First FreeLance Project

Unity? Characters? Animations? So much!

So for my first e-Comm freelance project I was given the simple task of doing a project that shows what type of job I want to pursue in the industry, so I thought it was a great opportunity for me to demonstrate my interests and learn unity. 

Unity is a game engine that can be downloaded for free if you are not intending to profit from your creation and you earn less then 100k a year. This makes it a GREAT program for beginners to jump straight into game development. This is a pretty tricky assignment for sure so I am going to have to work extra hard.

The plan:

Step One:

Develop the character. 

The character I am going to be using is a very bland and basic thief/rogue character. This is to speed up the modeling process, and to make animation a center point.

Here is my current progress:

Step Two:

Develop the Model.

Pretty self explanatory.

Step Three:

Rigging!

Rigging is definitely something I am going to take a bit of time with. From past experiences, rigs can make or break animations. 

Step Four:

Animation!

Specifically a walk cycle. I have attempted a walk cycle in the past and it came out rather clunky. My hope with this is to develop a walk cycle thats pretty nice.

Step Five: 

Enter Unity.

The goal after this is to be able to send my creation into unity to have it work as an interactive experience.


This creator has made a whole series dedicated to developing simple characters and putting them into the game engine. Even though the program demonstrated is blender, it is also applicable to Maya. Most of what is taught in these tutorials is universal animation and tech skill.

Web Design Final Reflection

A Valuable Take Away from Each e-Comm Guarantee:

Technology:

I learned a LOT this year about web code specifically. I had no idea had to use HTML or what it even was when I entered this program but now I am completely fluent in the language. The main way I learned HTML is just by using it. You really only have to hand code and eventually you will learn it. I think coding in general is of high importance especially with our generation being taken over by technology. 

Collaboration:

Collaboration was not improved much during my time in web design if im gonna be honest. Web design is a very independent activity and rarely requires that you talk with other designers. I think in general this class was about developing skills about websites rather then collaborating to create an amazing product. 

Communication:

Communication was not as important this year but if I were to pursue web design next year it would be one of the most important skills. In this class we demonstrated communication but to a very limited degree. However, we did talk about how web designers in the work force need to be able to communicate with employers too be able to create the best possible product for your client. 

Project Management:

This was the second most important skill that we learned this year just under Technology. Web designers need to be able to nail down parts of their project within a certain time frame to ensure that their product is delivered on time. This is obviously very important since people in every field need to be able to asses a situation/project and be able to come up with the best possible solution for that project. 

Leadership:

Again, this class did not have a lot of collaboration that took place. Because of this I was not able to practice my coordination abilities with a team. In my animation blog I talked about how I like to take charge and come up with a plan for a group and then execute it. Unfortunately this skill was not given a lot of room to shine in this environment, but this did allow me to focus on my own skills for once and how I could apply myself without a team.

Strengths 

My strengths mainly come from my imagination and ability to coordinate plans with people. An example being that if im in a bad situation I can come up with a very good plan on how to tackle it. My coordination while in a group can be amazing if I am really comfortable around the people I am leading and know their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Weaknesses 

I am very much NOT a lone wolf. That is something I found very difficult this year with web design. The problems I encountered were that I had a plan BUT execution is another story entirely. I often felt hopeless while working on some assignments because I just cannot nail down the thing I need to do. Another problem I have is being able to concentrate. Like I said earlier, I am not a lone wolf at all. I would frequently talk with others during class to hopefully get their input or I would just talk to talk with them. This lead to me frequently not getting enough work done.

What am I Going to Use my Learning For?

I think most of my time spent in this class was finding out my flaws and trying to correct them. I never really did learn anything that I will use alongside the career I am interested in (Lead Game Animator). I just don't see any clear application of skills we used in the class room. Something I have already been using this for outside of class in gaming organizations. I am a leader in a couple of major gaming groups and they have been needing to fix their websites, so I pitched in. This actually has been pretty useful for things like that. 

Would I Fix Anything Looking Back?

No. Just flat out no. Theirs a reason for that. I gave almost the same answer for animation. I learned this skill through trying to learn how to draw. One of my online friends is an exceptional artist and I asked him how to get better at drawing. He had a very interesting quote that I have been putting into almost all of my work recently.  "If you correct mistakes, you don't learn. If you look back on mistakes, you learn." . I was first shocked by this and thought it was ridiculous, but the more I think about it makes even more sense. I want to be able to look back on my mistakes to 1: see how I have improved and 2:Learn from them. If I rush to fix past projects I would be throwing a valuable lesson away. Every mistake is an opportunity to make yourself better.

