Gaming

Introduction to Gaming... 

The topic for this term is gaming and how it can be used for educational purposes. Last lesson we were introduced to the world of gaming and discussed whether it can be used in education and what would be the advantages and disadvantages of this. It was discussed that by gaming you can teach morals and increase their critical thinking. Also many games are now social and multi-player so their social skills are not suffering which was seen as a major drawback of gaming. However many games there are no consequences for their actions and many crimes are blamed on the violence of video games. The argument against this is that violence in cartoons has not been blamed for violence however cartoons are fixed whereas in video games it is your actions and it is more realistic that cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and the Roadrunner. So there needs to be careful consideration as to which games are acceptable for children to play.

For homework we were told to create a pick-a-path. I along with two friends created the one attached, I was inspired by a fable I read as a child called the honest woodman. Though we adapted it for ours. 

These were shown in class today. After we looked at three educational games, I was chosen to look at the 1066 Game on channel 4 about the Battle of Hasings and then to evaluate it as an educational game. Were you had to fight against your opposition after choosing how many of each type of warrior in your arsenal. The other two were School for Dragons and Bow Street Runner. Next week we are to be creating our own games. 

Evaluation of Classmates Stop-Motion Animation... 

During lesson we were required to present and watch the animations that were created and then choose one to evaluate. I chose Lucy Hill’s animation on mental health as seen on her blog. 

Example: Shadows

Within her animation there were many different scenes used to demonstrate his different mental states and thoughts. The very first scene used is a dark graveyard where the wooden man is walking down a path, to me this symbolises the dark road he is on and that his thoughts are dark in nature. The graveyard implies that this could be due to the death of a loved one or it could imply that he is thinking suicidal thoughts. The man walks as if being forced showing that he can't stop himself in walking down this path. With the building in the background being smaller in size to himself could show his belief that everyone else is so far away and so they cannot understand him. 

Example: Dark Forest

Next we are taken to a dark image with the wooden man on his own in a circle of light singling him out and putting him in the spotlight. This could be in his thoughts and in my opinion, shows that he is alone and doesn't believe that anyone is there for him. The single fireplace in this scene could be a small bit of hope that everything will work out but the smallness in size shows he may not believe it himself. The shadow in this scene demonstrates him being haunted by his dark thoughts and that they will not leave him in peace. 

Crows taking flight

After we are brought to a dark forest showing the wooden man spinning in circles unable to get away from the thoughts and feelings surrounding him. Within the forest there are a variety of sounds, the main one is the crowing of a crow. Crows tend to symbolise war and death (Murphey-Hiscock, 2012), this potentially shows that the man is a war with himself and his thoughts may be leading him to ideas on his own death. However forests are seen as mysterious places and in many stories they are a place where individuals find or lose themselves (Gaunt, 2011). This could be seen as the place where the wooden man's thoughts are at a peak in its battle as crows also symbolise change and that impossible tasks can be accomplished one small change at a time. The wooden man can either lose himself to it or he can find someone or somewhere to help. This leads onto the next scene where he is at the health clinic. 

Character like this one

The writing of the health clinic comes gradually, giving the impression that it is slowly revealing itself to the wooden man as a place which can help him overcome his problems, it can also show that healing will be a long time coming. When the words finally complete themselves, he is able to kick away the shadows that have been haunting him. By walking down the path to the clinic which had stones on either side shows that he is now on his way to being himself again and the background being light shows that his head is not filled with the dark thoughts as previous scenes depicted. 

The character used is a wooden man, this could be used could show him as unchangeable though with a lot of effort it is possible. Lucy also uses a variety of different objects for the background for Christmas decoration used as a fireplace.

The use of mental health newspaper articles and words at the beginning effectively introduced the animation and why she was doing it. It showed that the message was more awareness for mental health problems and that it is everywhere and can affect anyone. It also related it to events the audience were familiar with making them become more involved with the animation.

There were a lot of techniques used in the creation of this animation the one that stuck out for me was the ripping of the paper back to expose a sentence and then it being covered back up again showing that mental health is hidden and even after it is exposed people do not want to be made aware of the risks. Furthermore they do not want to know that there is something wrong with them mentally and would rather not seek help if they believe that to be so. The animation promotes people seeking help as it helps them to improve their quality of life as seen in the man not being in darkness anymore at the end of the animation.

Overall, I enjoyed Lucy’s animation and thought it was a powerful message she sought to create and she succeeded in raising awareness for mental health and encouraging people to seek help. 

Evaluation of Our Stop-Motion Animation...

Our stop-motion animation was about bulling and how you shouldn't let anyone make you feel small and helpless. Also, by speaking out and confronting bullies you grow as a person, shown in Timmy growing in size. This was discussed in further detail in the previous post.  

Previous characters

The first problem that came to our attention is our previous designs for the characters had to be reworked as they looked quite strange and did not have the same effect when created by myself and Cari so it was decided that Ceri would take over the designs and create all the characters needed and the tree. During this I worked out the script with input from the other two about how it sounded and tried to get a feel for the characters. When starting out in creating our animation Ceri was to take the photographs while I was to move the characters. Cari had used Audacity and was most familiar with the software so it was decided that she would work out the music and voices while we were working on the animation. 

