Donna K. Fitch - Portfolio

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Archives for October 2018

Hallway Expectations: A Stop-Motion Story

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I used the Stop Motion Studio to create the video, because it was an easy to use, intuitive program. I then used Camtasia 9 to add in the soundtrack, as I wasn’t entirely sure how to do that in SMS, and I’m familiar with Camtasia’s capabilities. I also added the concluding credits card, created in Photoshop, in Camtasia. This combination seemed ideal. I did have to go back to SMS several times to lengthen my video, but the copy/paste functions were easy to locate and greatly simplified the exercise. Camtasia 9 enables you to save your video directly to YouTube, which I found a great timesaver. All I had to do was log into my YouTube channel through Camtasia.

My method for the stop motion was to use sheets of adhesive magnetic material. I printed the children and lion and speech balloons on cardstock and backed them with the adhesive. I fastened squares of the magnetic material to the back of the printouts of the background images, I then used a small whiteboard to serve as a backdrop. I did have to resort to tape for the large speech bubble, as the magnets were not strong enough to stick through two layers of cardstock. I recommend this method, as you can leave everything positioned as you swap out the images and move them incrementally. I steadied the camera with a Joby tripod, and snapped the frames with a CamKix Bluetooth remote shutter.

Animation can be a great learning tool. I have watched many animated videos on YouTube on a wide variety of educational subjects, and have been surprised and pleased to learn that multiple channels exist. Topics ranging from pronunciation of Latin to causes of the Cold War to unusual planets to quirky international borders are available and have multiple views. Clearly audiences are captivated by animation. This enjoyment of the form means the designer may have the luxury of a few seconds more in which to engage the audience and teach them something. Animation lends itself to targeted chunks of information that leaves the students wanting more.

For the instructional designer, animation presents an opportunity not only to engage students, but also to indulge in the creative process. Of the two types of animation we used in this class, the animated video using Vyond (in my case) was more instantly gratifying. I was not as happy with my results in stop motion, because of the need to snap multiple photos of the images. The animated video still took time, but produced more polished results. The stop motion video was fun, though, and I enjoyed finding the images to use with it. Previously my only experience with stop motion was a movie I filmed in high school with a movie camera, about 5 seconds long, about hair rollers falling into the sink and being rescued by a Kleenex-caped roller. Naturally any skill improves with practice, so I think the needs of the designer and the timeframe provided by the client must be taken into consideration before choosing a method of animation.

A shoutout to Beth Clemmons! Her storyboard was so easy to follow! I did adjust it a bit to go along with the tweaks in her video, but it was so helpful, and so was she. Thank you, Beth!

Think Small. No, Smaller

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Working on the stop-motion/time-lapse video assignment has me thinking about small increments of time. 

The app I'm using is Stop Motion Studio, which is pretty amazing, considering it's all in my phone. (I can't get used to that idea!) The little fella you see depicted is one of the characters I'm using for the video. I shot a few frames, 7, to be precise, to see how many frames I would need for the actions I proposed. 

Cartoon Happy Child
Artwork by dip, licensed from Adobe Stock

Holy cow, that's a lot of frames! The action of those frames went by in the blink of an eye. I thought I had in mind how incremental the movement would need to be, but I had no idea. My project partner, whose storyboard I'm implementing, said she used 60 frames for a 30 second video. 

It just goes to show that when you're planning out a project, attention to detail is vital, and each project has its own requirements. If I bopped along with the video as if it were the previous project, nobody would see most of what I was trying to convey. That project was about broader themes; this one is about incremental steps to achieve the goal. 

I'll get it. You'll see. The next post will present the video and my version of Beth's storyboard.

Let's get small!

Text-to-Speech: Easy/Not Easy

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Old style microphone

In my recent assignment, I wanted to have a narrator for voice-over of the action. I've made videos before for webinars, and I have a wonderful Yeti Blue microphone for the purpose. Now where did I put that microphone…? Without the wonderful microphone, the recordings of my voice-over were faint and poor quality.

That's when I discovered that Vyond has a text-to-speech feature. I had a wondrous array of voices from which to choose: female or male; American, British, Indian or Australian. All you have to do is type in a text box the speech you want, and it is spoken–and lip-synced!–by the character.

Except. That's not the end of it. I chose a female Indian voice to begin with, as it fit the character of Donelda Futura. But there were instances where the voice was difficult to understand. When I tried out a few other voices, I realized that some are more distinct than others, as well as having different cadences. I changed to an American voice, since I wanted my classmates to understand her better.

The surprise to me was that the speech comes out differently depending on how you type it. For example, one phrase I used was, “You left your cell phone in your own time, of course.” Written that way, it came out as one sentence, with no pause. I changed it to two sentences, and it sounded much more natural: “You left your cell phone in your own time. Of course.” I changed several more sentences as well, and the final version was much improved.

The moral of the story is, when you're working with a different medium, the rules you're used to don't necessarily apply. I assumed the text would be spoken just as I typed it, with all my grammatical instincts in play. But when you're creating text-to-speech, flexibility is all-important. Be open to new ways of working, and don't try to force your expectations on the tool. See how it works best, and use its strengths to come up with a better result.

Hmm, does that apply to life as well…?

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