Conclusion: 

Its a wrap! Web design is done for me and im happy with the ending I had with it. I learn all of my skills for designing websites and what goes into making theme operate and im able to craft a website based off my favorite medium of art. In general this year has been a blast. Lots of things I could have done better and if im too improve I need to recognize that. This year granted me an opportunity to really find out who I am. The skills I learned here can be applied to different things other then my main career interest, and thats alright. Thanks for a great year!

Animation Final Reflection

A Valuable Take Away from Each e-Comm Guarantee:

Technology:

I have learned a lot from e-Comm but it has definitely allowed me to get some experience with industry standard programs for technology such as Maya and all of the Adobe Products. Throughout this year I have also learned much more about Macs and their specialties compared to PC's. Most of my learning of these things comes from personal experience in class rather then being lectured to which is a nice change compared to almost every class. 

Collaboration:

Collaboration is a vital concept that is hard to learn and even harder to master. Being able to take 5 ideas and mold them into one is a very challenging task. I have had one major group project in this class and it was the final. We had to adapt to each others ideas and situations and come up with the best solution for each problem we encountered. Like technology, most of our experience with Collaboration was just throwing yourself into a collaborative environment and getting to work. This skill is especially important for me considering I am wanting to go into animation myself, specifically in game design. If I had to nail down one thing that I learned this whole year for Collaboration is that often team work can be independent. Sometimes the best way for someone to do what they need to is too leave them alone so they can do the best they can.

Communication:

Communication ties into collaboration quite well. To describe my visions/issues/ideas for a project I needed to find the best way to communicate them. This is still quite difficult for me considering that I am almost always in my head and can rarely describe how I want something to be. This is definitely something I am still working on and this year has really helped in that regard. The main learning environment was both away and in the action if that makes sense. I would have to work it out in my head how I would want to say something, and then attempt how I would. 

Project Management:

Project management is horribly difficult for me. I can plan something down to the finest details just fine, anyone can. Problems arise, however, when I get side tracked. Side tracking is one of the most difficult things for me to control when working on a project of any type because I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I can't just run through a project and THEN fix it. Each segment I do HAS to be perfect after I work on it. That being said: This year really tested me in that regard. One of the most valuable things I learned this year has been that in animation you must go through the entire project first. Then you refine. A problem that I was encountering with the 2d story project is that I would be working on a segment and I would get it to look good for that part, but it didn't line up at all with anything else. This made it so that I had to redo that section all the way through and refine it. Flow is one of the main parts of animation and I really learned that through error this year. 

Leadership:

Leadership has always been a natural thing for me, ever since I was a child. I have always wanted to take lead and see my vision through but their are a couple problems with this. 1: I am not the only person with a view or vision. One of the harder things for people to realize is that everyone is creative. Everyone has their own unique imagination and concepts for something but the main thing that sets artists away from normal people is the ability to realize their imagination and make it reality. Having this in mind I tried to "lead" my groups and take in every view point and go with the best option. Leaders have to be realize their own strengths and weaknesses as well as the people around them, take them into account, and form a plan based off them. 2: Natural does not mean born amazing. I have always been working on how to communicate to a team or group, and as I said earlier, I'm defiantly not the best at it. The great thing about e-Comm is that it throws me straight into an environment where I can decide what skills need to be refined and work towards it. One of the main skills I have been working on as a whole is leadership. Wether it be leading a project in school or managing my own gaming groups and organizations outside of class. 

Strengths and Weaknesses

To better yourself its important to take into account what you are good at and what your are needing to improve upon. Lets start with strengths:

Like I said in my Guarantees segment, I am quite good at taking initiative as a leader. I am very objective based and very goal oriented. I like to be able to have something to work too in projects so that I can have a clear mindset when it comes to working on something. I am also very capable at being able to think of solutions. I have a very good ability to analyze multiple pieces of a puzzle and put them together. The trouble comes when I try to communicate these solutions.

I often say to myself that my mind is my greatest asset and my voice is my worst. I can't thoroughly communicate ideas to other people yet and I'm needing to work on it more. Another issue I have is that sometimes I get to caught up in my ideas that I can't take in others. I try to be as optimistic as possible since, ya know, I'm not an all knowing god who can't do anything wrong. But sometimes I desperately try to stay with my vision no matter what and it often works against me in the end. 

What Would I Fix?

Oh I have one project that has been in the back of my head ever since we did it. One project that I thought was so awful that every time I messed something up I would say to myself "At least it wasn't the 2d story project". The 2d story project. This is what made me realize why I don't want to go into 2d animation. This project pushed my to the end of my sanity. Their was a time where half of my progress on the project got corrupted and I was screwed over. Very rarely do I hate one of my projects so vividly as this one. If I had to fix ANY project it would be this one. This project was awful. I would fix it just to get it out of my head. Their are things that you can learn from failure. But this one is a little too much.

