Storyboard

I will create an initial storyboard to be able to grasp the basic actions that is going to take place during my animation sequence. This storyboard will also allow me to reflect at the final stages of this assessment on how it has developed from this idea to the final product. The storyboard will also allow me to see what software may be useful to create my objects that the user will be able to interact with. I will talk about each part of the video with appropriate screen dumps to show how it all fits in with the final product.

The first section of the animation is going to be an text based introduction to my product, This will be at the bottom left hand corner of my animation and will express what the animation is e.g. Hello Kitty. Therefore I have made an appropriate initial screen that shows the user just this. This fits in with the assessment component as one of the requirements is to have text, another way of showing this is to have the text as a graphic therefore fulfilling another section of the assessment which is to include graphics, however it may be better to show the ability to incorporate both and not a combination.




This is an example of how the text may look in final production; to achieve this you select the text tool on the sidebar of the macromedia flash 8 software. You will then select on the aria provided by flash, then type what you want on the screen. After you have done this you can move it to wherever you wish on the space provided.

The A below is the icon that is in the left hand column of the flash software, when you have selected this you will then be given another set of options to edit your text to ensure a personal feel and individual work.



The other set of options that you get from selecting this text tool is shown below, this is where you can individually select all the different options to achieve the optimum look for you flash project.



To create the text that I wanted firstly I needed to know what was going to be below the text for example if the text is going to be white and have a white background then it would not work. The decision that I have made for the background in my video is to have Hello Kitty sitting on the grass, therefore the background is going to be green. I feel that from trial and error a white text works well. Another feature of my text is to have the size of the font at around 22 as I do not want the text to overpower the video. All of these features can be seen by clicking on the image above.

Now that there is an introduction to the video it is important to figure out what is going to happen in the video. As this assessment is partially based on the user being able to interact with the video it is important to incorporate this within this storyboard. As I have said in a previous post about text i am going to have Hello Kitty sitting on the grass, now my idea is to have buttons with different outcomes on it that when the user presses the Kitty will do. Therefore it is important to say that in the storyboard that kitty will be sitting down unless prompted otherwise.

The image below is how the kitty may look like when it is not being prompted to perform any actions, this currently is with no background. This image has been drawn up on one layer, when I am going to create a final video I will have every image on a different layer due to the fact that I will want to move individual components of the Kitty not the whole image in one movement.



From the Hello Kitty sitting still it is important that I define the actions that will be performed when the user clicks on a button. Therefore I will show an example of a button and then a possible action for Kitty to do.

The screen shots below firstly show the image of a button and then the result of a user pressing that button.





I got the idea for the hello kitty to smile when a user presses a button due to smiling being one of the most common actions that someone takes on. It is an action that we perform without even thinking of doing it. Also the smile can be contagious, although this is just an opinion that I believe, I feel that I am not the only one that probably believes this. And if someone sees Hello Kitty smiling then maybe they will smile back. The reason for the way Kitty smiles is from watching the animated series with my niece and when Hello Kitty smiles her eyes make an inverted U, and the cheeks puff out indicated by rounded line in the corner of the Kitty’s smile.

Another idea that I am going to pursue to have in my animation is the ability to make Hello Kitty wave to the user when a corresponding button is clicked on. Again the reason for this is due to the fact that it fits in with the Hello Kitty persona. This is that it is a respectable figure that is polite and nice to everyone, so regardless of whom you are, if you want Kitty to wave all you need to do is to click the button which expresses ‘wave’.






One of the other important actions that I wish my animation to contain is to have Hello Kitty gardening, this is because in the episode that I watched this was one of the main plots was that Kitty wanted to do her garden up however she did not have the tools plus the weather wasn’t right for the growth of plants. Therefore I will create a button expressing Garden and then a corresponding animation of Hello Kitty watering the ground and a flower rising from the soil.






These are the major animations that I want Hello Kitty to perform I will go into more detail about each of these when I am describing the actions that I took to create the animations. The image below shows the total storyboard on what will happen as a result of the user pressing buttons.