This is an example of an animation that was created by a student working for the Alice Team to showcase the benefits of adding different kinds of audio to an Alice world. The behind the scenes design process documentation is provided to show the Alice animation design process in action and to provide an example of what a design document for an animation project might look like. The example design document can be used as a template for your own projects. For a lot of creative projects it is typical to be assigned or set yourself design constraints. For this project the student was challenged with the following design challenge:
• Create a world that uses all of the different ways to incorporate audio into an animation: background music, using sound effects for drama in a story, timing sound effects with an animation, and creating and adding custom audio.
“The point of this world is to create a somewhat simple and fun animation that can showcase the audio capabilities of Alice 3. I included techniques like adding and changing background music throughout the world, matching sound to animations (i.e. the footsteps of the playing card and the sounds of water as the shark moves through it), and creating my own custom audio and putting it in Alice (“Ahoy Matey!”). I think this world also shows how even just a small amount of sound can add more emotional depth and character to your worlds. Through the background music, the emotions of each moment are quite clear, and each change in background music amplifies the progression of our “story.” Even the various sound effects add great little emotional and contextual cues that may seem obvious, but reinforce the narrative (the gasp by the playing card is exasperated, showing fear, the shark sounds like he’s displacing a lot of water, meaning that he must be big and threatening). Regardless, I hope this inspires people to use more music and sound in their own worlds!”
* This animation makes use of audio files found in both the base sound library and effects found in the sound library expansion pack one.