Production Diary

7th November 2012

Today I created some of my characters that I will be using in my Alphabet Adventures. I created them in photoshop. The picture below is one of the characters that I had created during this lesson. I also used a drawing tablet to make the process easier.
To create this I used the brush tool to create the outline, in this case a 'z' shape making sure I made the ends curvy to look like a Zebra. As I found it difficult to draw straight lines free hand I held down the shift button when I clicked down which automatically draws a straight line. This helped with the top and bottom of the zebra. The only bad thing is that you can not use this tool going diagnolly.
The picture below is showing you the brush tool.

When I had done this I then created a new layer. After I created a new layer I then drew in the features and stripes. I tried to make it look cartoon like as the animal was in the shape of a letter and also because my audience is young children. I still used the brush tool to do the main features.

Then I created a new layer after I had finished this, this was so that I could colour in what I created. Aswell as using the brush tool, I also used the paint bucket tool to speed up the process.

                                       

After I had finished colouring, I then neatened up the character. I used the rubber to neaten up around the character for any lines that had stuck out a little. Also if some of the black lines had been covered with colour I went over them with the brush tool.

The only problem I faced in this session was that the characters do take a while to create as there are so many and they are detailed.

In this session I also created these characters:

21st November 2012
To start of this lesson I recorded my dialoge using a voice recorder which I will use in my final piece. I wrote down on a piece of paper what I wanted to say for example, A is for Aligator, B is for Bear etc. When i had done recording my dialogue I then put my recordings onto the computer.

The first time I did this the recording that I put on my computer was the wrong recording I needed and when I went back to put it on my computer someone had already deleted it. Meaning I had to go and record my dialouge again which the second time was successful.

When I had put the dialogue on to the computer I then edited how i sounded for example changing it to high pitch. I did this just to experiment with the effects.

When I had done this I then carried on with a few more edits which are below. I created these on photoshop using a drawing tablet, making sure I used layers for the colours and different tools for effects and to help make them look as professional as I could.

28th NovemberIn this session I decided to edit my voice recordings so that I could put them onto flash with my graphics. To edit my voice recorings I used Adobe Audition.

What I did on this programme was seperate all my recordings so that they wouldnt all play together which would help as i would have to put the seperate recordings on seperate scenes in flash. I did this by opening my voice recording which had all my dialouge on for example A is for alligator, B is for bear etc. Then I listened to my recording to see where the A is for alligator ended before going on to B is for Bear. I would then Highlight over all of the alligator recording, which is shown below.

                                  

After that I would right click onto the highlighted area and click onto 'Copy to new'. This would then copy the highlighted area to a seperate 'wav' file. When I had done this for every letter in the alphabet I then wanted to manipulate my voice so that it didnt sound like me.

To do this I clicked on the 'wav' file that I wanted, such as A is for alligator, then I would go to the panel at the top of the screen and click on effects then click onto time and pitch then click onto stretch and pitch.

                                                   

Clicking on this will bring up a seperate panel which will look like this.

                                                    

I would then click on on the top panel and make sure its on raise pitch. Then I would mess around with the stretch and pitch shift untill I found the right pitch that sounded good but you can still understand what I am saying. I chose to do a high pitched voice because I think that it would suit a younger target audience more as it sounds funny and it will make them interested.

I would do this process for every sound dialouge that I had.

After I had done this I then went back to my graphics to edit them to try and make them look better.



5th DecemberIn this session we were concentrating on the sound rather than the graphics. Therefore I used this opportunity to find some animal noises that I could use, also making sure that it wasnt copyright protected.

To get some animal noises I firstly looked on youtube but I found this was no help as the animal noises all had strange noises in the background and it would look unprofessional if I had some sounds with noises playing in the background and some not.

So I then typed in on google the animal noise that I wanted to find, for example 'aligator noise free download' this would then bring up many websites that were very usefull for me. However there were some animals that I couldnt find noises for and also took me a while to find sounds for just one animal as some of the sounds were very muffled and could not tell what it was.

This was successful as I found noises for most of my animals which were free and was fine for me to use.

The picture below will show you what sounds I had found.

