Animation: Another Computer Media Venture
PLEASE READ BEFORE WATCHING VIDEO
Over the last few months, I have decided to take up Computer Animation. People tend to take for granted its difficulty and tediousness. In order to properly build an Animation, you have to organize your original still graphics and a script.
The Animation Below is the "Battle of Cowpens" an American Revolutionary War battle fought in 1781 between the American Militias and Army and the British Army. The Americans are Blue, the British are Red. Daniel Morgan commands the Americans while Banastre Tarleton commands the British. The actual animation involves a voiceover of me explaining the battle setup and fighting while it is happening. The generals speak through humorous text bubbles. If you would like to skip me showing what's happening and seing the battle at the same time, a voiceover-less version of the battle can be found at 1:31, however you probably will not understand what is happening.
PLEASE READ AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO
You may notice that during the animation, a part with 3 dimensional soldiers. This was created with a video game "mod," a downloadable 3rd party plug-in that allows the player to adjust certain elements, like in this case, turning a Napoleonic War Era into American Militias. The strategy of recording a video game's elements for use in a story or other purposes other than tutorials and walkthroughs is called a "machinima."
The still graphics used here were pretty abundant. In this case, all of the squares, circles, and stars were still graphics as was the background, the title, the arrows and the explosion animation. (The subtitles were added later) The actual animation work coupled with drawing the shapes, background and arrows, not to mention the voice over and subtitles together took me about a weekend to do, with about 2-5 hours of working each day. It took about 6-7 hours to put together.
I do have another animation that I'll probably post in this week sometime, however I can't access it right now. Stay tuned!
