Traditional Animation Principles within Mobile App Development

As a result of being asked to devise and run a games based workshop at the 2015 Games Britannia event utilising Animation and a mobile gaming platform to produce a cross-media product – A project was born. A challenge in itself, the project was restricted with a time limit, group sizing and resources. The skills base of the workshop attendees also had to be taken into consideration. Traditionally computer games utilise 2D or 3D-CGI Animation. With a younger audience, to enhance engagement in the workshop, the hands on approach afforded by Stop Motion Animation was utilised. Teaching traditional animation principles alongside mobile app development skills, this workshop developed into a interdisciplinary collaboration between the animation and Digital Media Production courses. This idea was inspired from rare occurrences found within the games industry where stop motion and other traditional animation practices were used to generate the imagery found within computer games. An upsurge in recent indie game development has shown an increased interest and experimentation with visual styles used within computer games. The outcome of this project was highly successful but also offer ample scope to expand on the scope, skills and practices within both disciplines. This could potentially provide a platform for collaboration within other courses but also develop a sense of Media Art practice across all three courses. This presentation demonstrates the context of the devised workshop within past and present industry trends, the methodology of each discipline and the potential for further development and collaboration.