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.

Web Reflection

Web Semester 1 Final Reflection

So 1st semester has come and gone so we can look back on the war that is web design, and just like war web design never changes. Anyways im going to be reflecting on my progress throughout the semester through describing the work that went into creating my final project.

Overview

In this project we were given the task to create a website based off of what we were interested in.  My topic I decided on was Gaming Genre. Since I know a decent bit about the topic I loved to do my project over this. The overall purpose of this website was to fully test our overall knowledge that we had obtained throughout the semester. The process that went into making my site was simple. Just copy paste code from other sites I had made and edit them to match what I wanted.

What did I Learn?

Well over the project I really didnt learn anything. This project was more a test of skill then anything else. The one thing that I had learned from this project was that your website has to stay consistent. All color schemes have to match up to look appealing, all the text has to look good, the writing style has to stay the same. All to ensure that the viewer never gets confused or disinterested.

What would I do different?

I would like to have had a drop down menu bar for my side bar instead of the bar but time restraints forced me to stay with the simple option. The one thing I liked about my site was the color theme. The color theme, in my opinion, was by far the best part of the site with the site looking very clean with the banner. I think that the color scheme was the best aspect of my project and is probably the skill I will carry over to different projects.

First Semester  Reflection

This is my walk cycle project. It took a pretty long time and I was pretty harsh with myself in my blog over this project but looking back it really wasn't all that bad. I will say that it could have been improved if I had a proper model to animate with.  I wanted to reflect on this project because this project (besides my story) gave me the most trouble. Looking back on projects that gave you a tough time can really help you improve. To improve after  reflecting back on this project I noticed that the animation was really rigged with the character reacting to changes in movement with sharp movements making it look unnatural. Something that we didn't touch in the project but is still important to point out is that the rest of the body besides the legs and arms do not move.




Oh this project..... This project was a REAL pain. I mean almost EVERYTHING went wrong when creating this and on top of that we had a strict schedule we had to keep to. I chose this project to reflect upon for the reason I reflected on my last project,  the problems I encountered while creating the project. One of the problems I encountered was that my character WOULD NOT STAY TOGETHER. For the life of me I could not figure out why the puppet pin and parenting tools would not work. I ended up just animating each part individually. Something I learned from this project is that you will have to compromise. When doing something you will almost always encounter a problem and you have to figure out a way to work around it.



This was a fun one, my first 3d animation project. So far I am enjoying Maya much more compared to after effects just because of how easy it is to use. Another factor going into my enjoyment could be that I want to become a 3d character or environmental animator but still this program feels amazing to use. Anyways this project I was tasked with creating a castle by using booleans and textures. I thought this was a great intro project and it was a lot of fun for me to do. I picked this project to reflect on because I want to become a 3d animator and I think I can learn a lot from this project.  One of those things includes how to be effective in Maya. From what I have learned so far from Maya is that you have to take it slow. You can't just throw something together and hope it turns out well because something WILL go wrong and ruin your project. You also have to be able to see what will and will not work with some textures being just too bright or not being repeating.




This was my second animation project and you may notice that it looks MUCH more realistic compared to my last project. Well this is because of the use of lighting. Lighting in animation is absolutely essential if you want to create a world that feels alive. In this project we learned how to use the most basic lighting tools and shadow tools to cast onto our "poly thing". This "Polything" was created with the soul purpose being to demonstrate lighting. One thing that I learned from this project was that lighting is very realistic in these spaces. They act like they normally would if it was reality. If I were to use the spotlight tool it would look like a spot light is being used directly towards the object. This project in all is pretty simple to understand, we basically flashed lights at a weird ball and made it look cool. Even though its simple I can still learn the basics of lighting from this project.

Animated Story

The Story

A thief breaks into a museum to find a hidden treasure. He comes across the treasure and it is revealed that it is a cup. The cup is filled with a mysterious liquid so his first instinct is to drink it. This drink leads to the thief gaining immortality. The thief then drives away in his car with his immortality. 

The Process

This project was a burden on my soul. I had SO many things go wrong that I had to deal with. One of which is that my character would randomly just dismember in the video because their was a problem with the parenting tool. Another issue I had was that after effects is such a hard program to animate in. I personally have used other programs outside of school and they have been much easier to use (This may be because all of the programs I use animate on ones but still). Everything about the program seemed to be against me, layers wouldnt work, some would randomly disappear, keyframes not doing the things I told it to, and MANY more that I will not name. In total this project was more about problem solving, I actually had to draw a frame of the dude drinking at the end because of time constraints.

Multiplane Animation

Multiplane Animation Project

Multiplane animation is a more "recent" innovations in animation.  Originally utilized by Disney in the creation of "Bambi" and was created with a "Multiplane Camera"that would take pictures of frames but had perspective because of the distance between layers. This let animations seem as if they had depth and perception, making the animations seem more realistic and alive. With our most recent project we practiced this technique but instead of using a camera, we edited layers in PS and AE.

The Animation Process

The most challenging part of the project was to create the layers themselves. In my project I tried to add depth by using shading and such but that was a hit and miss. The next step in the process was to bring the layers into AE from PS and animate them. This was unbelievably easy. All we had to do was put the layers on the end of their layers and put a keyframe for them. BOOM, DONE.

The Final Product

The final product turned out well. I did a couple of things to make the shading better including burning the dark parts and highlighting the lighter parts. I also added bold outlines to the layers to make the layers pop out more and to make the layers blend better. I thought I did really well with this project, but still it was the easiest project we did all year so I guess thats a given.

