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Josie's Animations

Scripts

In 2002 I wrote an adult animation script Frog Dreaming which was taken up by www.stink.tv and developed into animation by Mike Overbeck (www.mikeoverbeck.com/frogdream.mov 11 megs download Quicktime Movie)

Another animation script idea I wrote is being showcased by AdvanceFXA and can be viewed on their site as a .wmv file.

My Own Animations

I did some experimenting with animated gifs in the nineties, here are a couple of examples.

   

I found this fun to do but quite restrictive as there is no sound and the animation is stop-frame and loop which is obviously quite limited. I’m much more sophisticated these days. I often use photos and scanned images as part of my animation as well as my own hand drawn ones. This makes for a more versatile scene and can be very funny. For example, my little ‘fanimation’ for The Lesbian Mafia. Still limited to short loops with no sound, though.



Recently I’ve got into Scratch. Scratch is a software that creates simple animations and games, using basic programming techniques and an easy graphical display. It is so simple to use that children and inexperienced programmers can create games and animate their own art. It is also free to download, and there is a large community of users who upload their own creations onto the site. Some of these are terrible, as with any public upload site, but some are brilliant. A bonus is that you can download the projects into Scratch software and have a look at the code, so you can get ideas for your own projects. It’s all free and a caring-sharing sort of thing, which I believe is the way the internet should be.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing with this, making projects in collaboration with my young son who is very enthusiastically learning how to program (which I’m very pleased about as I have always wanted to teach him how to program). I also plan to animate some short scripts that I wrote in 2002, after my initial successful sales.

If you want to be able to view and play these games, you will need Java installed (it's free).

At the moment I have a few projects on Scratch, and my son has a few of his own. But I’m working on more complex projects and will upload soon. My aim with these animations and games is to create something educational as well as fun. For instance I’m developing a demonstration of how stalactites and stalagmites grow that has a fun element when a poor bat gets dripped on. I conceive and design the projects with the help of my son, then I write the program, all the while showing him what I’m doing and discussing any errors in my code which lead to unexpected results. This sort of collaboration I think is going to help him develop his use of programming, and also produce something that he would enjoy watching. See my Scratch profile for latest updates.

Below is an embedded version of my 'Giant Dancing Cat' project. If you don't see a cat on a basketball pitch, you may need to click the toolbar message about blocking ActiveX controls.

Learn more about this project

For more of my programming work, see also my Web Development page.