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Animations

  For reasons described on the story design page, the KidsRoom uses layered, still-frame, cartoon-like animation sequences instead of rendered three-dimensional graphics. These sequences are displayed by two image server programs, one for each screen. The control program requests an animation, like "blue-monster-crouch" for a particular screen at a certain frame rate (usually about 1 frame per half second), and several frames are streamed to the display through an Alpha video card. Most animations consist of about five images. Although in the KidsRoom two Alpha workstations are used to output video (because they were available and we had expertise using them), PC’s with video cards could easily handle the load.

Most of the animations used in the story are displayed below. All the artwork is original and was created explicitly for the KidsRoom by Alex Weissman.

  

River

Side wall Front wall
Side of river gif animation
Quicktime plug-in required

Monsters

Crouch Flap
Gif animation of monster doing a crouch Gif animation of monster doing a flap
Make a Y Spin
Gif animation of monster making a Y Gif animation of monster doing a spin

Transitions, Blinking

Blinking and talking spotlight monster Room to forest
Gif animation of blinking monster Gif animation of bedroom to forest transition
Blinking eyes in the forest  
Gif animation of blinking eyes in forest  

 

 

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The KidsRoom - Perceptual Computing Group - MIT Media Laboratory