The Deer and Fox, A Fable Jaclyn Kwiatkowski and Darrin Gailey

A fable is a story that teaches a lesson, usually using animals as characters.The Deer and the Fox is a fable created by Darrin Gailey and Jaclyn Kwiatkowski to highlight the use of animation in conjunction with stories that have morals. They do so by using Adobe Flash for animation, as well as Soundtrack Pro for music. In order to create the animation, much preparation work was done; which includes constructing the animals in Color Aid paper, and then scanning them into the computer where they were copied and pasted into Photoshop to be cut into a PNG file. Digital storytelling is an effective way to get ideas across, especially morals to children. They believe that digital stories, like the fable, are a thought provoking and exciting way to bring not only a lesson, but the idea of animation to younger audiences.

In order to create The Deer and the Fox, it was necessary to create a basic idea of the fable. First, a mind map, which was used initially to express the different ways in which stories are thought of and viewed. From there they used the concepts from the mind map to choose the fable and the way they wished to express their story. They decided on creating characters first, they used animals to portray certain personalities for instance, the deer as being self centered, the fox as being cunning but prone to trouble, the wolf as being pretentious and self absorbed, and the chipmunk as being kind and understanding. From here they created an outline for their story; the deer who is self absorbed in his small problems does not want to listen to any advice given and when the time comes to help a friend in need, he decides to mope about not being the center of attention until his friend, the chipmunk, talks some sense into him. The moral of the fable is that one should be aware of others, and not just think of oneself. They feel this story has a great deal of connectedness to children, because sometimes it is hard for them to think of others before themselves. They used animals because they feel that they are more interesting, but to give them a human- like quality they have them standing on their hind legs. The next steps they took to complete the story was by using Adobe Flash Animation.

To be able to complete their story they needed to create the characters. This was done by hand using Color Aid paper. They choose to use the color aid paper and to scan them into the computer as images this gave them a “story book”, child friendly feel though a more visceral media. After scanning in the images, they pulled them into Photoshop where the magnetic tool was used to cut them out and save them as PNG files, this created cut-out paper aesthetic. Before the images were imported to Flash, the story was separated into two halves, Jaclyn decided to animate the title page and beginning while Darrin, the end and credits page. From here they each used the PNG files imported to Flash to construct the characters. Because the images were scanned in, every body part was a separate image, which allowed for movement of the characters and expressing more human like emotions. Darrin and Jaclyn used the same background, which they found on the internet, to keep the animation concise. The background was a simple forest scene that was cartoon-like, with the cut out paper characters, it gives a more interesting feel. The animation was created using twelve frames per second, many scenes, and movie clips to animate characters as “walking” or “crying”. They used knowledge on frames, keyframes, blank keyframes, classic tweens, and AIFF music files to create an animation that is fluid and understandable. To create an overall mood for the animation, Soundtrack Pro was used to cut specific clips from Fleet Foxes to be saved as a mono AIFF file. The clips that were used help express feelings of sadness, angst, anger, and a sense of completion within the animation. Overall, Flash animation and Soundtrack Pro were effective in providing tools needed to create The Deer and the Fox

Digital storytelling is excellent way in which stories can be brought to various audiences. To be able to create a digital story two things must come together, those being a story and animation. The Fox and the Deer is an original fable which uses digital storytelling as it main medium. This medium allows for the moral of the fable to get across to younger audiences as it is able to capture attention though movement and sound. Through skills in Adobe Photoshop and flash, as well as Soundtrack Pro, the fable was able to carry a story-book feel while being still being a product of digital storytelling.

Biblography

http://abzhakim.blogspot.com/2012/08/kids-book-background.html

Fleet Foxes: Meadow Larks

Fleet Foxes: White Winter Hymnal

Fleet Foxes: Heard Them Stirring

Fleet Foxes: Blue Ridge Mountains

Fleet Foxes: Sun It Rises