Characters used

In the beginning before we started taking the pictures we had issues with the colour as the meadow in the background was suppose to be green however in the pictures it was a range of colours with the background being pink at one point. We eventually managed to get it to the right colour by placing a lamp to shine on the scene and changing the colour focus. Strangely it was more green after we lessened its affect. 

In my personal experience the main difficulty was remembering to move everything that needed to before the picture, with remembering to move the ball in the background as well as the other movements of the characters and there were a few occasions were retakes were needed when it was noticed the ball had stopped moving half-way through a roll when it wasn't suppose to. Another issue was the screen kept moving slightly and was extremely difficult in getting it back to its place. 

Additionally we had difficulty with the audio; the meadow sounds, sad music and the song Happy by Pharrell were kept however we took out others such as the danger music as we felt it was too mismatched and it was better to keep the music to a minimal so as not to lose the message of the animation. Furthermore, the audio would then not transfer from one computer to the other which had the animation this was eventually figured out using the internet.  

While filming the animation we noticed the lighting kept changing and could not figure out as to why so we were unable to stop it. Though we used the change to create the effect of the weather with clouds potentially passing across the sun. Another problem we found was that our script was too long and after recorded it did not match properly to the animation. Therefore the script went through some major changes though we kept the same basis just shortened parts to keep it in line with the rest of the animation.See previous post for the full planned script. 

We also found it difficult to reach the two minute mark as after we finished the animation we discovered that it was shorter than expected and without completely reworking the entire animation there wasn't much we were able to do in the time we had available. 

Below is our complete animation...

Overall I am pleased with how this animation turned out despite the problems as seen above. However, if I was to do it again I would take more time in making the animation and experimenting with more complex techniques to broaden my abilities. 

Audio and Sound... 

Michel Dougherty says:
“A truth whispered among animators is that 70% of a show's impact comes from the sound track.”

Our teacher gave us this statement and asked us to write at whether we agree or disagree. In my opinion the statement above is true especially in films such as horrors and thrillers were music is essentially to the anticipation of the events in the movie. 

Music adds to the effect and the emotion, it can show sadness, anger, happiness and impact upon the audience what the scene is trying to convey and if a soundtrack is effective individuals can listen to the soundtrack and link it to the movie. Some soundtracks are as famous as their movies. For example some of Disney animations music is recognisable even to those who have never even seen the films. 

Without sound behind the animation there is little interest. If you watched your favorite animation without any sound you would probably not enjoy it as much unless you can remember it well enough to hear the music in your head. The music behind the scenes brings characters their emotions and their actions to life! 

Later in the lesson we were put into pairs and told to create an podcast using the Audacity, we did a Christmas Special news report using the news that Russia are now employing reindeer to patrol with police in snowy areas. This used running jokes linked to films and songs for an example penguins escaping a New York zoo (Madagascar) and Rudolf being arrested for manslaughter, see song below... 

  

The Podcast will hopefully be uploaded at this moment in time... 

 Is Animation Useful in Learning? ...

A recent lesson was about creating animations by slightly changing the picture between frames to give the impression of movement. This is called Stop-motion animation. Within the lesson we got to experiment with creating our own. Mine was about a couple walking through the country side.

Animation of the center of the earth

The topic for discussion is the relationship between animation and learning. Animation as described by Ainsworth (2008) is an energetic process which differs over time with it increasing in its use since the 80s. Its convenience and complexity grows each year as the software increasingly develops (Ainsworth, 2008). 

Lowe (2003) discusses that within animations there are three different areas of change. The first is form changes (Transformations) e.g. changes in the animation properties; size, shape, colour and texture.  The second; position changes (Translation) which is the movement from one place to another and finally inclusion change (Transition); this is where the object is either presence or not and either in full or part, it is also about whether they move in or out of the borders and either appear or disappear (Lowe, 2003).  

Example of a weather map

There is a growing conviction that in using animation it increases people capacity to learn difficult concepts (Ainsworth, 2008). Lowe (2003) conducted a study that looked into animation and how it affects learning.  Lowe (2003) looked into weather maps and had participants draw predictions either using the animation or without; looking into the amount of information they removed from the experience. They found that they extracted information easier with the animation. It was also discovered that the more vibrant the change was in the animation the more information was extracted from it. Additionally if the animation appealed to the participants either more or less than the surroundings affected the amount of information extracted. More information was extracted, as well, if the form and position change was different to the context as it fascinated the participants more (Lowe, 2003).

There are problems with this study as there was a limited opportunity to show what they have learnt and that even though the participants may have gotten a lot of information there is no information on whether they remembered that information in the long-term and assimilated it into their schemas. Finally the participants had no prior knowledge to draw upon and help them in understanding the animation.

Overall, I believe that animation is useful in learning as it helps in understanding complex information.

Camera-less Animations...