12th DecemberIn this session I had to make my prototype of my final version of alphabet adventures, this was so that I could show people what I am doing and hopefully get the final version to be like this. I had to show a few people in my class what I had completed so they could then evaluate it in this lesson or the next.To make my alphabet adventures I had to put all my graphics and sounds in Flash. First of all I had to find a background that I could use, I was going to create my own background using photoshop but I didnt have enough time so I then went on google to find a jungle background that I could use so it wouldnt be copyright protected. I wanted to add a background so that it looked more professional and would appeal more to my target audience.

When I had found my background, which is a cartoon jungle, I then put it into photoshop. When I had done this I then added a new layer so I could add my animal to it, For example the picture I had designed for the alligator. So that it would look like this

                                   

I had to resize the alligator by pressing control and T, this is so that it fitted on the background and didnt look too big.

After I had done this I then imported it into flash, then put it into the centre of the page, to make sure it was perfectly in the center i had to allign the picture. When I had done this I then went back to photoshop to make the writing to go underneath the picture.

I selected the text tool and wrote 'Alligator' I then changed the font to Lithos Pro, this font made it more relevant to children and more fun to look at than a normal boring font. I then pressed on the fx button that is at the right hand side of the screen and the bottom of the panel, i then clicked on stroke and make an outline around my lettering in the colour of the alligator so that it matched and there was a theme going.

It then looked like this

I then imported this into flash. I wanted to make it say 'A is for alligator' when you rolled over the word. To do this i had to right click on the word alligator and go the convert to symbol button, then change it into a button. When I had done this i double clicked on the word so that this came up.




I inserted keyframes in each one. When I had done this I then drew around the word and then filled it (you can not see this in the finished product) and then made a new layer which i then inserted blank key frames in each. I then clicked on over and went to properties and inserted my sound so that when someone rolled over the word it would say a is for alligator.

When I had done this I then created a next button to get me from scene to scene. I created this in photoshop and made the colour of the button the colour of the animal. I then inserted it into flash in a seperate layer. I then again converted it to a button. I clicked onto it and then clicked onto the arrow in the corner of the screen which brought up this screen.

I then had to insert a few things such as 'on (release) {
 gotoAndPlay("Scene 3",1);}

this is so that it would go to my second scene. I then carried this on for a few more scenes.

19 decemberIn this lesson i carried on from last lesson carrying on where I had left off. I created more scenes up to letter F doing the same process in flash and photoshop but this time I also created my started page which had alphabet adventures on it and some pictures. I made this background by watching a tutorial on the internet. It has colourful writing so it will attract children and cartoon like graphics to make it more interesting.

The finished product looked like this.

Photoshop

We did an exercise in class to help us get used to photoshop and know all the different tools and what they do. As I have never used photoshop before this exercise really helped with my understanding. This is the origional picture that we then edited in photoshop. The result of this is:

To get the picture to look like this we had to edit it alot. First of all we had to import both pictures the house and the stormy sky onto photoshop into two different layers. I then dragged the stormy background onto the picture of an old house so that the pictures were together. As I put the pictures together the stormy sky background was infront of the house, to make the house come forward, I went to the panel with my layers in and switched the two layers around, doing this made the house picture come forward and making the stormy sky be the background. After this I then had to get rid of the white background etc, to do this I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool. As this was the first time I had used photoshop so I deleted little chunks at a time of the white background to get used to the tool.

When I had got rid off all the background I didnt want I then had to get rid off all the fencing and wiring that was at the front of the house. To do this we used the cloning tool. To use this we had to click above the place we wanted to work on so that we selected the right colour, then we would click over what we want to get rid of and the colour you selected will then blend everything together. I had to be careful using this tool as it sometimes smudged the window panes etc. We used the clone tool to make the picture look more presentable.

After that we created a title called 'Mysterious House'. When I made the title I created a new layer for it. I made my title have a dark colour and effect so it adds more scariness.

I then imported my finished picture into flash.

When I finished that I went back into photoshop and created a button for my picture. I created three different button. The button above is the button you will see first. I drew the arow myself using the brush tool then added text to it.

This blue button is what you will see when you roll over the button. To do this I used the brush tool again and went over it in blue. I changed the colour as I wanted it to be seen when you rollover the button.

This is the third and final button at the starting page. This time I changed the colour back to red and changed the colour of the writing instead. This button is used for when you click down onto the button. I used red as it creates more of a scary feeling.

