HyperStudio Festival

The Greater Essex County District School Board is hosting a Hyperstudio Festival to recognize and celebrate the great Hyperstudio projects that are developed by our students. Each school will be encouraged to show off the creations of its students.

Here are some Tips & Tricks to assist you with your projects

Good luck to all!

HyperStudio New Button Actions

After you have mastered the basics, it is time to have a look at some of the wonderful features also included in HyperStudio. These two are great.

• Roll Credits: This NBA allows you to automatically scroll text in a Text Object. You can use this, for example, to create a "credits" screen, much like you see at the end of a movie! Be sure that you have enough text in the Text Objects so that it can scroll.
• Ghost Writer: This NBA allows text to be automatically typed into a Text Object one letter at a time, as if a ghost was sitting at the keyboard. Create a button that refreshes your card to recreate the Ghost Writer text again.
  

plant01

HyperStudio Creating your own Animation

In order to create your own animation, you need to create a series of pictures in a folder on your hard drive. For example, say you want to animate a growing plant. Draw the first image on a new card, and then choose Export Screen... from the File menu. Name the first image Plant01. Next, change the image on the card a little, and export that screen as Plant02 (HyperStudio will increment the numbers for you automatically after your first frame, so every time you choose Export Screen, you should just be able to click on OK). Continue this process until you have created your series of images in your folder.

Playing your animation

HyperStudio will display a dialog box and allow you to select the area of the frame you want to use for the animation. Make sure that you select a large enough area so that all of the material being animated is selected - you don't want to cut off any part of your animation. HyperStudio will take a moment or two to read all of the frames for the animation, and will then allow you to position the first frame on the screen. Now follow the instructions on how to play an animation.

KidPix Studio Creating graphics, backgrounds & Movies

Don't forget about the power of the tools available to you with KidPix. KidPix has a variety of draw tools, stamps, etc. that are not available in HyperStudio. You can let your imagination run wild as you create. The files created can then be imported as backgrounds, clip art or graphics in your stacks.

Extra! Extra!. Create a slide show in KipPix and save as a QuickTime movie or an.avi file. Now this movie can be imported into your Hyperstudio stack. Great fun!

Library QTVR

HyperStudio Creating your own QuickTime Panorama

Available on the HyperStudio for Windows CD are some very useful utilities that you could use to enhance your projects. One such utility is Spin Panorama. Included on the CD is a 15 day trial demo version.

Location on CD:HyperStudio/Utility/QTVR/SpinDemo

First you need to take your photos. Photos from a digital camera work best, but scanned photos will also work. It is recommended that you use a tripod to keep the camera steady. Take a series of photos, ex. the library. Carefully turn the camera to create either a panoramic still or a QuickTime VR movie. Twelve to sixteen images will create a good panorama.

Using Spin Panorama you will:

• 1.- Get the images from disk
• 2.- Stitch the images
• 3.- Crop the images
• 4.- Create the panorama Voilà fini.

(Visit The Hyperpage for a useful Mac Movie Making Utility.)

Clay Animation

Let's not forget the use of Stop Motion Animation

Clay animation is one way to truly enhance the experience of cooperative learning in the classroom and incorporate this animation in HyperStudio.

Visit the Clay Animation Page for further details.      Register for the upcoming workshop this March.

The Hyperpage A history of Tips & Tricks