Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Bear; Fuzzwich is Animation Software!

Awkward title rhyming aside, this post brings us to the eighth and final assignment for IT 644. However, invert those oral gestures of negative value (turn those frowns upside down!), because blogs are forever. You thought it was diamonds? Nay. Blogs.

So, who’s got two thumbs and loves animation? This gal. From Bugs Bunny cartoons of the 40’s to a healthy collection of anime titles including new and shiny Appleseed and Ergo Proxy incarnations to old school Transformers and Macross, animated entertainment has been a large part of my free time since childhood.

When we were given the assignment of creating an animation for this class, I was not without great concern. Animation takes talent, creativity, and lots and lots of hard work. Right? Well, yes. But I managed to create one without all those virtues through the Fuzzwich software. Which is free, as you might have guessed. And online. And easy to use.

Fuzzwich allows you to choose a background, or you can upload a background via the simple “point/click” interface this blog is riddled with. It also provides a fairly large template of varying characters from current political figures to regular people to mustached monsters. To create the animation, once you have selected your background and characters, you create the path on which the characters will move. The path version of animation is very similar to what you would see in Monty Python skits. This sounds simple, but it can be rather tricky. This is where the creativity and hard work come into the animation scene. But really, as with all software, it merely takes some planning and practice. I had to restage mine many many times, and ended up changing characters and backgrounds more than once. Once you get the hang of the manipulation, however, it is easy to see how playing around with different animations can be very addicting. Fuzzwich also has a lot of brilliant examples to watch.

The practical applications of this software are not as wide ranging as some of the others covered in this class. Fuzzwich is however, great fun and provides a good foundation to animation principles. It could also be used to create cards or invitations, as well as promotional material for businesses.

Fuzzwich will be added to Clickety Von Linkety and my example will be posted below. In my animation, I poke fun at Sarah Palin, which really, is just too easy to do.