Here's the final complete video enjoy:

Critical Review:

Flash I have come to learn is a very intuitive program. Initially i was reserved about using it, probably because I've only just started using the program and didn't know my way around the user interface. As time has gone on however i'm beginning to feel more comfortable in using it and intend to expand my knowledge of it. But in my opinion the program isn't without its faults. Mainly which I discovered really late is its poor options for outputting videos and compression, whilst its main purpose is to create flash videos I believe it would be of great benefit to include options as file formats are forever expanding. I had some trouble with synching the audio to the mouth shapes, there always seemed to be some sort of delay, most noticeably between 0:34 and 0:43, I'm not sure what the issue is because when building the file and scrubbing through it it seemed to be fine. I think I could have done a lot more improvements but due to my poor time keeping i didn't have the time to implement them such as more dynamic character animation in the face. I also had to cut the ending a little short. All in all I enjoyed this project, i learnt new techniques that i can use for the future, not just for my projects but in the animation industry also. Also the same techniques can be applied in 3d applications also.

When it came to rendering out the final flash movie I did come into a few problems. My intention was to add the music and things such as title effects within a different program. To do this however the video would need to rendered out as an .avi or something similar. While Adobe Flash is capable of rendering .aviis does a poor job of it. with no extra options to fine tune it my 1 minute 15 seconds video came up to 4gb of data, I tried this on three separate occasions. As such I had to find an alternative method, so I stumbled across an .swf to .avi convertor. This seemed to do the trick.

To compile my movie along with the music title and end credits I used a video software called pinnacle studio, it's a very simple piece of kit and manages to get the job done.

Here, to aid with the animation I created a layer that could display my mouth shapes at any given time rather that switch between something like a picture viewer.

Also other reference were used and traced over like this bed, again it was put on another layer and organized into a separate folder. Once all the references had been used I deleted them from the file, just so when viewing I can lower my cpu's usage.

 

Numerous folders have been created to collate and organize my symbols, as you can see folders are divided by type, such as stills, voice clips, and mouth shape charts. This makes it easier when navigating the workspace and finding the necessary items I need. 

Again these folders are broken up even further to separate mouth shapes from a front position and side position as to not confuse my workflow.

Moving on to the start of the final animation, scenes that required more movement than usual were done with frame by frame. This method of animating has become my staple as I feel I have more control and understand the methods behind it with more ease than using multiple tween, also aesthetically I feel it looks better overall. Having learnt from a previous module I decided not to animate the frame by frame sections in a motion clip. Although I'm aware it can be less computer resourceful and a more manageable setup I believe it's limitations outweigh its merits in certain aspects. Particularly that when animating in a movie clip you are unable to see any animation outside of the clip, therefor it can actually be like animating blind. By not being able to see animations that may be underneath you are effectively guessing your timings and will have to make more adjustments anyway.

Once all the images were collated and the voice samples were recorded I began working on the animatic. Voice samples were inserted along the timeline to matchup with my timings

 One of my classmates helped by switching the way sounds are imported to "stream mode" this way I could use sound cues when scrubbing along the timeline to help me place them correctly. A program named "GoldWave" was also a big help. It functions as sound editing software, whereby you can trim, fade, heighten and do all sorts of manipulation to the sound .

In this case I used it to chop up unwanted parts of my voice overs. I didn't want to waste much time so as I was doing the stills along with the pre-recorded tracks I went straight to animating the mouths also here's what it lead to: