Students in Jeffrey Ball’s Animation II class will be working on a dance animation for the next four weeks. Ball aims to teach his students the fundamentals of Adobe Animate and help them develop their techniques and the overall understanding of animation.

“Throughout Animation I learned a lot about Adobe Illustrator and how to create characters,” sophomore Hai Tong said. “This year it’s a little bit different because now we are working in Adobe Animate instead of Adobe Illustrator, so it will be a little bit of a challenge learning the new things that Animate has to offer.” 

The project will include creation of a unique character and a unique background. It will have to be 5-10 seconds long with at least 24 frames a second.

 “The goal for this project isn’t to make this hard for work for you but it’s basically going to be a stepping stone for the other things we learn in this class,” Ball said. 

This project will be graded based on creativity and the smoothness of the animation, as well as the details of the animation.

“The hardest part about this assignment is going to be working through Adobe Animate,” Ball said. “Once you get the hang of Animate, your life will be so much easier.”

As the students learn how to work through the Adobe Animation products and further their animation projects, they will face several challenges and obstacles, such as inconsistent frames, troubleshooting errors and finding the right character design.

“I think that this project will be the foundation of my animation skills and be able to help me in the future with other projects,” Tong said. “At the same time it is very tough learning Adobe Animate especially because we are doing distance learning and we can’t learn in a classroom.”