I then inserted the buttons onto flash, in the first layer it has the picture of the house and in the second layer I inserted my buttons. One at a time I inserted my buttons making sure they all alligned together. Once I had done this I inserted the buttons onto my picture. I then went to the control panel and went to test movie and tested to see if the buttons worked. Which then looked like the picture below.

When we had done that we then added another scene into flash and another layer so that we could insert the next picture for the next seen. I used a picture of a scary hallway with a girl standing there so that it creates mystery and carries on with the scary theme. To insert this picture I made sure I had clicked on to the second scene then imported the picture in the picture library then dragging it into the centre of the page. Before importing the picture I had to resize the photo using photoshop. When I had inserted the photo into flash I made sure the photo was alligned in the centre.

When I had created a new layer in flash I named it actions. To put in actions for my movie, I firstly clicked onto my first scene which is the picture of the house, then went onto actionscript panel. When the panel came up i scrolled down to 'timeline control' and dragged 'stop' into the middle of the screen. This will then stop the scene once it has gone onto the other screen so that both scenes dont flash up after each other repeatidly.



I also had to put actions into the second scene which is the picture off the hallway. Again I made sure I was clicked onto 'scene 2'. I did the same as before as I went onto actionscript panel. When I was on there I had to drag a few more things into the centre of the page.

After that I tested out what I had done and the two scenes I had created came together smoothly. They didnt overlap like they had done before.

Alphabet Adventures

Alphabet Adventures
 I am going to produce a interactive flash presentation to be used in a junior school. I will use graphics and sound to present letters of the alphabet and words in a fun and exciting way which will appeal to 6 - 8 year olds, for example 'Aa is for apple'
Sounds can be used to pronounce the letters and words made by the letters. This will help children to pronounce the words and letters easily.
Buttons and rollover graphics can be used to progress through the presentation and trigger graphic images, texts, animations and sound.
The final interactive media product will be a projector file on a CDROM published from flash.
My target audience for this is 6 - 8 year olds.

Why did I choose 'Alphabet Adventures' for this unit?I chose to do 'Alphabet Adventures' as it will be a fun task creating all the characters for each letter in the alphabet. Its a very creative task which will make it more enjoyable. It will be a challenge creating my characters for every letter. As it is for a younger audience I will be using cartoon characters which makes it easier and more fun.


Useful links?
There are a few links that I can use to help me with my task, they are helpful as they have given me ideas to what I can do for my own alphabet.
For example:
http://www.learningplanet.com/act/fl/aact/index.asp
I even got images off 'Google' to help me with my ideas.

Style?
I am going to merge my letters and animals together to make it more of an unique style. This will make it more interesting to look at and will capture the eyes of the younger target audience. The characters will be very colourful.

My Planning
Ambient Sound - Describe location
For my alphabet adventures I will use different sounds. At the start screen where all the letters are shown i will use a jungle noise to represent all the animals. When the user clicks onto the letter they want for example 'A' then it will show an alligator imerged into the letter 'A' i will use the noise of a swamp to represent the location of the alligator. Then i will put sound in that the alligator will make and i will do this for every animal.
Spot sound effects - triggered by something eg user or change in pictures
Sound spot effects will be used when you click or hover over the pictures. When someone clicks on the letter or hovers over the animal it will make the noise that the animal makes.
Dialogue - speech, pronounce letters or wordsWhen someone clicks onto the letter a clear voice will pronounce the letter aswell as the animal that represents the letter. This will be there so that the children have a better chance as pronouncing the letters and animals rather than them reading the words and trying to pronounce it themselves.Music - Creates moodIn the background there will be a song playing, not too loud that you cant hear the letters and animals. It will be catchy therefore making the children want to learn more. I want it to create a happy mood but not too annoying that children cant concentrate or will just leave the page.

These three drawings are what I have created using photoshop but these are a rough version of what i will be doing. I will be using these in my final work but with colour. All the letters will look like this to represent the animal that the letter represents. The drawings are very cartoon like rather to them looking realistic as they will be more appealing to my target audience which is children. Also if they are cartoon like I can make them blink, or for the fish i can make bubbles appear.
I will be using dialouge in my alphabet adventures. I will be saying the letter and the animal which represents that letter. This is to help children with pronouncing the word and letter.