Flash Animation: How The Sun Was Made
6 12 2007Well, I had never used Flash before so when my family had cleared the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I headed into school just to try to familiarize myself with the program. I thought I would just spend a couple hours. This turned into five and I found the whole thing somewhat difficult, but also loved this new form of storytelling! I spent the next several afternoons/evenings/late-into-the-night, in the lab (right in the middle of the the Applications group editing their hours of footage, and having group meetings). I found it frustrating that certain symbols–like my birds–I couldn’t open up, edit, and then change the name to make it a new symbol.
After doing most of the animation, I went home and re-wrote the story, based on the two versions I found on the internet. I searced on store iTunes for some Aboriginal music and Australian birds—and purchased a few songs. Later, I worked with these in Audacity, cutting some of the Aboriginal music track and then inserting two layers of bird music (also edited) at various points. I imported this in Flash and lay this as a base behind the whole animation.
I also checked out an M-Audio and recorded Sam reading the story. I had no idea he would have such a good storytime voice!! So I imported this track as well, but then found I had to adjust my animation quite a bit to match his voice. There are a few parts where I would have added a bit more animation, but I also kind of like the story just to move with Sam’s voice.
