Bryce Mathews
I enjoy education when it is entertaining, whether through visual effects or interactive media. For my project, I wanted to present a narrative to the class while also challenging myself. I decided to give a timeline of the future of the universe, including researched facts, animated sprites, and interactivity via a webpage.
I began by animating my videos in Aseprite, a pixel-art creation tool with built-in animation tools. For the challenge, I asked some friends to provide some relevant obstructions to my work: I was limited to 9 videos to tell a complete story, I couldn’t use orange, green, or violet, and I was limited to a 121 by 121 canvas. On top of learning the application, I feel that these obstructions “gamified” the experience more.
Using Aseprite, I created pixel animations detailing the 9 major events in the universe, ranging from 1-3 second animations running at about 10fps.
I needed a way to present and add more context. I had taken what I had learned from Dreamweaver and created a webpage that integrated the sprites (now GIFs) I had made.
The finished product is a basic website with animated sprites and a scrollable website for reading. Some key areas for improvement are: improved website UI, or more interactive features.
How do these fufill the requirements?
Animated Narrative: The project is a complete narrative of the universe’s future, with sprite animations as visual complements to the educational material.
Game Design/Play: To introduce a challenge, I forced myself to learn Aseprite and had friends choose obstructions that would define the project’s scope. Users must also engage with the text and video to learn or entertain themselves.
Video: Each sprite is its own video that enhances the text-based storytelling.
Link to Google Drive for HTML download:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oxC7-vocP0t2yOEpSg66HCCTeoC2cwnk?usp=sharing
