Web Design: A New Adventure!

My website's home page.

Look familiar?

This week we ventured into the new and undiscovered world of web design. We used Adobe Dreamweaver to create a website where our projects would be showcased. It took about a week to complete. I used my time in class to work on my website- except in the instances where Dreamweaver was not working, in which case I just looked at memes. Speaking of which, the biggest challenge I faced was Dreamweaver itself. At times, it would not cooperate, not allowing me to work on my website. But, that problem was soon worked around.

I have learned how to make websites using Dreamweaver, and also that DREAMWEAVER IS NEVER YOUR FRIEND. IT MAY SEEM LIKE IT'S ON YOUR SIDE BUT IT CAN TURN AGAINST YOU. 

Despite this, Dreamweaver is fairly simple.  Making a website on Dreamweaver is a piece of cake (provided it's WORKING) and my final outcome was very professional-looking. And since I am downloading the entire Adobe suite onto my laptop at home over break (since I asked for it for Christmas), I will definitely use Dreamweaver for all my website-creating needs.

Maddie's Magnificent Movies!- Bouncing Ball II

The sequel, now with arcs and Lemmy Koopa.

After our previous animation involving bouncing balls, we were tasked to do another. We were supposed to use arcs and anticipation, as well as squash and stretch. First, we drew out the path. The path was erased in post. Then, I copied the ball 24 times (yes, I counted) to create the bouncing arc and the rolling offscreen. Along the way, I added squash and stretch to the ball. After that, I had the character Lemmy Koopa from the Super Mario Bros. games fall onto the ball and roll offscreen balancing on the ball (as Lemmy is typically portrayed doing). I made sure to add squash and stretch to him as he fell. Finally, I added the title and fadeout effects, and I was very tempted to put the title in Comic Sans. However, I decided not to put the title in Comic Sans, for obvious reasons. 

During this lesson, I learned how to use arcs and anticipation. I also learned how to add a title card, which will be helpful down the line. Also, with the addition of Lemmy and the repeated copying and pasting I had to do, it felt just like the "animations" I would make as a kid, except a lot more fluid than my old animations MS Paint slideshows. This further cements that I will use Photoshop for my future animations.

I think I did quite well. While it does have that little white-border glitch at the end, it DOES look better than what I tried to make on Adobe Flash a while ago, and looks MUCH better than my MS Paint slideshows.

Maddie's Magnificent Movies!- Bouncing Ball Animation

Up and down it goes....

The Process

Over the past few days we have created our bouncing ball animations in Photoshop. I did not know you could animate in Photoshop, so it was a new experience for me. We had to create a ball, use gradients to make it appear 3-dimensional, and use squash and stretch and layers to make it bounce. Then we made them into animation frames and created a GIF out of it.

What I Learned

First of all, I learned how to use Photoshop. I have never used Photoshop before, so it was fun learning to use it. I also learned the principle of "squash and stretch", which is used often in animation for falling objects: objects are stretched before hitting the ground to show speed, and squashed when hitting the ground to show impact. 

What I Would Do Next Time

Next time, I'd probably do everything in the same way, and from now on I'm probably going to animate in Photoshop for my web animations on YouTube, as it's less infuriating than Flash. I had a lot of fun with this project and can't wait to see what else we do in Animation!