cr8v-design.blogspot.co.uk: Ta-da Stick Death Animation!

Well the stick death had to include a number of things.

· frame-by-frame animation

· importing and using bitmap graphics

· motion tweening

· shape tweening

· simple character animation using motion tweens

· animating with scenes using sound in animation.

The animation is based on the popular stick death comedies that have been around since the late 90’s. The animation is based on the original blocky basic bitmap style from that time with the exception of the background which is a photograph taken from Flickr.

The story takes place on a road where we see the stick man walking along. He doesn’t see a bump in the road so he trips over and slowly falls to an agonising death. The stick man slides along the road and a puddle of blood comes out. Later we see a bird hopping along onto the road, he stops and squawks. The bird has an idea and a light bulb flashes above his head. The bird goes closer to the puddle of the stick man’s blood. The bird opens his beak and a tongue appears, the blood starts to disappear and when the bird has had his fill he backs away out of the scene.

Later, a mound of soil appears as the body decomposes. Much later grass grows out of the mound. Much later still, flowers grow out of the soil. Then later again, a small sapling grows out of the ground. Finally a large tree grows out of the ground and the animation finishes.

The Storyboard

Intro Scene 1

The Animation has no sound yet, I need to get out there now and somehow capture sound of a bird squawking. Either that or I record a song in the old school way of using a microphone and instead use a pre-recorded bird which might sound a bit better. Still this animation has proved so difficult.

Before I show the animation know this;

The animation will be 2D and look very cartoony; the characters the stick man and stick bird are comic book line drawings that have been animated. The animation is mostly frame by frame drawn with a few tweens in here and there.

The animation will be around 30 seconds long.

The intended target audience are those in their twenties to thirties who will have seen these early internet animations and would have been involved with stick death back when it was a gaming website that was interactive and used humour and gore to entice their audience.

The animation will be saved for the web which affects the frame rate which would normally be set at 12fps. However, the animation is intended to look blocky and bitty therefore the frame rate has been slowed down to 9 frames per second.
The resolution will be set at 400 x 300 as most people will likely view the animation in a small window on YouTube. The animation will be saved for the web in swf format.
The animation should take no longer than a week to make once planning is complete. The animation has been completed in Adobe Flash and most of it is frame by frame which did affect the length of it time it took to create.