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.