Animation 2

The Secret Operation

Anders, Brayden, Carli

Drakes Creek Middle School

Animation

We began this project by using Scratch, which is a free coding application. We scrapped this idea because we knew it would take a long time to complete. We had a few different options, such as Stop Motion Studio & Google Slides. We decided on Google Slides, since we all had experience with Google Slides, which would make this project go more smoothly. We also decided on Google Slides because we could all work on the slides at the same time.

The images that we created came from Google Shapes on the slideshow. It was a very annoying process, but it was perfect for the style of the animation we wanted. We used various different shapes to make characters like robots, humans, zombies, and much more. With these and some images we searched on Google, it made our slideshow what it is. The images that came from Google were the backgrounds, the walking dinosaur (Snake & Panther), the Hydra Clan’s masks, the eyes & smiles for the humans, & the screen being broken during the post-credits scene. All of the images are cited at the end of this write up.

We used Google Slides to animate our project. We used it because it is a simple program to use to animate everything we needed to animate. We also used it because there are no limits on what you can do with it. By using it we could animate the objects, slides, images, etc.

First, we brainstormed out what our plot would be. We used a Google Doc for all of our brainstorming. We did figure out most of the plot during the creation process. This was also when we figured out the character’s names. The plan was to end the story by defeating the Hydra Clan, but we decided to have the Hydra Clan help the FDO (Federal Dinosaur Organization). The name for Hydra Clan was made at the beginning of the animation, while the FDO’s name was made later along with the introduction to the characters slide found at the beginning of our animation.

Then, we started to design our animation’s characters. These characters consist of Hydra, Bart, Ace, John, Jimmy, Snake, Panther, and Oxygenman. These characters helped develop the plot of the story along with many other events. Our characters are each unique in traits in their own way.

The characters also helped us come up with the organization names for them too.

Next, we started to create our animation. We started with the original plot with there being a secret agent among the kids and then built and added to the story after that. We introduced the Hydra Clan and their evil scheme and then showed the first conflict between the clan and the organization. Once the Hydra clan had corrupted some people along with Bart and Ace, we started to add the fighting scenes into the animation. In the end, we showed Bart being corrupted and turned into a monster.

Finally, our main animation was completed. Bart was defeated by the others. We created the end credits, & reused the introduction to the characters from the beginning. Brayden had the idea of creating a post-credits scene, so when he went home, Brayden sketched some ideas for the next animation & for the post-credits scene. We decided on using one of the antagonists, named Oxygenman (originally Windman, but his name was already used by a Megaman character so we changed it), for the post-credits scene. After the animation was completed, we watched it slowly to make sure it wasn’t too fast for readers. If a scene was too fast, we duplicated the slide a few times.

We created this project for the purpose of our robotics class, and to entertain anyone willing to watch it. This inspired our team to keep on going and we continued to add more and more to the animation until it was almost absolutely perfect. We chose to work in this group because the three of us were going to make separate animations, but decided it would be better if we worked as a group.

Citations:

The music was created using a website called Soundtrap.

Here is a list of the images from Google with their image link:

Cartoon Gas Mask

Snake/Panther Sprite

Broken Screen Background

Cartoon Monster Mouth (bottom center)

Cartoon Mouth

Cartoon Eyes (circle)

Cartoon Mouth (no teeth)

Cartoon Noses

Cartoon Bird's-Eye View of a City at Night