Conclusion

Sophomore year. I hated it. I did not like it at all. Lots of things outside of school, marching band stressed me out, friend issues and many more factors come into my disliking of this year. Thankfully e-Comm made my year a little better. I have a feeling senior year I will look back on my journey and remember this year fondly but I don't know how. Leave it to melancholy I guess. Anyway this year of e-Comm has been a lot of fun for me and was a great experience. I can't wait to start next year, considering 2 of my hours will be dedicated to animation alone. 

Responsive Design

Making a Responsive Web Site

Its been a while since I blogged about web design but unfortunately everyday I am held captive in my web design room and forced to work and now I have to blog on top of that. Anyway our latest project was a photo composition website and it focused on reducing photo size to increase load speed. Now after this we had to make that website responsive so that all platforms can load the site.

Percentages

Too make a website responsive their is one crucial step. Almost all measurements must be in percentage. This makes it adjust to whatever system it is opened on. So say I set the body width style to 70%. No matter what system it is opened on it will open it at 70%. 

Media tags

At the very end of the CSS we had to add tags that are media tags for specific systems. Tablets, monitors, ect. This is used so that the people viewing the website can actual operate it on their level. Say my sidebar is 20%. This might be small for mobile users but big for PC/MAC users. This is solved with the media tag. It makes certain specifications for certain systems so all users can operate your site.

Balls falling

Animated Falling Balls

No suprises here. Just falling balls. Pretty self explanatory isn't it? This was a very simple project but it was pretty fun non the less. In this project we were given the task of recording 3 different balls falling and then we had to animate them in Maya based off the videos we took. 

Spread Sheet 

The first thing we did for this project was record 3 balls fall onto the ground and bounce all over the place. These three balls were a golf ball, bowling ball, and tennis ball. After we recorded the balls falling we then went on to possibly the most tedious thing we have done in this class beside fixing the 2d story animations (I still have flashbacks). We had to take these videos into photoshop and mark the frames where the ball hit the ground and where the ball was at its highest for each jump. After we did this we had to enter it into a spread sheet along side the heights of the balls and their jumps. This took FOREVER because of issues with the server. 

Maya

Maya was very simple. All we had to do was create all 3 balls (including bump maps and textures) and animate them. The animation part worked like this: We took the balls and set each key frame equivalent to the frames we marked in Maya. After that we took the height of the balls AT those keyframes and set them so equal. After we did this for each ball we got a picture of a warehouse and set it to the background. 

Conclusion

That was about it for this project. Defiantly more self explanatory then anything else but still good practice. I thought that it came out great for what I have done but I did have to adjust a couple key frames to make it more seamless. 

Snow!

The next animation project was based off of something that we are all very familiar with recently, snow! It was a fun project since everyones end product looked very different. 

Special Snowflakes

The first objective for this project was to create the snowflakes themselves. We did this using a special creation tool with a curve tool. We created a one sided shape with this tool and then mirrored the shape against itself. This then created a segment of the snowflake. After we have the one segment we used a "special rotation" tool that rotated the segment in a circle and thus a snowflake was born. We repeated this 5 more times resulting in 6 individual, different flakes. 

Snowfall!

After we created and grouped the snowflakes we created a basic window model to add some context to the scene. We then had to duplicate the snowflakes to create 18 so the animation could go on for longer. After all of this it was time to animate! We set the frame rate to 24FPS and put the max frames to 240. This, obviously, is 10 seconds long. The next part was very easy. All we had to do was create a key frame where the snowflakes were at the top and at the bottom. I rotated the bottom one to make the snowflakes seem to be randomly spinning.

Conclusion

This was a very fun project because of everyones different snowflakes and personal twist on the project. It was also a lot of fun just creating the snowflakes.

Magic Potions

Magic Potions!

For this project we were given the task to create a bottle of our own brand and create a wrapper with logo, description, and barcode. This project was one of the easiest we have done thus far and I really didn't find anything about it challenging.

Sketching

The first thing we needed to do was create a mock up sketch of both our bottle and the wrapper. This was simple so it didnt take much time. Everyone else was doing things like soda and juice but I was feeling a little creative and decided to make a "Magic Potion". It was titled "Gunter's Elixir". The name is based off my online name and I just thought elixir sounded cool.

