The guy on this media course is doing a project at the moment - create a short animation, somewhere between one-and-a-half and three minutes long, which is a trailer for a prequel or sequel to a currently existing film.
Animation?! For work?! I offered to show him through Flash, point out some cool little tricks and things that he could use to make it all run nicely, and generally assist him if he needed it. He said that'd be fine, what a great project, there surely had to be a catch somewhere. Oh yes, a catch...
It's not Flash he's using - he's gotta use Director.
If Flash is Macromedia (Now Adobe)'s shining knight, flagship and all around chiseled, good looking hero, then Director is the igor-esque, shambling, hunch-backed, drooling freak that the parents thrust forwards into the world without considering how difficult it would be to interact with such a character.
They're of the same family, they're definitely brother programs; one is like the other, but they specialize in different things, you see. Flash is most certainly, definitely for animation. Director is for...
...Well, Director isn't.
The problem is, the tutors of this course demand the use of Director. Demand it, they do. I can't grasp why; why on earth use the program that isn't for animations to create an animation?! It's diabolical, it's taken us about an hour and a half just to do what Flash could do in 60 seconds. In fact we did that exact experiment out of frustration.
We had to restart the whole thing about seven times just because one of us happened to click once somewhere we shouldn't, somehow deleting all the frames, and then moving something else. The bloody program has one undo level. ONE!
Imagine if you were stranded in a desert, no water for miles around, and a genie pops up in front of you.
"Oho," says he, "I shall grant ye transportation!" And promptly summons a huge, fuelled-up, desert-traversing 4x4, and a penguin. "You must ride the penguin." he says. You protest that you want to use the 4x4, but he pulls a gun and threatens to shoot you if you don't do as he says. That's pretty much the situation here, except you can't attempt to disarm the genie and hijack the 4x4.
Basically the tutors have set an animation project, and instead of telling the students to use the animation program, they demand that they all use a program that's actually for making DVD menus. According to the page on the Adobe Director 11:
Adobe® Director® 11 and Adobe Shockwave® Player software help you create and publish compelling interactive games, demos, prototypes, simulations, and eLearning courses for the web, Mac and Windows® desktops, DVDs, and CDs.
I wonder what they actually mean by "demos", "prototypes" and "simulations".
It's annoying because it's as if the Media tutors don't even realize. It's a Media course, so they're into things like movies, scripts, casting, scores, cameras and what have you. Director takes all the core things from flash - the Library, Timeline and Objects, and renames them - literally, to Cast List, Score and Cast Members, respectively. Yes, they rename objects to Cast Members, so if you have a lamp-post scrolling across the screen, Director says it's a member of the cast too, it'll need to be paid and its name put in the credits, of course.
It's almost like Director has fooled these tutors - by using media-related terminology - into thinking that it's somehow more relevant to their course, when actually, if you want your students to animate for you, let them use Flash! I've read your brief, it can do everything you want them to do in Director, but more dynamically!
I feel sorry for the class, they could be producing stuff so much easier, with much higher productivity too. Oh well, I shouldn't be as nosy as this, it's their course, they can run it however they want, with their riches.
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