Walk Cycle

The Walk Cycle Project

So yea.... this is my walk cycle project, interesting but more on that later. This project was very challenging do to a couple of my own set backs for myself that I didn't realize were going to be an issue until the animation process started and you can see what the problem was clearly in the video. 

The Process

First step in the project was to create a picture of the character you wanted to animate. We first drew a picture of the character and then uploaded it onto our computers. We then colored in the drawing as we pleased and separated layers to prepare for the animation. After this we brought the file into after effects to animate and thats where it all went down hill for me. I realized how awkward it was going to be to animate the character because I uploaded a character with depth already drawn into it. The goal was to have a side view of the character to easily animate the arms and legs, however I had a character with both a front view and side view making my job much harder. A suggestion to put a ball under Hobbes to mimic the concept of balance was given to me so I added it and it made it much better.

The Final Product

The final product or result of the project was not very good in my opinion. I would have liked to have had a cleaner walk cycle but  had to deal with the set backs that I set for myself so it is my fault alone and that is something I must improve for the next project. Another thing I would like to improve for my next project would be to have more clear lines then what I had on my character. Other then that I am pretty happy with the end product. 

Web Design Challenges.

Web Design Challenges

The challenges we have been assigned in web design have been interesting but most of all, tedious. The one thing that most of the students in our class are figuring out that coding is not challenging but more of a chore to complete. Especially when you have one flaw in your website and you are unable to locate the problem in your code. Ill talk about the 2 latest challenges I have been assigned in this blog.

Challenge No.4/Table Creation

All of our code is created within HTML code and theres a lot of thing you can do with it. One of which is creating tables. We were tasked in this challenge to create a table that contains 10 different HTML acronyms. This was pretty easy and simplistic with the most challenging task being the graph. There was a couple of errors I had including not closing the table and incorrectly listing some objects but thats about it for this one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Challenge No.5/RGB Color 

This one was a real doozy. Quite frankly the most challenging thing about this assignment was managing my sanity. With this website we were tasked with creating a site that described RGB Color Codes. RGB color codes are assignments of numbers and letters given to a color to represent it in code form. This sounds a bit complicated but it really isn't. Its just. Very. Tedious. I finally finished after about a week of on and off working but I thought that the lessons over the RGB color coding were very interesting and I am interested in what else we will learn within web design.

The Very Angry Worm

Animating a Very Angry Worm

This project went much faster compared to the bouncing ball surprisingly. The project went much smoother because of our familiarity with PS and AE; however, we used a different animating technique for the worm. With the bouncing ball we created ball keyframe at the top and bottom at each arch then filled in the space in each arch with extra frames and key frames. We took a different approach when animating the worm.

The Puppet Tool

The puppet tool is much more convenient in terms of effectiveness and ease of use. What the tool does is it creates pins on the layer you want. In each frame you can move them around and simulate motion AKA create an animation. The reason this is so helpful is that you can literally create one group of key frames and copy paste that across the time line and have a very smooth animation. The tool that ties this all together is the "Null Object" (Really weird name and kinda out of context if you ask me but I can let it slide.). This tool is used to make the worm go on a set path. If you were to JUST copy paste the frames then the worm wouldn't go anywhere.

Overall Experience

This project made me realize something about animation. Its a lot more simple and easy then I once thought. I believed that in each animation every person who animated it was an amazing artist that is capable of doing anything with characters, this is still true but not to the degree I thought. My experiences with this project were pretty mixed since I had some trouble with creating the initial cycle but the rest was fine.

 

Bouncing Ball Animation

The Bouncing Ball Animation.

So with school back in session its time to start animation once again. This years first project is almost identical to last years but a little more advanced. The task we were given was to make a bouncing ball using both Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. This was much easier then I had anticipated but still was a challenge. Here is the final product!

What Did We Learn?

This project was not as challenging as it was informative and it was the project that set an example as to how others will go. The process of the animation was different from last years since it included both PS (Photoshop)and AE (Adobe After Effects.). Both of these programs work in tandem with one another since you can create the assets in detail in PS and easily animate in AE. In terms of animation we learned/reviewed squash and stretch mostly, a technique that makes motion seem more realistic. I think I succeeded in executing this technique correctly in the animation.

Why is This Project Important?

This project will be important for my progression in this class on mostly a technical stand point. I was able to practice and use some of my animation skills/knowledge and get additional practice using other adobe programs. I think that this year will really cement what I will be pursuing in my future animation career throughout highschool and beyond and this has helped me further understand the basics of animation.

The Way Back Machine

A Time Machine! (But for the Internet.)

The way back machine is a website that, well, goes back in time. The website lets you search a website and it will display the history of that website that has been recorded. For instance, I could search "http://www.amazon.com" and the history of that website will be shown. You just need to click one of the links for the website and you will be shown a past screenshot of that site at the time. This sounds like it wouldn't be all that cool on the surface; however it is much more interesting considering on certain sites you can go back up to 20 years or more.

What Did You Find?

I have looked up a couple of sites in and out of school and its honestly fascinating. I think that youtube was the most interesting to see. If you go back to the first screen shot ever you can see that videos will load but have no pictures or tags with them. All the UI of the website looks very messy and confusing. We also looked at amazon and that was also pretty intriguing. All the items had no pictures but had names and description but I saw no price on anything.

WayBack Machine or WayBAD Machine?

The WayBack Machine is most defiantly an interesting site but at the same time it is a frustrating one. Some of the links to websites don't work and the website can be difficult to maneuver but overall I enjoyed the experience but to a certain extent.