Animating the Concept of Framing

Having no past experience with animation, I was a little bit nervous going into this assignment. To my surprise, I found that the animation tools in LeoWorld were actually pretty easy to pick up and use. The interface mostly revolves around the use of a timeline (see image). On this timeline, you set various keyframes and the computer then animates the scene based off of the changes made between these keyframes. This allows for the user to create some cool effects, such as the camera panning across the screen or having objects fall into place. I also found that in LeoWorld, you can apply physics to the objects in your scene. While my model wasn’t designed with the use of physics in mind, it was still fun to watch my creations bump and crash into one another in this virtual space.

While I did have a lot of fun, I quickly learned that animation is a slow and tedious process. It took me approximately an hour to create my six-second animation, with the majority of my time spent learning the various tools and keybindings in LeoWorld. Once I had a grasp on the various tools, I was able to start working at a fairly decent pace.
 

The only complaint I have in working with LeoWorld is the lack of a convenient way to use any of the other tools without leaving the animation tab. It was a bit annoying having to switch between tabs if I needed to tweak or add anything into the scene. In the end, I managed to pull something together and I’m happy with how my little animation turned out.