Course Description

This class introduces you to the basics of Corel's Animation Shop, an animation editor that runs under Windows and that is integrated with several versions of Corel's image editor, Paint Shop Pro. Topics covered include fundamental animation concepts, navigating the Animation Shop workspace, using Animation Shop's tools and commands, creating animations from scratch, editing and optimizing animations, adding effects and transitions, and using Animation Shop in conjunction with Paint Shop Pro. Click here to view Animaion Shop features This is a 6 week, self-paced, online course. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, a class discussion board to interact with your fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Animation Shop 3, either one that came bundled with versions of Paint Shop Pro prior to PSP X or the stand-alone version of Animation Shop available from Corel. You do not need a copy of Paint Shop Pro for the course, but it would be helpful to have PSP since one week's lesson covers Animation Shop/Paint Shop Pro integration and another lesson includes instructions on how to create Paint Shop Pro Picture Tubes using Animation Shop. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. Corel also offers a free 30-day trial edition of Paint Shop Pro. Students have the option of using the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom. If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available: Basic HTML page WS_FTP SmartFTP Students should have working knowledge of their operating system: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

None

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 Animation Basics Lesson 2 Transitions and Effects Lesson 3 Editing Animations Lesson 4 Cropping and Optimizing Animations Lesson 5 Animation Shop and Paint Shop Pro Lesson 6 This 'n' That

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Animation Basics Animation produces the illusion of movement from a series of still images. By making slight changes from one image to the next in the series and then rapidly displaying one after the other, you create a dynamic whole from a collection of static pieces. If you're old enough to remember the days before DVDs (and even videotape), you've probably seen a section of movie film. Each frame of the film displays a snapshot of a scene that is gradually progressing. Play those snapshots one after another at just the right speed, and you seem to see the scene as it actually unfolded. With animation software, you can make your own short 'films,' putting together a series of digital drawings or photorealistic images to make a moving picture. To understand animation, you should first learn to distinguish between two related-but quite distinct-elements of any animation: the frame and the cel. (Cel is short for celluloid, the material that film used to be made of.) A frame is something like a container for a particular image. A frame 'holds' the still image in position relative to the other still images in a sort of filmstrip. A cel is the content of a particular frame. The image that makes up one cel might be used at different points in the animation, in several different frames. So, for example, you might have a five-frame animation that uses only three cels. The animation's first frame might contain a cel showing a cat with closed eyes. The second frame might contain a cel showing the cat with half-opened eyes, and the third frame might contain a cel showing the cat with its eyes wide open. The fourth frame might contain the cel that shows the cat with half-opened eyes (the same cel as in the second frame), and the fifth might contain the cel that shows the cat with its eyes closed (the same cel as in the first frame). Play this animation, and you see a sleeping cat that opens its eyes for a moment and then goes back to sleep. Here are three cels, which were created in Paint Shop Pro, that might be used to produce such an animation. TIP: Some folks assume that you need to add more frames to smooth out the movement in a choppy animation. Often, this is just the opposite of what is needed. Instead, you might get better results by reducing the number of frames and adjusting the display times of the remaining frames. Working in Animation Shop Animation Shop's work area includes a Menu bar, which changes depending on whether an animation filmstrip is open or not. Below the Menu bar is the Toolbar, with icons for quick access to several of the commands that are also accessible from the Menu bar. Below the Toolbar is the Tool palette and Style bar. On the right is the Color palette (which in Animation Shop is of limited use). And at the bottom is the Status bar. The large area in the middle is the main work area, where your animation filmstrips and previews of your animations appear. Animation Shop makes obvious use of the filmstrip metaphor. To see this, consider a three-frame version of the sleepy-cat animation described in the previous section. The closed-eyed cel was added first, and then the half-open-eyed cel, and then the open-eyed cel: Continued...

Course Goals

In this course we will learn fundamental animation concepts, navigating the Animation Shop workspace, using Animation Shop's tools and commands, creating animations from scratch, editing and optimizing animations, adding effects and transitions, and using Animation Shop in conjunction with Paint Shop Pro.