Creating Animations in Alice

1. Creating Animations in Alice

2. What will we learn today? • Remember that Alice is a programming tool • Alice uses storytelling to teach programming concepts • We will learn • Writing an animation program • Reading the scenario • Designing a storyboard • Visual and Textual storyboards

3. Animation Program • Creating a computer program that animates objects in a virtual world is a 4-step process • Read the scenario; a description of the problem • Design a storyboard; decide how to go about creating the animation • Implement; write a program code • Test; run the animation

4. Reading the Scenario A scenario Is a problem statement that describes the overall animation in terms of what problem is to be solved and what task is to be performed A scenario provides answers to the following questions What story is to be told? What objects are needed? What actions are to take place? (actions=instructions)

5. Scenario Example • Scenario.. • Questions Answer..

6. Design a Storyboard • A storyboard is the design approach we will use to create a solution to a problem or plan a list of actions to perform a task as specified in the scenario • We break down a scenario into a sequence of many short scenarios • Types of storyboards • Visual storyboard • Textual storyboard

7. Visual Storyboard • A visual storyboard breaks down a scenario into a sequence of major scenes with transitions between scenes • Each sketch is a snapshot of a scene in the animation • Each snapshot is associated with objects in certain position, colors, sizes and poses

8. Storyboard Template Scene Number: Description Sound: Text: (Sketch)

9. Storyboard Scenes Scene Number: 1 Description: When a man was walking in a desert he found a treasure chest full of jewels and gold Sound: None Text: None

10. Storyboard Scenes Scene Number: 2 Description: A randomMan came looking for the treasure, he got his gun out and said “this is my treasure, I stole it from someone else” Sound: None Text: the randomMan say “this is my treasure..”

11. Storyboard Scenes Scene Number: 3 Description: The man run to the town and informed the local Sheriff Sound: None Text: None

12. Storyboard Scenes Scene Number: 4 Description: The sheriff caught the thief and sent him to jail Sound: None Text: The sheriff said “hands up”

13. Textual Storyboard • It looks similar to a “to-do” list and allows to prepare a planned structure for writing program code • It may summarize several scenes from a visual storyboard • A textual storyboard is called an algorithm • The actions in a textual storyboard are often known as pseudocode

14. Textual Storyboard Example Do the following steps in order a man moves forward a man says “Treasure Chest” Do the following steps together other man moves toward the treasure a gun moves toward the man Do the following steps in order other man says “this is my treasure, I stole it” a man turns and moves forward a sheriff moves toward the other man a sheriff says “hand up” the other man turns and gun falls down a police car comes

15. Evaluate and Revise • After designing the storyboard, it is good to take an objective look to decide what might be changed • The storyboard is Not final • Creative people go through the design-modify-create cycle

16. Let’s work with Alice Design and create a visual and a textual storyboard for a scenario of your imagination