Calendar:

My calendar is going to be difficult to predict. I am actually ready to start animating my story in Flash, but know that at first there will be a learning curve as I re-familiarize myself with the program. Also, with the experience I do have with Flash, you can get stuck on one tiny detail for hours, setting you back and in other areas that sometimes come together much easier than originally planned. But here is my project goals:

4/13 Watch Flash tutorials and get to know the program

4/15 Start animation according to story board

4/20 Reach the 2 minute mark in Flash (about half way)

4/26-28 complete animation

4/28 Add music & publish (or prepare for presentation)

What I did yesterday….

Yesterday I began working on my project. First, I found and downloaded the two harry potter fonts that I will need for the title of my story and the credits themselves. These fonts were Harry Potter (go figure) and LumosLatino, all courtesy of dafont.com. I also began illustrating some of the graphic elements in Adobe Illustrator, as I learned yesterday that you can drag vectors between Illustrator and Flash somewhat easily.

I also created my rough draft story board (as I expect design challenges will influence changes as I go) but have a basic layout that will help me begin my project in Flash.

Why I did it….

First, what was most important was to create a story board. This basic outline helped me to hammer out transition issues and picture in my head what I wanted my title sequence to look and feel like. I had to make a lot of design choices in graphics, layout, and cutting out areas that seems unnecessary to telling the final story, or seemed infeasible to execute in Flash.

Second, I wanted to make sure this project looks and feels like Harry Potter. So, I really wanted to make sure that the fonts I used were the same ones (or very, very similar) to the exact fonts used throughout the books and movies. Similarly, I will need to get the infamous Harry Potter music by John Williams called “Hedwig’s Theme” that is used in all the Harry Potter movies and promotional materials for the film series.