Amazing Animation introduces kids (ages 4-15) to a wonderfully exciting world of creativity and play through animation. With Amazing Animation they can create multimedia movies, cartoon stories, and interactive home and school projects. Basic animation is as easy as choosing a background scene, stamping a character, moving the character along a pathway, adding exciting sound, and pressing the Play button to watch. As kids seek new challenges, they can go to the next ability levels, and can use the powerful painting and drawing tools, and special effects to create stamps and backgrounds reflecting their own interests.
TRIAL VERSION
--------------
This trial version is limited in the following ways:
1) You can't save your movies.
2) The time per session is limited to 20 minutes. You can quit and start over again after 20 minutes if you would like to see more.
3) The trial version contains only a limited amount of stamps, scenes and sounds for use on color monitors ONLY. The full version contains 9 scenes, 55 sounds, and 30 stamps, appropriate for use on both black & white or color monitors.
4) Since you cannot save movies, the Button feature is not usable. In the full version, Buttons let you interactively link movies together.
To purchase your own, full version of Amazing Animation 1.0 for only $39* directly from Claris, call (800) 544-8554. Education site licenses are also available.
HOW TO GET STARTED
-------------------
Amazing Animation has three ability levels for kids of all ages with different experience. The Basic level allows kids to create simple animations using the three basic components of animation; backgrounds, scenes and sound. The Tools level is for older children or experienced animators ready for more challenges. The third ability level, Effects, is more advanced, providing tools for adding transitions, pauses, and buttons.
When you double-click the application icon, a new, blank movie is created. Each time you start Amazing Animation, you will see a blank movie-making area (called a frame), movie controls and the Basic level tools including Scenes, Stamps and Sounds.
TO CREATE A MOVIE
------------------
1) Click on “Scenes” once to open the drawer. Click on a scene to select a background for your movie.
2) Click on “Stamps” once to open the drawer. Click on a stamp to add a character to your movie. You can click again to add more stamps.
3) Click on one of the stamps and drag to move it. Amazing Animation creates frames as you move the stamp, and the animation is created automatically!
4) You can go back to the first frame by clicking on the ‘Rewind’ arrows on the movie controls in the upper left hand corner. You can now play the movie, or drag another stamp to add multiple, simultaneous animations.
5) To add sound, click “Sounds” to open the drawer. Select a sound by clicking. A sound can be added in any frame of a movie, and will play from where it is added.
6) To play the movie, click “Play”. View and enjoy the result of your efforts!
UH-OH AND FIRECRACKER
----------------------
Clicking “Uh-oh” (the little face) is the same as selecting Undo from the Edit menu. The first item in the Edit menu changes depending on your previous action.
You can use the Firecracker to remove something in the frame. First select what you want to remove by clicking it, and then click the Firecracker.
If nothing is selected, clicking the Firecracker removes the last thing you put in a frame and continues removing things in reverse order, including previous frames. Clicking the Firecracker repeatedly erases the entire movie.
MORE ADVANCED FEATURES
------------------------
Beginners can use the Basic level, with ready-made scenes, stamps, and sounds to create a movie. To change to the next level, Tools, click the up-arrow on the Basic tool bar.
The Tools level is for older children or experienced animators ready for more challenge. This opens up for drawing and painting, adding text, and rotating, resizing and moving objects. To change to the next level, Effects, click the up-arrow on the Tools tool bar.
The Effects level is more advanced, providing tools for adding transitions (called Wipes) between frames, pauses in animations, and buttons to open and play other movies (also called Branching).
