The first week of Digital Media focused on introducing us to the software (Adobe Flash CS4) that we will be using throughout the semester. The first session started out with the very basics, such as how to set up a canvas and use the basic tools such as the paintbrush. We also watched a number of different animations to give us an idea of what we would be aiming to achieve by the end of the course. Some of the work produced by past students of the course was of a very high standard and quite intimidating. I don’t have a wealth of experience when it comes to using Flash. Prior to our first tutorial I hadn’t used the program since year 10 Multimedia. I am however looking forward to the challenge of developing my skills in the program and am enjoying participating in a practical, hands on course after studying in predominantly theory based subjects throughout my Media degree.
Our second tutorial was a little more complex, as we were given the task of producing an animation of a bouncing ball. At first I struggled a lot with using the pen tool, which is used to create the path the ball will follow. After a number of little tweaks, I eventually got to the stage where my ball linked up with the path from beginning to end. Due to my struggles with the pen tool however, the motion of my ball was very rigid and unnatural. In order to develop a natural flow to the bounce of the ball, I started my path from scratch once I had gotten the hang of the pen tool. Once I had finished the new path, for some reason I couldn’t get the ball to follow the proper motion. Unfortunately I ran out of time before I could correct the animation but I plan to revisit the bouncing ball later in the week and post the results on this blog.
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