Ever since 2Simple held their advisors day at the headquarters in London I have been eagerly awaiting their latest offering; 2Create a Superstory. With the promise of easy animation, simple storyboarding and augmented reality features it really seemed to be a title too good to be true.
Well, I've recently received a preview copy of it, and I have to say I'm impressed.
From the moment I launched the title, I was greeted with the familiar 2simple icons and layout (if you have used other titles they've released, you'll instantly know what the icons means, and what they do). Along the top of the screen are the straightforward icons - new creation, print screen, load work, save work, activate camera (if attached), play creation, minimise and close.
Down the left hand side of the screen are the standard text and image options, - freehand drawing pen, box or circle (filled or not), line, paint pot, text tool (double click this and you can access all the fonts on your computer to use within the program), erase, 40 colours (double click on these and you get access to a pallete with many more colours within it), and the image thickness selector.
For a child using 2CaSS for the first time the similarity of the layout to other 2Simple titles (for example 2DIY) ensures that they will be able to get started quickly.
The splash menu offered me 18 templates to work from - ranging from simple storybooks to creating an activity or reference work. Each template had a USP (unique selling point) to it, whether it be an easy way to animate and move characters in the "auto" template, the historical looking "aged" and "torn" templates, the Bayeux Tapestry effect of the "scroll" template, right through to the Augmented Reality "AR" template. Yes - 2Simple are ahead of the game, and offer Augmented Reality features as standard within this title!
I began by creating a "square book". Adding images was straightforward; as with other 2Simple titles, it just required a right click. Clicking on "import picture" then choosing from your computer selected the image to be used. A nice feature included in 2CaSS allows the user to zoom into or out of the image, and also add an effect to it: original colour, greyscale, sepia, posterised, black and white or pixelated. Once the image is sorted, clicking OK adds it to the work.
Writing could be added to the text boxes quickly, and by using the text increase / decrease option along the top banner of the software ensured that the writing could fill the text area. I found that I could add more and more pages as I wished to my activity. I eventually discovered that there are a maximum of 20 pages within an activity - plenty for a detailed piece of work to be produced.
Several of the templates allowed character movement within each page. Achieving animation was a breeze. Simply drag and drop the type of character (person / vehicle / building / animal / etc) onto a page. What 2Simple have done with these animations is provide a faint outline of the shape for users to use to create their own designs. A very good idea in my opinion as it means that pupils will need to design their own characters.
Once a character had been designed, right clicking on it gave the option to edit how it behaved on screen, and once again dragging and dropping was used very effectively. On the left of the pop up window are various animation options - jump / wave / walk / spin / fade away / add a speech bubble and many more effects (for certain types of character you could also use specific effects like tail wagging with an animal, or wheel rotating with a vehicle). Simply dragging the desired effect onto the 10 step timeline below the characters image set it to be used.
Several characters could be used on the same page of an activity at the same time, and there was the feature to order the position of them on screen.
I particularly liked the "jump to page" effect. This effect would allow a user to create a non-linear, or branching story, with very little fuss. By simply adding that effect to the screen, as a mouse click, the user would be able to click on particular places within the screen to create different outcomes (I have begun to create an activity with this further down the screen - see the Goldilocks story, and decide which bowl of porridge to eat...)
Perhaps the most useful feature of all the templates within 2CaSS is the ability to add actionscript code, as has been possible with 2DIY. Like with 2DIY, this is going to allow users to make their activities as simple, or advanced as they wish, and will extend the age range and appeal of the title well beyond the primary classroom.
Finally, 2Simple have once again devised a way for the finished activties to be saved as .2c2 (2CaSS) files as well as .swf files - the latter being possible to upload to a learning platform and allow other people to view the completed activities. As with their previous 2DIY title, this opens up a whole new area of pupils being able to publish their own work onto the internet. See some quick examples I made within an hour of trying the software.
This is an example of an "auto" story with simple animation effects.
This is an example of a tabbed book;
This is an example of using a story with non-linear elements contained within it. Help Goldilocks choose which bowl of porridge to try;
A quick tip that I would pass onto others is that when creating a story start with a static, title page. Leave the animation until the 2nd page. As you can see from the two examples above, the first page animations have already played before you scrolled down to them, and have been missed. A static page would hold all those effects until the user is ready to read the story.
To summize, 2Create a Superstory is an extremely powerful, yet simple to use, piece of software. It's many templates will allow it to be used effectively across the curriculum, and the ability to control actionscript within activities will allow more advanced work from secondary pupils, whilst at the same time appealing to primary classrooms.
