This assignment was one of my favorites from the entire class. It also took longer than any other assignment so I want to see if I can make it easier for other people.

The first thing you want to do is open up your spreadsheet application. I used Microsoft Excel but google docs should work just as well. Next you’ll want to decide what size you want each shape to be. The smaller they are, the more precise of a picture you can create, but it will also take a lot longer. To do this, select about 70 columns or so and then click on format -> column -> width. I chose .2 to get small enough boxes for my pong game.

Now you can start making your background. Just select the cells you want to paint and click on the bucket fill tool with the color you want.

Once you have everything set up, take a screenshot. On a mac you can do this by pressing Shift/Command/4. This will turn your cursor into crosshairs and you can drag out a box over what you want to take a screenshot of. These will be put on your desktop by default. You may want to move them into their own folder as you go along.

Now comes the tedious part. You have to go through and change the cells of your project between every screenshot. On my pong project, this meant moving the pong ball and the paddles but it can be whatever you want to have animate.  Repeat this process of changing the cells and taking a screenshot afterwards until you finish the animation you want.

Next you’ll want to open up a movie editor. I used iMovie because it was so straightforward. Before you start the project in iMovie, make sure that the Ken Burns effect is OFF. Once you create the project simply select ALL of the screenshots and drag them into your project window. They should all appear as a frame and be there in order. From here all you need to do is change the duration of each frame to your liking and export.

I hope this helps!