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In Nickelodeon Director's Lab, kids work with a suite of sophisticated tools to create on-screen movies, cartoons, or animated reports. Multimedia theatrics combine illustrations, photographs, splashy titles, video clips, music, and sound effects. A full-service production studio metaphor simplifies the design process.
Kids start off in the Main Hall, an electronic foyer with several labeled doors. Each door serves as a gateway to a special studio where kids work on an aspect of their presentation. For example, click on the Title Editor door to make video titles or headlines. Kids can work on individual Title Screens by typing or changing text to suit their directorial temperament. Libraries of ready-made titles provide creative inspiration while on-screen Help gives instructions. Test guides show how the title will look against different color backgrounds.
Visit the Graphic Studio to paint illustrated backgrounds for the video. Kids can touch up prefabricated illustrations using this studio's special tools. An electronic easel holds the design as kids draw with paint brushes and geometric-shaped draw tools selected from studio art shelves. Kids can paint with 64 shades, select a different color palette, or stamp their design with ready-made art clips.
Video Suite lets kids play with ready-made video clips. Kids can use each video as is or stamp individual frames with ready-made designs for special animation effects. Director's Lab lays out each frame of the selected video in a special grid for easy editing. Kids just select the stamp they want to animate and click the video frame that will hold the stamp. When the frame appears in the work window, click the spot where the stamp is wanted. Select a new frame, position the stamp in a slightly different place, and stamp again. Repeat this procedure for each frame in the video sequence. When the movie plays on-screen, it will seem as if the stamp is moving around.
Kids use the Music Studio to score their own compositions or select ready-made tunes for the video. They can experiment with music speed, different instruments, and special loop effects. Visiting the Sound FX Studio makes the video come alive with wacky bings, boings, and screams. Echo and Reverb tools produce zany effects. A Mixer combines two sounds. Kids can record their own sounds if your computer has a microphone.
Kids visit the Director's Lab to assemble the parts of the production. There's a separate timeline for each multimedia element (i.e., graphics, video clip, sound, music, etc.). Simply line up the parts on the timeline so they present at exactly the right moment. Kids can add special-effect wipes to mark transitions from one frame to the next.
A preview screen shows what's been selected and how it will look. Click-on shortcuts return kids to a particular studio to touch up a presentation element before inserting it in a show. After saving the presentation, visit the Screening Room to sit back and enjoy the show, complete with canned applause. If kids want to share their production with someone who doesn't have a program copy, just click the Screening Room's Video-To-Go option. The show saves to disk for standalone presentation.
For DOS/Windows (via DOSBox) [*Please review compatibility/platform sections]
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