The Frame Rate of my animation
29 frames per second.

The length of my animation is 57 seconds


FINAL SIZE OF MY ANIMATION
Frame width : 720

Frame Height : 480

Data Rate : 2799kbps
Total Bitrate : 2997kbps

Difficulties and Overcoming Them

Whilst creating my animation I encountered various problems.

When I was creating my character on Inkscape, the program kept crashing when I was working on it so all the work that i had done that lesson went to waste. This happened to me twice, I became very paranoid and then started saving after every little detail I had added to my animation to ensure that it wouldn't happen again .

After creating the character, I started exporting it, half way through I put my exported images onto movie maker to see how long it was. My background was transparent and i had already done 58 frame, I overcome this problem by using pain.NET to change the background, however, in doing so the shading on Toad's head disappeared, I decided to just leave it because it was only for a short amount of time then change the setting on my Inkscape task, so that the colour was solid. The shading at one point just comes out of no where during the animation.

These were the problems that I encountered.

Image Format Frames Were Saved As
The format of the file when the image was eported was a PNG file ( opens with windows photoviewer ) .

Format of Image During the Development of the Frames

During the development of the frames the images were being saved as a svg. format, a scalable vector graphics file. This allowed me to edit the image so that I could continue to create my animation and my frames were still realtively smooth as I moved them.

Design Process Of Animation

First I chose the picture which i wanted to base my mascot on. I found a picture of toad. I redrew toad on Inkscape. Inkscape allowed me to stick to most of the details of toad from his jacket to his pant which were lightly shaded at the bottom. I used Inkscape to create Toad because I had some experience with it therefore I could quickly and easily get my assignment done. After Toad was drawn I then grouped his mouth, tongue, body, pants, feet.... everything but his arms and legs/feet/shoes because they were the parts of Toad that I was going to use. I started moving the arms and legs and exported the images into my IST folder in a PNG format. at my 58th frame I realised that my background was transparent after trialling the images on movie maker. Mr Cavil changed my background setting so the rest of my frames were white. I decided to change the 58 frames white using paint.NET even though Toad's head would be effected - shading would be lost.

I added all the frames into movie maker where i changed the duration of the frames where Toad was jumping around to 0.17 and changed the duration of the frames where Toad was cheering/yelling G O C L A R E to 0.07 to make it look more realistic. I then published the animation to a WMV file so that I could post it on blogger and because it was a requirement for the assignment.

To create this animation I used : Inkscape, paint.NET and Windows Live Movie Maker. Inkscape was used to create the character. I used it because it had the right tools to easily and efficiently make the toad. It did exactly what I wanted. I did try to use Microsoft Word - shapes but it was difficult and I knew i couldn't stick to details if I used it. Inkscape was also used to create the text "GO CLARE" Inkscape allowed me to export my images as a PNG file.

paint.NET was used to fix my background and toads head because originally my background was transparent but then half way through I realised that the background was transparent so it turned black. I used the magic tool and the fill tool to recreate the background and head. Windows Live Movie Maker was used to create the animation. The frames were put into movie maker where I changed the duration of each frame. At the start of it when it was set for 5 seconds the animation went for 58 minutes ! so i reduced it down to 0.17 seconds when Toad is jumping and waving his hands and 0.07 when Toad starts yelling out the "GO CLARE" individually. Movie Maker was used to convert the video into a WMV. file which then allowed me to post it on my blog.

This image was created using Inkscape. I had difficulty using the gradient tool so the eye region turned out orange instead of grey.