Homework 3 - Story Animation

Part 1:

As a right-of-passage to the Halls of Animators, you need to animate (and extend) the bouncing ball that appears in Figure 2 of Lasseter's paper. Make the ball enter the stage from the left, bounce on the floor a couple of times before bouncing of the right side of the stage (which is to behave as hard as the floor), then bounce back on the floor before disappearing on the left side of the stage. You should use vector graphics for this animation, as it will make your life easier. (See Ariel's ball as an example.) Name your file name_ball.dir, where name is your puma account name.

Extra credit (harder): Animate Luxo Jr's jump from Figure 3 instead. Think about how many cast members you need to create Luxo - to save you some work in creating keyframes it should not be a single cast member.

Part 2:

Now you have gotten down the basic animation techniques, it is time to create a more complex animation. An animation that has a theme, a story to tell, and does so nicely.

Pay attention to the specifications below, as you will be graded on following them:

• Your story should have a "punch line", or a "message".
• It should last between 30 and 60 seconds.
• Your .dir file has size no greater than 5 MB. You will want it to be small so that you can post it on your web site. Do not use external cast members (linked images).
• You animation should present a dynamic view, that is, it should have panning, zooming and background movement.
• It should have at least 4 active characters (not just cast members)

Avoid multiple unnecessary cast members of the same character, place your sprites neatly on the score, measure the timing of your animation carefully, name your file name_story.dir, where name is your puma account name and story is a one-word description of your animation. For example, If I was submitting Luxo Jr's animation, it should be named pmetaxas-LuxoJr_jump.dir. Also, using QuickTime create a .mov video of your animation, and name it in a similar way. (E.g. pmetaxas-LuxoJr_jump.mov.)

In brief, your animation should look "professional". You will be graded not only on the technical part of creating the animation, but also on the creative part of the story. And do not forget to title and sign your work!

Ah, yes. And you should have fun!

What to submit: Two things: The Director files and a quicktime movie showing your animation. When done producing them, place your files inside the appropriate folders on puma. Each part should contain .dir file you worked on,and the html file and the .dcr file that are created when you published your project.

In addition to how well you executed the assignment, you will be graded on how well you followed the specifications of the assignment, and whether you completed its Assessment questionnaire.

Some examples from past years:
Chloe - Wenjun - Yilun - Miranda - Annie