Creating overlapping action

The animation you just created in the previous procedure has several fish swimming back and forth. To make these fish seem more lifelike, you can add other movements that happen as the fish are swimming across the animation frame.

Try adding overlapping action to your animation by animating tail movements as the fish swim across the animation frame:

1. Open the fish animation and select the second frame in the frames window. VSE Animation Maker displays the second animation frame in the main window.
2. Select just the tail portion of one of the fish.
3. Move the tail down just a little. Refer to the figure below.
4. Select and move each fish’s tail down by the same amount.
5. Select the fourth animation in the frames window. (You skip the third animation so as to leave the tails in their original position in that frame.)
6. Move each fish’s tail up slightly in the fourth frame.
7. Repeat steps 4 though 6 as many times as necessary to create tail movement as the fish swim to the middle of the frame, flip, and swim back.
8. Select File > Save and name your set Swimming Fish.

Adding special effects

Objects in animations can change in ways other than appearing to move. For example, an object can change colors. Imagine a cartoon character holding its breath and turning blue. Visualize a character moving from a bright place to a shadowy place in a scene. The color of the character would change from a bright shade to a darker shade.

The lighting on an object can also change. Take the example of a bird flying. A spot on the bird’s body might be a lighter color to simulate a light source shining on the bird. As the bird moves, that light spot moves on the bird’s body, simulating a change in the bird’s po- sition in relation to the light source.

Objects can disappear; for example, a ghost could suddenly vanish from the screen. Simi- larly, objects can fade in and out of focus, gradually disappear, or even materialize from nowhere. Some animators feel that the beauty of animation lies in being able to have objects and characters do things that they could never do in the real world.

Sometimes objects change shape completely. Imagine a firecracker that begins as a red cy- lindrical shape with a fuse at one end. In animating the explosion of this firecracker, the shape first changes to a cylinder coming apart with, perhaps, the addition of fire and smoke. Then the object evolves to a brightly colored explosion of flames.

You can experiment with adding special effects to the Swimming Fish animation in several ways:

• Color the fish a darker shade and then brighten the color as they swim toward the middle of the screen. The fish appear to be swimming into a brighter area.
• Erase the fish gradually in a succession of frames after they swim back to the side of the frame. The fish seem to disappear.
• Redraw the fish slightly in each frame so that they change into a different looking fish as they swim toward the middle or as they swim back to the sides.