Coding Pain by Erin Lottes (Spring 2018)
Erin: I used a Corel Studio Video free trial, Corel painter studio, and a Wacom drawing tablet that I already owned. I drew my illustrations in painter studio and recorded using the video software. You could do the same thing with MS paint and a regular mouse. The library also has some great resources in the media center and on their Macs, so I’d check those out too if you’re looking for some higher tech software. As for the voice recording, I just recorded it on my phone and then added it in the video software.
Mirror Neurons by Carrie Gudenkauf (Spring 2018)
Carrie: I didn’t have any experience with animation before I made this project, so I’m sure there’s a more efficient way than what I ended up doing. That being said, here’s how I made the video:
1) For the animation, I used Adobe Animate and a Wacom tablet/pen. I rented both from the Media Center at Swem, though I think Adobe also does a 20$/month student price if you just wanted to purchase the program. Just a heads up- I got lucky and happened to have an uninterrupted 3 weeks with my rentals. I don’t think that that’s normally the case, so definitely start animating well in advance. I used Adobe Animate for two reasons: 1) I wanted that “stop animation” style and 2) Adobe Animate has a layering feature that allowed me to trace over clip art images. I am not a natural artist so this was VERY helpful for me.
2) For the audio, I just used my iPhone to record and tossed the files into Audacity (which I believe is free) to edit. I recorded each section separately- ‘a brief history on mirror neurons’ and ‘types of mirror neurons’ are separate recordings.
3) Adobe Animate allows you to combine audio and visual elements, so I didn’t need to use any kind of video editing software.
4) A lot of this was trial and error. I think at the start I might have tried to animate and then match my voice to the animation, but I found that it sounded too awkward. Instead I fell into a pattern where I would: 1) write a script for the section 2) record the script 3) edit the script as needed in Audacity 4) insert the file into Adobe Animate 5) animate according to the audio file
Computational Neuroscience 