Week 2 - Initial Ideas

After researching the history of Animation, we were given the task of showcasing this information as a 60 second animated film as the final task. This brings up a lot of issues in itself such as needing to be both creative with presentation but keeping all of the crucial facts. It also comes down to practical aspects, as we have very little knowledge of Flash, we can't really tell what will and will not be possible or practical.

With this in mind I focused on making brief outlines of ideas instead of going into too much detail. When it comes to production it gives me breathing room to further develop or change my plan, while still sticking to my initial justification.

The Target Audience for this project is Secondary School children. This mean it must appeal to their creative likes and dislikes, but you must also take into consideration things like the assumption that a younger audience will not want to read paragraphs of information, but prefer them in short bursts. With this in mind I plan to be concise with my information and limit it to a few sentences per device. Also wanting to appeal to a younger audience, I used music as a starting point for ideas. I have chosen the track "In Motion" from the Social Network soundtrack as my song. It is pacey and electronic, and has suggestions of forward movement.

With this in mind I still needed a way of presenting everything. I thought for a long time about relevant imagery and transitions, wanting to show movement and creativity, whilst making something exciting  and appealing enough for a younger audience. I decided on an initial concept, whereby an ink splat falls onto a page and suddenly comes alive, shaping and morphing into images and text. When the information on screen has been up long enough ,the images and text will morph back into a single ink blob and roll further to the right where it will then turn back into images text, now for the next device on the timeline.

My worry is that this concept will really stretch my novice Flash abilities. With this in mind, as I am still at the Initial Idea Stage, I can wait until I have more hands on time with Flash. When I have judged the possibility of my idea, looking at different techniques I can decide from there which direction to point the idea in.