Part One: Discuss your feelings about the iBook animation story task:
1.
Are
you satisfied with the final result?
Yes I’m very satisfied
with how my iBook has turned out. At the start of the term I wasn’t too sure if
everything would work considering I had never made a book of any sort before, but I guess that I've proved to myself that I can make an iBook!
2.
Did
the iBook require more/less time than you originally thought?
I think making the iBook
required more time than I originally though due to the fact that when we were told about
the project, I thought making an iBook would just consist of finding pictures
or taking screenshots of our animation then writing a story to go along with
them. However it actually turned out that making an iBook was much different to
what I thought it was, as we needed to:
- Split up and trim our full
animation so there would be QuickTime clips for each chapter
- Make voice recordings for
each chapter
- Find suitable background
pictures
- Find suitable fonts
- Choose a good colour
scheme for the iBook
Although it took a while,
it was definitely worth it in the end because I’ll always be able to open my
iBook and be proud of the work I did in Grade 9.
3.
Would you like to change any aspects of your final project (layout, links, images, video
and audio content, colour scheme etc)?
If I were to change
certain aspects of the final project, I would probably try and modify my voice
to sound more interesting in certain parts of the book. For example, if
something sad was happening I would try make my voice sound sad, if something
really exciting were happening, I would try and make my voice sound excited,
and so on. I might have also looked for different pictures to put in the
background of each chapter, even if it that only meant finding a little clipart
fish or some underwater bubbles.
4.
If
you could start the project again what would you do differently?
I
don’t think I would do anything much differently if I were to start the project
again. However, as I mentioned in the previous answer, if I were to modify any
aspects of my iBook, I would probably try improving my tone and emotion in the
voice recordings as well as finding some more background images for extra interest
on each page. Although coming to think of it, before I imported my videos into
QuickTime, I should have made sure the sound at the end of the video slowly
faded off to prevent the sound from being loud and suddenly coming to a stop. This would have helped my videos to flow more when watching them.
Part Two: Respond to each of the following dot points. You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.
1. Discuss whether your iBook has turned
out the way you pictured.
I think my iBook has turned out better than the way I pictured considering I had never previously made a book, let alone an iBook. I had
never used anything relating to iBooks Author so everything was really new to
me, however I soon got the hang of things and was able to produce an iBook that
can be kept and read in my iBooks Library for many years to come.
2. Explain whether your iBook clearly
depicts the style of your animation and describe some specific design principles
that you have used to achieve this.
I think my iBook clearly depicts the
style of my animation considering both are quite childish and colourful.
However in order to achieve the appearance of my book being similar to my
animation, I downloaded fonts from the internet that closely resemble the
handwriting of a child, I then made the colour scheme closely relate to the
colour scheme of my animation by using the magnification glass tool found in
the colour pad. The colour played a major part in making the two look similar, as
in every chapter, the main colour of the video preview was the same colour as
the text box surrounding the writing, the title of the chapter and the same
colour as the shadow surrounding the video. I think all of these aspects helped
my animation and iBook have styles very similar to one another.
Matching colour scheme:
3. Describe any problems or technical difficulties
you encountered while creating your spoken words in GarageBand.
There weren’t too many problems while
creating my iBook, however at the beginning of the project when I wasn’t too
sure how to use certain tools, I continually had to ask my friends and Mr
Powell for help. For example, I didn’t know how to crop an image, use the
magnification glass tool or how to chose an appropriate cover image for the
movie previews in each chapter. My other issue would have had to be getting all of the
voice recordings done, as I kept having to delete and restart recordings due to
me miss-pronouncing or missing words, stuttering, or missing a line when
reading.
4. Did you have all of the necessary resources
to complete your iBook or did you have to create new materials?
Yes, thankfully I had most of the
resources needed to complete my iBook such as appropriate QuickTime movie lengths
that allowed me to create decent length stories for each chapter. The only
resource I didn’t have were the background pictures for each chapter. For the
opening page with the little introductory sentence to start the story off, I
found some orange clip art fish to go in the background. For the remaining pages, I
found an appropriate striped pattern off Google that I cropped down so there
could be a few rows of stripes at both the top and bottom of each page.
5. List the steps you used to plan and
develop your project.
When we were first told about the
project, the first step I took was to trim down appropriate sections from my
full animation into good chapter lengths. From doing this first, I knew what
each chapter would consist of so I could start off writing the stories. This took
about two class lessons before I’d finished, so after this, I begun putting
together my iBook. I started off with importing my QuickTime videos and pasting
each chapter’s story into each chapter. After this, I discovered how you could
download fonts off the Internet, so I ended up finding some really useful fonts
that could be used in my iBook. I’m really glad I discovered these fonts because
otherwise my iBook might not have had the same childish and fun feel to it, as I don’t
really think any other usual fonts found in programs could have achieved the
same appeal. Once I had figured out my fonts, imported all my videos and pasted
all my stories into each chapter, it was time to start the voice recordings. Altogether,
this took several hours, as I had to make sure each sounded how I wanted it to and make sure it would fit into its assigned chapter. On top of this, I also had to
add in the title “Click here to play voiceover” to every voice recording and
change the font to match the story’s font. Once all of this was done, I started
playing around with the colour scheme. I made the background of each slide a
light blue to match the underwater theme of my animation, and then made sure
each chapter’s title, text box surrounding the writing and shadow surrounding
the videos, each matched the main colour of the chapter’s video preview picture.
I did all of this by using the ‘colour magnification tool’ that can pick out
any colour it’s hovering above. When all this was done, I had just about
finished and had a last couple of read through to make sure everything was in
place and looked appropriate. Finally a term's work was finished! And I couldn't be happier with the final result.
6. Talk about any time-management issues
you encountered during the project and describe the steps you took to improve
in this area;
I don’t think I encountered any
time-management issues during this project. I managed to stay on track with my work so at the end I wasn’t rushing to have everything finished for the due
date.
7. Discuss whether you undertook adequate
and detailed reflection throughout your project. i.e. Have you provided enough
evidence to support your work?
I think I have undertaken
adequate and detailed reflection throughout the project as I’ve kept recent
blog updates explaining what I did in each lesson and what I learnt. I have also
included screenshots and pictures in some of my post to support what I was
talking about or trying to explain.
