Art and Design
As students of media, our discussions of design, animation, and interactivity should be precise. Make sure that you understand the meanings of and the differences among the key terms listed below.
- static, animated, interactive
- Does the object move? Does it respond to a user's actions?
- drawn, painted, printed, computer graphic
- Almost all of the work we are analyzing in this class was created using a computer. But only some of it looks that way. Does the object appear to have been created using a traditional graphic tool (like a pencil or paint brush)? Does it appear to have been stamped onto paper by a printing press? Does it have the sharp borders, flat colors, and geometric forms that are characteristic of computer graphics?
- photographic vs. photorealistic
- The second term is more precise for most contemporary still and moving images, since photo-chemical film and analog video processes are becoming rare.
- graphic vs. photorealistic
- Does the image look like it was created by hand or recorded by a camera?
- organic vs. geometric
- Does the object resemble forms found in the natural world? Or does it appear to have been built from simple geometric shapes?
- abstract vs. figurative
- Does the object represent something else?
Adobe Flash
Chapter 5: Building Animation
- Timeline
- Layer
- Frame
- Keyframe
- Tween
- Tween types: Motion, Shape, Classic
- Motion Editor panel
HTML and CSS
- markup language
- content vs. form
- tags
- container tags
- attributes
- HTML, XHTML
- navigational vs. hypertext links
- rules, selectors, declarations, properties, values