Exam: Day 1

For the first day the plan was to try to complete the starting star scene, and make progress on the moon scene.

To start with I took my gathered resources and starting work on the fade in stars showing the aquarius constellation. I did this using PhotoShop and made each star a separate image.

From the black dots I changed them to white, and then used the glow layer effect to make them resemble stars more.

The next stage was to import the .PNG stars into Flash. I found that I had issues with using flash for this. At first I found that the .PNGs would not allow the use of the Alpha control function, which would have allowed me to make the stars fade in, in order. I managed to solve this issue however by converting the .PNGs to symbols within Flash. This did however cost me some time.

Once I had set it so all the stars appear faded in order, I next needed to move on to the next step which was to make a line 'flow' through all the stars. I wanted this line to follows the same pattern/ order in which the stars initially appeared. For the lines I decided on wanting a wavy-ish line connecting them all. To accomplish this, I felt using the brush tool was the best way of making these lines as I had greater control over them.

Once I had connected the stars, I decided to re-use an old quote. This was the previously used quote to do with Aquarius, which I really liked. I made the text fade in after the lines had formed.

My next step, was to make the stars 'Shoot'. As previously mentioned this part was inspired by the effect created when a camera leaves the shutter open when taking pictures of the night sky.
To do this again used the Brush tool, to create movement trails to show that the stars are falling.

Although in still frame the lines don't look very good, when actually playing the movement overlays each other and creates an impact.

Now that this was done, all that remained to finish for the aquarius scene, would be the transition into the next scene. For this, I planned on having all the trails, forming together to create the moon.

From here I needed to work on the moon patterns 'Dancing' on the surface. I wanted to make these patterns resemble fire in a way, powerful, destructive, yet creative and shapeless. To do this I again turned to flash.

I started by making the moon, fade in a glow. To do this I used the moon from my prep work, placed it overlaying the moon and played with the alpha again. This created a really nice fade as I made the moon slightly bigger, it created a fading in ring around the original moon, which then became a full glow, making it seem like the creation of a new moon.

To start the patterns I decided on having two spike looking patterns circle the moon, colliding at opposite sides of the moon. I found this to be a good start as It got me thinking about how else I could control the patterns.

Day 2 To do List

- Finish Moon Scene(Inner Pattern - Transition to Ocean)
- Create Ocean Scene
- Add Sound (Audio file needs minor editing, found it prep folder)
- Add Titles (If theirs time)
- Evaluation (Priority)