Multimedia Content
How to Animate Animation
Zeke Ewing, 8th grade
Drakes Creek Middle School
Multimedia Content
For my technology class, we were tasked with making an animation about something we were learning in school. I chose to do my animation on animation!
To begin, I got onto Google Slides. We had to use at least 700 slides, my animation ended up being almost 1000 slides! I combined animation, text boxes, and images to create my multimedia project.
This animation story follows Minecraft Steve and Alien Jim as they learn how to animate. To beghin, they meet on Steve’s world and fly away into space. In space, they get out of their spacecraft and the spacecraft flies away.
That's when they learn the first step of animating, how to move the characters on screen! When they're done with the animating session they hail a space taxi and head back to Steve’s planet. Only the taxi doesn't take them there, it takes them to an unknown planet!
They try to get back into the taxi, but it's too late. The taxi has already blasted off into the sky. Not to worry though because that gives Jim and Steve plenty of time to complete their next lesson . . . backgrounds.
Once they’re done animating the background, they look up from their computer to find a looming figure towering above them. Suddenly they get sucked into a powerful vortex that pulls them in. Steve throws the computer and knocks the figure out. Steve and Jim run away to complete the next lesson . . . how to get your character to interact with others.
Suddenly the figure comes back for vengeance! He kicks Jim off screen and chases Steve. He gets away and finds Jim and mourns him when suddenly the character they were animating comes to life. The figure comes back and gets a hold of Steve. The character jumps into the air and delivers the final blow to the figure. The character disappears and Minecraft Steve and Alien Jim fly home in their UFO.
How I got the animation to work: The platform that we had to do our animation on was google slides. Once I had the slides complete I had to publish the animation to the web. To do that you go to File → Publish to Web. That gives you a web address to copy and paste into a new window.
One big problem I faced was that my animation didn’t transition fast enough. I needed it to play faster so that it looked smoother. We figured out that we could change the speed by changing the last number in the address bar. This fixed my issue and the animation now plays at the right speed.
My favorite part of the project was getting to animate a story exactly how I wanted to. This is good because it gave me a lot of creative freedom because the only criteria for this project was to make it about something we were learning in school. So trying to be funny I made it about animating. I am really happy with how well it turned out.
All of the photos I used were free to use off of Google, or pictures I took myself with my phone. My Tech Ed teacher showed us how to use a background removal website call remove.bg. I uploaded my pictures to remove the background so they wouldn’t have white spaces around them. That's how I made the space taxi look like it belonged there!
Citations:
Alien Jim: https://images.app.goo.gl/SKXJSogcrW22Jqtf9
Minecraft Steve: https://images.app.goo.gl/av1rpZVGTCMwciYAA
UFO:https://images.app.goo.gl/hpYfS1trCjfcKJ79A
Space taxi: https://images.app.goo.gl/4oGZaCJVsFQJTRsg6
Person in Space taxi was taken by me at the Atlanta Aquarium
Click HERE to view my project
My Weird Planet
Renaldo Teixeira, 8th grade
Drakes Creek Middle School
Multimedia Content
For my technology class, we had to make an animation project. To create this project I used a combination of images, text bubbles, and animation.
My story is about a ghost landing on an abandoned planet where there appears to be no life for miles. Once the ghost goes to find life on this unknown planet, he discovers a broken-down robot in the forest. When he gets the robot back up and running, the robot orders the ghost to bring it to a city for repairs.
I got my idea by thinking about a simple, easy to draw creature that is unique. I came up with the idea of using a purple ghost. To create the purple ghost, I designed him in Google Drawings. I inserted him throughout the project. Next I had to think of a partner for this ghost. I thought, “What can I make that is on an abandoned planet with no life?” Then I thought of the robot named Ziobot! (I had never thought of a name for the ghost.)
After more than a week of working on this, I realized I had made more than 1,000 frames! Now, I needed to animate my google slides. To do this, I went to File → Publish to Web. I had to modify the number at the end of the web address to make it the speed I wanted it to play at.
My project includes animation (of course), images such as the explosion near the beginning, and text bubbles. I used Google Slides to animate my project and to make the character, backgrounds, and text bubbles. What I found the hardest thing to do was making the Ziobots language. You see, Ziobot has a sort of “corrupted” text. In that, I had to do an uppercase and lower case text like tHiS for his made up language. This process took a very, VERY long time.
The best part about this project was using my imagination to create the story and setting of my project. It was overall the best thing I’ve done in Tech Ed class and it is :the project I am most proud of. When we showed our projects to the class, they all liked the art style I used, even my Tech Ed teacher loved it!
Citation:
Explosion: https://www.flickr.com/photos/41937330@N03/3866776521
Everything else was made by me in Google Drawings