Student Animation on Anxiety During Exams Using Pencil 2D

Project Description

The student animation GIF utilizing pencil 2D is a project that demonstrates how to utilize photos, drawings, and sounds to reflect contemporary living conditions of college and university students as they prepare for, take, or await exams results. The persona impact of a speech-driven anthropomorphic character has been implemented in the web application of an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) in the form of pencil 2D in this project. This agent is in charge of directing the learner around the environment and relaying feedback signals from the system. In terms of the impact on students’ learning, conduct, and experience, the project serves as a proxy for evaluation. It is possible to create rudimentary animations using Pencil 2D, picture by picture, and through drawing of students under exams results anxiety as reported in TASK 1.

The program is specialized in the creation of graphics based on sketching with a brush, a pen, or a pencil. With this program, you may rapidly construct a multi-second animation. Drawings are used to create more complicated animations that can depict diverse environments. As a result, the project will serve as a resource for future students interested in learning all of the features of the Pencil 2D program. The project allows for the establishment of systematic, step-by-step learning using the software. Future learners can understand the software’s dashboard by watching the students animation GIF utilizing the Pencil 2D. Furthermore, the usage of the timeline is described together with all of the tools, as both for the picture layer and the vector layer, with the addition of key frames, in this case, 10 frames per second.

Technology

Pencil 2D is an easy-to-use 2D animation program for beginners. It is open source software that is available for free. Its user dashboard allows users to swiftly build frame-by-frame 2D animations. Although Pencil 2D does not support complex animation, it is an excellent choice for anybody just getting started with open source software. Color may be added to the animations as well. An individual’s work can be exported in video format.

The usage of a pencil 2D offers both benefits and drawbacks. First, the tool is beginner-friendly, with a straightforward and easy-to-use User Interface. In this instance, even a novice user may learn how to use the program in a matter of hours and complete the job on time. Second, it is entirely open source, making it a free 2D animation program. As a result, there is no cost associated with using the program. Finally, the program is Cross-Platform, which means it can run on any operating system or device (Blain, 2019). Fourth, it works with raster and vector graphics, allowing users to animate both types of media. Finally, it is free to use, even in commercial businesses, thus it runs smoothly even on low-budget computers. In this aspect, a user does not require a high-end system to execute this program smoothly.

The usage of pencil 2D, on the other hand, necessitates animating frame by frame, which takes a lot of time. It lacks 3D capability due to the fact that it can only produce 2D animations. Furthermore, when compared to other animation tools, it offers restricted choices. Professional studios do not frequently employ it in this circumstance. Some of the activities, such as rotating one’s drawings (resulting in no possibility to multiply layers), changing bitmap layer to lighter, and shading layers, are not obvious.

Schedule & Activities

In this project, schedules and activities that were used to create the student animation on anxiety during exams are used. In the 0:01 to 0:02 timeframe, a simple hand movement cycle of the teacher giving exams’ results to the student is indicated. In this timeframe up to 0:03 onwards, animation package of the student eye movement, up and down is shown by creation of two layers, a bitmap layer, and a vector layer. In this point, the vector layer is clicked to remove the layer button by removing the bitmap layer in the edit menu.

Here, in the menu, preferences in the general preferences where there is a vector curved smoothing is clicked by moving the slider to the left to give a more accurate trace of the pointer movement. By moving the slider to the right, other smoother curve is drawn. Using the draw tool, a rough circle for the character ‘s eye is drawn as a straight line for the character upper eye lid and bending the eye lid toward the chapter’s nose. The second character’s arms are fairly placed close to the body at time frame 0:12, to indicate a posture often used during prayers. Add key button is used in adding next frame when by default; the onion skinning is on, thus showing the previous frame. The lowest position of the head is drawn by adding key frame and tracing out the head in the circle and tracing out the back again, but slightly lower than the normal.

A copy and paste tool is used to ensure the second and the fourth frames are the same. At this point, the onion skinning is left off. The frame rate is then increased to 30 frames per second at the time frame 0:22. Using hold down alt and select button, the second frame is dragged to frame eleven, by making the tenth frame as the current frame. Since 10 frames per second is 1 second, 4 frames are added in the walk cycle at timeline 00:18 and repeated twice for the character to stand still at the end of timeline 00:19 in the next 2 seconds. Lastly, a light grey stationary background object is added to the animation, with a sound imported to the file.

Team

1. Team member A: Responsible for creation of the student animation video.
2. Team member B. Responsible for the facilitation of the images, videos, and sounds to be added to the Pencil 2D project GIF.
3. Team member C. Responsible for performing and conducting the team’s project presentation as the lead speaker.

Content

The final project of the student animation is a video of a student walking dejected with a book on his hands towards the end of the GIF. The video shows the student walk in cycles and facing up and down, with some instances of standing still as he heads to exam room. This indicates the lack of preparation since, in most case, student tend to prepare for exams when such exams timelines are due. This causes anxiety and lack of mode within the student community.

The project employs frame-by-frame animation, which involves modifying the contents of each phase of the animation in each frame. In this scenario, the edit menu’s copy and paste tool is selected and dragged to consecutive frames, resulting in the creation of drawing layers. As a result, each frame is designated as a keyframe by producing a unique picture for each frame. The menu is shifted between raster and vector processes to allow for frame sketching, as well as black painting of the picture on the go with the drawing tool. Onion-skinning provides context by displaying the contents of the previous and following frames on the stage. When onion-skinning, the mouse is clicked and held simultaneously. To omit or include frames, right-click any onion skin frame inside the onion skin range in the timeline by-line. The mouse is clicked and held at the same time to examine and choose the choices within the onion skinning.

Persistence of vision is the process of creating even, realistic, and natural animations in the most efficient way possible by presenting the spectator with just enough frames to establish an impression of motion. The utilization of frames stopping or standing still in GIF frames from walking cycles allows for eyesight persistence in this scenario. There are several methods for adding a video or picture to pencil 2D Animate, each with its own set of advantages. For example, with this program, the user should select File > Import > Import Video, or File > Import > Import Picture if they want to import an image.

There are several advantages to employing animation at 30 frames per second. For example, animations will seem smooth at a pace of 30 frames per second. This guarantees that the videos created by users are realistic and appropriate. According to Vision Boutique (2021), experts and scientists working on this area think that the human brain identifies reality at a pace of 24 – 48 frames per second. As a result, anything lower than that might appear imbalanced, and most viewers will struggle to enjoy their films at a lower frame rate.

References

Blain, J. M. (2019). The complete guide to Blender graphics: computer modeling & animation. AK Peters/CRC Press.

Vision Boutique. (2021). How many FPS can the human eye see? Web.