Modeling

This model was very simple to create. I just created an outline with the bevel tool, created the surface with revolve, and converted surface to polygon. After this I created a duplicate to serve as the liquid inside the bottle, with the original being used for the glass with a bit of transparency. After this it was to photoshop! In PS I created a canvas of the dimensions required and drew the logo, got a barcode off the internet, and my wrapper was created. All I had to do was save for web (bc I'm not a fool who uses low quality images) and import it as a texture in Maya. 

Really bad web design

Dodge these design habits/stupid ideas.

So at the moment our websites are really bad. I mean really bad. But compared to these we honestly look like web design veterans that created the internet. 

STOP USING IMAGES FOR SIDE BAR BUTTONS

WHY. Like seriously WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS. It looks awful. I have seen next to NONE that use images to an advantage with the side bar buttons.

Color scheme, or ya know, just don't have one. That works to.

Just make a color scheme. Like don't have every color as a color scheme because thats not actually a color scheme. Fine I'll just give you one. Blue Orange and white. Go have fun.

Sound on websites....

I hope water falls on your keyboard.

Make images look nice.

Like ok if your going to add images at LEAST make it seem like they fit.

Other Ideas:

buttons...EVERYWHERE

not aligning anything

having a front page that has a link to the actual front page

white text on yellow background

autoplaying anything

Why do people do this?

Well to put it simple, they are to self centered. The designers of these websites are too scared to look objectively at there work so they cant improve themselves. Another problem is that these people lack simple understanding of design fundamentals such as color schemes and alignment. Sites such as these have been completely abandoned do to the introduction of sites such as wix and other automatic formats available.  

Credit to crappy web designers

http://www.roverp6cars.com/

http://www.arrestling.com/index.html

https://nwokillers.weebly.com/our-beliefs.html

http://www.libertyvan.com/

First 3d animation

3D Animation

So for our first animation project we went back to the good old ice cream models. The animation was incredibly simple but it just got us a little more comfortable with the animation workspace in Maya. This project was probably the easiest that we will ever be given in this class and I say that with the utmost certainty.

So All we had to do for this project was create a "lazy Susan" and make it rotate the ice cream models. And surprisingly its as easy as it sounds. All we had to do for this project is create a couple of groups and rotate those groups. I did it within like 30 minutes, fastest e-Comm project ever. There was nothing really complex but again, this was just an intro to the topic so we really didn't have many complicated tasks to complete.

2 objects, 2 new tools.

The Creation

With this project we were tasked with creating a salt shaker and a cup. This was actually much easier then I thought it would be. It was because of two new concepts introduced known as "lofting" and "revolving". 

Revolving

Revolving is a tool used in combination with other tools to rotate a shape around itself. This may sound really complicated but its actually very simple. Using a curve creation tool, I went into 2d view to create an outline for my cup. After I did this I used revolve and that line was formed into a cup. Thats it. It sounds like an expert technique but you just press a button.

Lofting

Lofting is another tool similar to revolve but functions differently. Instead of rotating around the object it adds polygons in-between objects. The way I used this was I created multiple shapes with the bezier curve tool and duplicated them. I then stacked all the shapes on top of one another leaving a bit of space in-between so that polygons could fit in the spaces. It then created the saltshaker base! After this I did a couple of basic techniques to create the cap. 

3d Hammer

Hammer Time!

So winter break is over and were back on track with class unfortunately. At least were back to animation! So our first project we were assigned was to create a hammer and nail within a 3d animation program called Maya. 

Modeling

The first and most time consuming part of this project was the modeling. This process was the creation of the 3d model I would use to represent a hammer and nail. This can be a very fun part of the project but we all encountered the same problem will modeling. Tumble. Tumble is a mode you can be in within Maya that forms everything even though its not selected. This was obviously a big issue considering that we needed to select certain parts of the model to do certain things like create the claw of the hammer. All of us were almost screaming at our computers when suddenly Mr. Netterville comes and fixes literally all of our computers with one button. B. Moral of the story: Tumble is turned on with B. Anyways We had 4 things we had to create in Maya: The Handle, Hammer Head, the Claw and the nail. The hardest of the 4 had to be the claw but that was only because of the tumble tool. You just had to use the scale tool and rotate the model downwards to create the claw. To create the handle you first start with a high rectangular block and add divisions and start forming the divisions into the handle. The head was pretty easy with just a couple of extrudes and forming here and there. The nail was the easiest because you just make a thin cylinder and make a point on the end.

Shading and Lighting

I put these together because they literally coincide with one another. To have shadows you have to have light so these two have to be treated the same way. So for this project we used a technique called     3 point lighting. This contains a Fill light, Key Light, and Back Light. The Back and Fill light are mostly used as support to emphasize the key light and its effect. All of this is used to manipulate shadows to make the object seem to pop. Im generally new to this which you can see in my pic but I'm learning.