The document describes the process of creating an animated music video in Adobe Flash CS5. Key steps included drawing the character's body and filling it with a gradient to appeal to wide audiences, using separate arms and legs to enable movement, and animating the character using bones. Various tools like brush, shape, and deco were used to create additional elements like a bottle, bin with fire, buildings, road, and heart shapes that morph over time to depict emotions. Test scenes were used to check animations before exporting individual scenes as video files to edit into a final music video.
2. I started by drawing a body using the brush tool.
Also I used the paint bucket tool to fill in the body with a black/white radial
gradient. I decided not to use any specific colour for the body because my aim was
to attract a wide range of audiences and for the music video to have a worldwide
appeal; not targeting any specific ethnic groups.
Paint Tool
Brush Tool
3. I continued drawing the body and filling the arms in with the paint bucket tool,
being sure that the arms, legs and body did not join; to show movement. I realised
that with this programme it was much easier to work with separated parts because I
could create much better dance scenes and could move the parts easily without
any shapes being distorted.
4. Moreover, for this scene I wanted to have the person drinking alcohol and
throwing the bottle into a bin. This shows his carefree lifestyle, linking in with
the dance music that would accompany the video.
I used the brush tool to create the bottle and the bin, also I used the shape
tool to create the circular surface for the bin.
5. For all the body parts I used the bone tool which allowed me to animated the
person using the structure of bones. Bones allow shapes to move in complex and
naturalistic ways with a minimum of design effort. When one bone moves, the other
connected bones move in relation to the bone that initiated the movement.
Bone Tool
6. I used the pencil tool to draw lines and scribbles in the bin to make it look full of
paper and rubbish. I also added some fire into the bin using the deco tool; the
animation would start with a little fire in the bin and then once the bottle is thrown
it would explode with more flames.
The deco tool is a tool that has a preset shape or animated symbols, such as the
smoke and fire animation.
7. Here again I used the deco tool to create a textured surface that the animated
character could walk on. Moreover, the deco tool had many different types of
textures but this specific one allowed the fire to be seen clearly.
8. Here I used the deco tool to create buildings for the background of the animation,
linking into the type of area the character lives in and presenting a realistic setting
to the audience. The deco tool had five different types of buildings and I could
adjust the width and height of them.
9. Finally, I have created a blue background to sit behind the building, the blue acts
as a sky and gives some vibrancy to the scene. I created the road with the
square tool and altered the position of the square with the skew and rotate
tool, also I added the white dashes with the pencil tool.
10. For this part of the music video I wanted to create images that showed emotion
and linked into the lyrics of the song. I started drawing the outline of a heart
with the brush tool and I then filled it in with the paint bucket tool. I then
added in a light yellow background to add some vibrancy.
11. I then added a frame at the end of the animation and painted the whole scene
with a red and black radial gradient with the paint bucket tool.
12. Here I added a ‘shape tween’ which created an effect similar to morphing,
making one shape appear to change into another shape over time, it can also
tween the location, size, and colour of shapes.
The heart seems to be breaking apart, however when played back it will show
the original heart I started with morphing into these shapes.
13. This shows how the scene really looks, it doesn’t look like the heart its
breaking apart but it I shows more heart shapes and more outlines. The hearts
carry on morphing and changing shape until the end of the animation.
14. Here I created a dance
scene for music video. I
added text using the text
tool and a blue and
green background with
the shape and paint
tool.
The blue and green represent
calmness but also the use of a
radial gradient represents a
light and links into the dance
culture of clubbing and
partying.
15. I added in some
spotlights which would
change colour every
second to make it look
like a realistic club and to
add to the whole
energetic atmosphere.
Also, I added a red floor
using the shape tool
and I used the skew
tool to adjust the shape
of the rectangle.
16. For every animated I scene I created I used the ‘Test Scene’ option to
see if anything was wrong or out of place in the animation I had
created; rather than exporting the animations right away.
17. This is a screenshot which shows all the individual animations I created, I
exported them all as ‘QuickTime’ files; I was ready to edit the music
video and to import the music.