, giving information and instructions and conveying information. Audio editing software can be used to create and edit audio files for a final presentation. Audio files can be edited by using cut and paste tools and effects such as delay and phaser. Pitch and speed can be edited to change the characteristics of the sound. Audio editing software can also be used to clean up sound by using tools to remove noise. Files can be compressed to smaller files for use on the internet and in presentations. Audio files are created by converting audio to a digital format, they then need to be converted back to audio for playback. This process of converting is called audio-to-digital (A/D) when recording and requires an ADC (analog-to-digital converter) which converts an analogue input voltage to a digital number. Digital-to-analog (D/A) is the process for playback and converts a digital code to an analogue signal.

Analogue and Digital Signals

Tapes and vinyl can be converted to digital files most commonly mp3s by using editing software by plugging a tape or record player into the computer and recording a new track which can then be edited to remove hiss and use the cut tool to spilt the track into different songs. Voice and music can be recorded to create podcasts and to convey other information. Editing software has many tools and options to enhance and change voice and other sounds by moving parts of track around or changing the tone. Music tracks can be imported to edit and cut sections of the track to create ringtones or samples. Mp3s have the advantage of being able to transfer over the internet and are much smaller than other digital audio files. Editing software can be used to convert stereo files, using two audio channels, to mono, using one audio channel. Surround Sound uses multiple audio channels to give a 3d sound experience. Audio files require a lot of compromise when being used in multimedia media applications because of the size of the files. While CD-qualit sounds good the files are large and must be compressed, losing quality. Audio playback software such as QuickTime and Windows Media Player may be required to hear audio used in application. Audio editing software includes Audacity, Soundforge and Adobe Premier.