Wednesday, 29 February 2012

cut out animation test

I've decided that the characters within my client project will be made using cut out animation, similarly to South park and Blues clues. I have decided this, as I have been experimenting using clay models for animation (Artefact2) and this cut out technique, and the cut out technique allows for mistakes to be rectified much easier! For example,knocks and movements within a stop motion animation can be fatal and I know i'm very clumsy. I will, however be using stop motion to animate the food as this is a far less complex set of movements. I did this short test using the cut out technique animated in after effects. Something more was supposed to happen, but actual work for submission must come first, maybe i'll finish it later. (Size and frame rate issues! As the after effects file was large and was having trouble exporting sound, i've used the wrong compression but it's not a big deal as its only a test!)

artefact 3

Origami test! I decided on an origami test, as you can get written instructions or video tutorials and they both work. It will also be cost effective as you only need paper! I'm currently deciding on what objects to use for my origami test, planes, boats and hats are far too simple, everyone knows these so there's no challenge! I will make a video showing how to make object one, and have instructions for object two (both same level difficulty), and see which people find easier to follow. This is aimed at more kinasthetic learners.

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Artefact Almost complete

so my artefacts are trying to show how digital media is an effective teaching method, due to its advantage of being able to combine audio/visual learning styles and also aid kinaesthetic learning. I will be comparing multi sensory learning tasks, with their single sensory counterparts in tests to determine which has a more positive result. My first artefact/s is a short stop motion animation about a cat. The idea is to have a group of people watch the animation along with its audio commentary, and a different group of people listen to the commentary alone. They will then both be asked the same set of questions about the story - and the results compared. I'm not 100% happy with my animation, as the camera I used didn't have a remote, therefore its very jumpy - however this will not effect the experiment.
The main things I needed to consider when creating this were:

+ Lots of objects and actions that can easily be described using audio alone. (It's no good having complex factors within the animation, as the listeners won't be able to see it, therefore it will not be a fair test. Simple objects such as the 'Blue shoes' and the 'Domino' and easily recognisable and easy to imagine.)

+ Many different colours/objects/actions to show/describe. (If I simply put the cat in a plain room with one/two objects - there wouldn't be much of a challenge and all questions could be answered easily, making the experiment appear useless).

+ A scenario/storyline which is easy to understand - (therefore does not distract from the actual objects and surroundings)

+ It's not too long! Research shows that the average person can remember up to 7 things, for 30 seconds. Therefore, I want to push this just a little by having the artefact just over 30 seconds, and around 10 questions.

Here is an example of the animation (incomplete - no audio):