Blog Post 11b: I Came to Bury Caesar

GoAnimate.com: I Came to Bury Caesar by Kelsey
http://goanimate.com/player/swf/0Xuu9-4vbi2Y?autostart=0
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

Okay, so I’m not sure what’s going on, but the video box is not showing up for me. I was able to successfully post this to facebook and livejournal, but not wordpress? Also, lately wordpress has been blacking out whenever I go to a screen that has my site stats on it.

Clicking that link will take you directly to my video, though.

I’d meant to do a stop-motion animation version of this, but that was a better idea when I thought our animations were due next week, not this week. The site that I used — goanimate.com — was certainly a big help and saved me a lot of time, but there were definitely limitations.

1) No zombies (my original script called for a zombie)
2) The lip-synching is terrible — the mouths just flap, rather than matching the sounds. Which makes sense, but it’s distracting and makes you feel like you’re watching Godzilla. That’s why I chose to not have the teacher’s mouth move, even though most of the video is devoted to her talking. This, in turn, is why I made her movement so animated. Nothing like watching three people sit completely still for fifteen seconds while a computer voice recites Shakespeare in the background, amiright? I know that lip-synching is difficult, and they actually pay animators full-time to do nothing but match character’s lips to the sounds. That is probably why they decided to just have a lip-flapping movement, rather than full-on lip-synching.
3) The interface made me scared to screw up or take risks, because I had no idea how I’d fix it. There were originally three desks, and I would have had three students, but I accidentally scooted the third desk and couldn’t get it back in its original place. I just deleted the desk rather than deal with it. Towards the end of animating, I found the “undo” button. Also, both students were supposed to start out sitting, but as it turns out, I placed the boy’s movement as “entering”, and there was no way to get him to not enter. That’s why he walks to his desk and sits down. He had to “enter” the scene. Also, because I was scared of making a mistake, I couldn’t have an “open scene” frame and a “close scene” frame.
4) I wish I could have had the students scream. Alas.
5) No sound effects — just music. It would have been nice to start out with a bell.

Overall, though, goanimate was extremely simple and fairly intuitive. This animation was fun to do, and I did like the variety of art styles available. It’s written to be more of a comic book come to life than a piece of artistic brilliance, so keep it in mind if you ever use this software.