Four Ideas for Greeting Card Project

Here are four quick concepts for the greeting card project. These are suggestions, not requirements. You may certainly use a different idea. Projects based on these suggestions are not necessarily favored.

1. Traditional, sequential animation

Jacquie Lawson's work contains excellent examples of traditional, single-sequenced animation. You may design a card in which a scene unfolds step-by-step in response to mouse clicks. One way to do this, obviously, is to add features, items, actors, or transformations.

2. Pick a tree

Set up a series of scenes or tableaus through which the viewer can scroll, perhaps by clicking on the left or right side of the screen. Each should contain a number of trees to choose from. Trees are visibly different. There may be five, six, or more moves to left or right. Perhaps the final move in either direction takes us back to the origin point.

When the viewer picks her tree, we switch to a scene showing that tree, perhaps indoors. At this point we see the tree become decorated, step by step. (Or perhaps we click to call up each step in the decoration.)

3. Trim a tree

We start with a bare tree and an assortment of ornaments. The ornaments can be dragged from their start point over the tree. Perhaps this is a game: placing a heavy ornament too near the outside of the tree will make it fall off. Maybe some ornaments have to be placed in particular spots.

As each ornament is added, the scene becomes brighter. When the last one is on, the tree-topper (angel, etc.) magically appears. Play sound.

4. Tree trimming contest

You have a fixed amount of time to get your ornaments onto the tree. They disappear from view when time is up unless they are on the tree. Perhaps they begin animating (bouncing up and down) when they're about to vanish.

Second variation: there are two trees. Every time you select an ornament, the computer selects another and places it on the other tree. Or the computer picks ornaments every couple of seconds for its tree, and the object is to trim yours before the best ones are taken.

The computer's picks in either case should be randomized, so that the card/game can be replayed many times with variations.