Creating Animation with Fuzzwich

I had an impression that making animation would be difficult and time consuming. Therefore, I was very excited and eager to learn about Fuzzwich. During class, Dr. Yuen discussed about types of animation and how they are produced. He further explained about Fuzzwich and emphasized how easy the program is. However, he mentioned that carefully plan the storyline would help producing better animation. 

Fuzzwich is very easy to use since the program provides users all animated characters, scenery, their face expressions (e.g. happy, bored, angry, and sad), and their actions (e.g. attack, rejoice, and swoon). After selecting the characters and scenery, users have to create a path for each character according to the story. Then, users can add speech bubbles for each character. Since picture worth more than thousand words, here under are step by step on how to use Fuzzwich.

1. Click "Make one now" button located at the upper right corner of Fuzzwich website.

2. Select the setting for your animation.

 

          3. Choose characters for your animation.

4. Watch 10 seconds Fuzzwich video tutorial on how it work.

5. Start your animation.

For our class assignment, we were required to create an animation using the Fuzzwich.  We had to have at least 2 characters with appropriate actions, faces, and speech bubbles. After finishing our animation, we had to embed our Fuzzwich animaton in our class social network. It did not take me long to decide what I would do for this project. My animation title is “Meet USM Fashion Merchandising Faculty.” I have planed for the FM program to use this animation when we visit high schools for recruitment and for my colleague, Brigitte Burgess, to use for her Intro to Merchandising class. I had fun making this animation. I agree with Dr. Yuen that planning the storyline ahead is very helpful. So far, I have a positive experience with the program. Like coin, Fuzzwich has both sides: pros and cons. I like Fuzzwich for their user friendly, and useful features, and ability to share with others. More importantly, Fuzzwich is free. Additionally, there are couple drawbacks about Fuzzwich. First, approximately 20 seconds of animation is very short. Restricted time will limit what users can use Fuzzwich for. Second, users can’t upload audio file or add their voice to the animation. Third, there is no search function on Fuzzwich website. It is harder for others to search similar animation or find what they are looking for.

In my opinion, Fuzzwish has potential not only for education purpose but also for business perspective. Therefore, in my future classes, I plan to assign my students to create animation for promoting products or introducing projects.  I also plan to explore other animated programs that Dr. Yuen kindly sent me the link.