Progress so far

There are a few glitches and timing issues but here's how it looks so far:
http://playground.eca.ed.ac.uk/~s1364534/Kinetic_Type_Test_05_Dracula/rnb_kt_index_05_dracula.html
I got some help from a lecturer adding int the flocking algorithm  and it works quite well apart from one part in the animation, the bit that slows down because of a filter used on a movie clip. I have to remove that and use something else.

One month to go

I’ve been trying to resolve some issues I’ve had with my mouseOver event on the home page. I’ve been using code snippets to add some interaction to the main image. The eventhandlers didn’t work because I had not used a bind method. I got some advice from people on Stackoverflow to include ‘on’ and ‘off’ instead of using ‘addEventListener’, the event handler assumes the scope o the object that dispatched the event. I’m playing around with this as only one of the movie clips plays properly so I may need to use the binding method anyway.

The Windup Girl

I’ve decided to take a slightly different approach to animating The Windup Girl. Dracula acts as more of an intro to the book, with the Windup Girl I want to animate an extract from the book to see if it’s something that could work on website or for eBooks. I want to include some simple user interaction that would take the user from one paragraph to the next.

Home Page

I think my animation is pretty simple. I will have to write clearly how and what I’ve spent my time doing. By trial and error, I’ve figured out how to make certain things work and what hasn’t worked so well i.e masking and filters on movie clips. I’ve decided to spend the day working on the home page. I’m still aiming to work on three books–Dracula, The Windup Girl and Peter Pan, if I only manage two I think my write up will have to explain why.

Boids

Adding the Three.js with my flash document is proving harder than I though. The animated birds freeze when I try to add the two elements together. I’ve tried placing the two elements at different z-indexes but I think it’s something to do with setting a time out button, I’m not sure.

http://playground.eca.ed.ac.uk/~s1364534/Kinetic_Type_Test_05_Dracula/rnb_kt_canvas_geometry_birds_riona1.html

http://playground.eca.ed.ac.uk/~s1364534/Kinetic_Type_Test_05_Dracula/rnb_kt_index_02.html

Website

Once I was happy enough with the animation I brought it into the website. I had some work to do on the website such as including links and changing the home page. If I only do one book I’ll have to take change it again but that’s something I have to ask my supervisor about.  I also began including boids. I had thought about this for some time. There are some effects such as fog, clouds, rain which would add greatly to my project. I had looked up Mr. Doobs and GitHub for some code to use. I found the code for the flocking algorithm used on the Arcade Fire website http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ and thought if I could at least get one of these elements into the project that would make it from being just an animation you look at to something the user can interact with. Also, if I can get this working it might open the doors for the other effects mentioned above.

http://playground.eca.ed.ac.uk/~s1364534/Dracula/rnb_kt_index_04_index.html

http://playground.eca.ed.ac.uk/~s1364534/Dracula/rnb_kt_canvas_geometry_birds_riona2.html

Timing & tweeking

There were certain elements that were too fast and too slow so I spent some time watching the animation and jotting down the time elements faded in at. I looked back at other film titles such as ‘Catch me if you can’ to see what their timing was like, if I had enough time to read the text and how long it took for elements to appear on the screen. I had to do some adjusting but noticed that masking and blurring filters affected the timings no matter how many times I changed them.

http://playground.eca.ed.ac.uk/~s1364534/Kinetic_Type_Test_04_Dracula/rnb_flash_trial8.html