Animation allows us to give life to our storytelling, creating 3-dimensional spaces where our characters and imaginary worlds interact. Until recently, most of animation was done by hand by artists. Since each second of animation requires 24 frames, the amount of work to create even the shortest of movies is enormous.
Enter computer animation. Computers have transformed the film and video game industries over the last ten to fifteen years.
CS 112 uses Alice, an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create animations for telling a story or playing an interactive game. Increasingly, Alice has become a tool for teaching introductory computing. It uses graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.