Logo

We went through all the possible names that we could use. We found names such as tass productions, etc. But we found that in the end, we decided on the name Avatar Animation. Sultana was then supposed to make the logo, however, she was unable to complete the task and I just made one for the time being.

Confirmation With Actors

I went to confirm with Mr Davey that we were still going to film on the designated day. However, when i asked him, he said that he had forgotton about it and had organised to do something else on that day. So we rearanged the date to another day.

Location Lookout

We looked for places were we could film our scenes. We took images and filmed a couple of shots. For example, we found a wooden fence in school which could work with our scence with the fence. We had a look around other places but could not find one so we decided to use that one. Me and taslima even filmed how we would shoot it. for instance, taslima would act out our actors role and i would film it and find the best angles for that scene.

Creating the Character

As i had picked up the skills for animting quite quickly. I got the special job of creating the main character. I had no idea where to start but after a while i found a photo of mr davey which i used as a template. I drew over his face on another layer and made certain changes such as eyes, size of nose, size of head, etc. After a lot of work, i managed to create this character below.

Background

Our main focud here was the background. We had to create a city background. After we created it, did panning on an object aswell. I created a little scene with a person running. I call it, "pac man on the run".

Panning and Background

Here we tried to do both creating a background and the panning technique. We drew our fields in layers, insuring that the further away the hill was, the lighter the colour was to show distance. We also made the background long so they we could do the panning shot. In order to pan, we made the ball bounce up and down on the same spot on one layer and we moved the background from one side to another in another layer. This created the effect of panning.

Frame By Frame

Frame by frame is taking a picture of an object or a person and then moving the object/person and taking another picture. you keep doing this until you get a series of images that when you play one after another, it will look like the object or personm is moving. This is slightly different in flash because in flash, you can create the animation characters or objects.

I did a short frame by frame animation as an experiment. I made it look like i was typewriting.

Layering

Here we learnt how to make two things do two complete different things at the same time. For example, i have a man on one layer and another object on another layer. Both can move on each layer and both show up on the screen. The good thing about layering is that you wont get mixed up in each object. You just label the layer and you will know exactly what layer you are working on.

Finding Actors and Signing Agreement

We had to choose who would be our actors in the film. We had a discussion about who would be best for the roles. At the end of it we, we decided to have a teacher (mr davey) to play the lead role. We thought that he looked the way we wanted the character to look like. We also knew he was an actor because he would be more willing and so it would be easier to film with someone with experience.

We thought the librarian would make the right type of mother we wanted in our character look like. Our decision was made totally on appearance. We had no idea whether or not she would be willing or coud act the way we wanted her to.

The aliens, were not a significant role as they were extras, so we decided we would just get any two men and one woman who was available.

We then asked each person if they could play the part and they all agreed. After we found all our characters, taslima then produced a contract which all actors would have to sign. We gave them a copy and kept a copy for ourselves.