CDME 1001: Communication Skills for Digital Media. Creating Multimedia, Web Pages and Animation

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1 CDME 1001: Communication Skills for Digital Media Creating Multimedia, Web Pages and Animation

2 Multimedia, Web Pages and Animation With the advent of digital technology and development of production applications the power to create multimedia, web pages and animation is now available via personal desktop computers. This has caused a massive rise in the creation of such media. With the applications used today the 3 (above) elements often interlink as many of the programs are created by the same software companies (i.e. Dreamweaver and Flash etc). Many share a cross section of file types too, more so now that Adobe have assimilated the former Macromedia suite of software.

3 Multimedia: Multimedia is media that uses multiple forms of information content and information processing (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video, interactivity) to inform and/or entertain the (user) audience.

4 Multimedia: Multimedia can be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer eg a cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress e.g. Computer/video games, DVD and self-paced computer based learning/training. Non-linear content is also known as hypermedia content

5 Multimedia: History In 1965,the term multi-media was used to describe the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a performance that combined live rock music, cinema, experimental lighting and performance art. In the intervening forty years, the word has taken on different meanings. In the late 1970s the term was used to describe presentations consisting of multi-projector slide shows timed to an audio track. In the 1990s it took on its current meaning. In common usage the term multimedia refers to an electronically delivered combination of media including (but not limited to) video, still images, audio and text in such a way that can be accessed interactively. Much of the content on the web today falls within this definition as understood by millions.

6 Multimedia Creation : Adobe Flash CS5 The main application used for online multimedia creation is Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash CS5.5 Flash is now the main online delivery medium for multimedia and it is the most popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. It is supplied by Adobe - as is the web application Dreamweaver. Flash operates on the principle of a timeline and elements happening at different intervals along this line. Adobe Flash CS5.5 is the latest version and requires a browser plug-in to view properly over the web (whether on Mac or PC). One of the disadvantages of Flash is that you need to keep making sure your viewers have the latest (free) plug-in installed. If not then content may not show or work correctly. Flash creates very small (web friendly) multimedia files and relies, to a large extent, on the use of vector graphics. The file-type it creates are.swf (ShockWave Flash). Flash will allow use of compressed audio and video files within it such as.mp3 s and.mov s etc. To look at examples of flash usage try looking at

7 Web Page Creation : Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 The main development application used for web page creation is Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Dreamweaver CS5.5 Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 is another commercial level application from the same producer as Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator. As such it can seamlessly incorporate elements of any of it s sister programs into web pages. Most commercial web designers have been using Dreamweaver to create web content for over 7 years. It s WYSIWYG interface enables the author to either construct content in pure HTML (HyperText Markup Language), or create/design page elements directly. There are other applications but none with the following that Dreamweaver has for writing a pure HTML web page. Dreamweaver will allow you import multimedia, audio, video, shockwave and many other additional file types into one of it s web pages. With Dreamweaver you can choose to either have entire control of the site you re creating -or- you can use it s file management software - which can speed up site creation.

8 Animation : Flash & Toon Boom Studio The main development applications used for both linear and non-linear 2Danimation content are Adobe Flash CS4 and Toon Boom Studio. Much of today s 2D (Two dimensional) animation is created either via Adobe Flash CS5.5 or by dedicated animation software such as Toon Boom Studio. They both create the same file type (i.e. SWF). As this format will view in most web browsers, a huge amount of online animation now exists. For examples of this see and As both applications use vector based animations, the file sizes are, again, normally very small making them ideal for creating animation content suitable for viewing online. As 2D animations are becoming easier to create with the advances in software technology the range of uses is increasing too. Toon Boom Studio was used on movies such as The Rugrats Movie (1998), Belleville Rendezvous (2003) and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2005).

9 Animation : Other Forms of Digital Animation Many traditional animation considerations apply when creating animation for internet use. One of the overriding factors though is internet bandwidth - this affects the size of the product and the speed at which it is delivered to the viewer/user. However, as more and more people have access to broadband connections, the ability to both produce and view more content heavy media online is increasing. Other common types of online animation use technology such as: - Apple s Quicktime or Windows Media Player which allow for constant audio and video delivery. - Bitmapped Animation which mainly uses animated GIF images. - Programmed animation using JAVA or CGI scripts - this is more advanced and requires some programming experience. - Finally, 3D animation via applications such as 3D Studio Max, Maya etc are now more common and used in a variety of situations from film to games.