Drawing a circle

Cutting out circle

The hand drawing

Graveyard drawing

There are five types of camera-less animations that we looked into. These are Thaumatrope, Phenakistoscope, Zoetrope, Praxinoscope and Flipbook. 

Within our seminar we did two of the camera-less animation, the first one I did was Thaumatrope. I drew and cut out a circle from a piece of card, I then drew on my design. I chose to do a hand coming out of a grave in reference to Halloween next week. After I drew on my design, I punched two holes in the middle at either end and put two pieces of string through. I didn't have time to colour in my animation.   

              


My main problem was matching up my pictures as first I did the hand too high and upside-down. I took me a few tries to get it right.  

The second camera-less animation was a Praxinoscope, done in a group. A praxinoscope has the images reflected on a mirror for people to view. First we cut out a strip of card and decided to use angry birds as inspiration for our design. We delegated roles with one person creating the circle mirror and another drew the picture at the beginning whilst I drew the end pictures. We tested are animation and then once correct we coloured in.

Almost finished animation

Problems we had with this animation was that the mirrors couldn't be aligned properly and so are picture looked disjointed in places but it couldn't be helped with the mirrors available to us. Another problem was lining up the scenes such as the bird and the blocks so it would look seamless in the movement. We didn't manage to finish in time as there are still bits uncoloured. Below is a video of our animation in process. 

Animation…

Animation has been around since prehistoric times. The images on caves show that they tried to show movement in their pictures and may have used light to trick the eyes into believing the images are moving (Ceurstemont, 2013). 

Cave Painting

There are different types of animation; I will be looking at Stop-Motion Animation. Stop-Motion Animation is when physical objects are moved between images (frames), this creates the optical illusion of the object actually moving. Initially toys and other inflexible physical objects were used until the idea of using Cel animation which gave way to clay and puppets being used (O’Reilly, 2007). This then led onto animations such as Wallace and Gromit, a Grand Day Out created by Nick Park and Chicken Run also created by Nick Park (BBC, 2002).

A Grand Day Out

Stop-Motion is unique and is capable in bringing creativity and life to inanimate objects. This type of animation is highly popular in social media and when the video is shared more money is being made and their message is being sent further than they themselves could (Qudos-Animations, 2014).

Unfortunately Stop-Motion becoming less common in films with by computer generated animation taking over (Emson, 2011). This is due to the amount of effort put into making a film length Stop-Motion animation with painstaking work and the film generally take years to create. It is also extremely difficult to change and adapt a scene once it has been shot (Pomerantz, 2014).

Chicken Run - Stop-Motion

Chicken Run is a stop-motion animation that uses clay models to create the story of a group of chickens trying to escape from the life chosen for them by the farmer and his wife. This film was created 3 dimensionally, to provide more quality to the movie. There were 40 animators working on the film and for 1 minute of filming was about 1,440 frames (Jeanmendoza, 2011). 

Merida defying tradition

BRAVE…

The last animations I watched was the film Brave. A story about a young woman called Merida who wants to choose her own life not the life her mother and tradition demands for her. It takes place in the Scottish highlands in the dark ages where it was almost unheard of for women to defy the traditions of the people as she did.

BRAVE was written by a woman called Brenda Chapmen and part of the film was directed by her. However, Mark Andrews took over half way through. Katherine Sarafian produced the film (Pixar Wiki, 2014). 

Mother and Daughter relationship 

Merida's hair - 111,700 hairs in total

It was originally called 'The Bear and The Bow' and its creator Chapman used her own experiences with her daughter as inspiration. This film was Pixar's first fairy tale though it differs from the usual plot with more development in the mother-daughter relationship than in a romantic relationship (Pixar Wiki, 2014).  

In creating BRAVE the animators at Pixar fashioned a brand new hair simulation software named Taz, after the Tasmanian Devil (Terdiman, 2012). This was used in creating Merida’s curly red hair which had never been seen before in animation (Alexander, 2012). Within Merida's hair there are 1500 individual strands, this means that in total Merida has 111,700 hairs (Pixar Times, 2012)

Merida - water animation

Fergus - 8 layers of clothing

The animators also changed the way cloth was animated. Merdia’s father, Fergus, has around 8 layers of clothing, for example cloth, leather, chainmail and more  (Terdiman, 2012). Another difficulty in the animation was water, clothes were to getting wet and how it would look with people in the river  (Terdiman, 2012). 

Learning Environment...

A learning environment is an atmosphere that encourages learning and is where the student is most comfortable in exploring the knowledge around them. This environment can be effected by a number of different influences. The resources an individual and the social and cultural surrounding all affect the students learning environment as well as their emotional well-being and their motivation to learner (The Glossary of Education Reforms, 2013). It is seen as a give and take situation as the learning environment can affect the learner and the learner can effect the learning environment (OECD, 2010).  
Learning can take place anywhere and at any time (The Glossary of Education Reforms, 2013), this means that there is no set place for a learning environment and that it can be anywhere and looks like whatever the learner want and needs it to be to learn effectively. There are settings where learning is encouraged more than others for example museums and libraries. The learning environment is important as it encourages the student to work harder, longer and more efficiently when they are in the right environment.