Semester Reflection

Through the first project we worked on, the emotion project, I was able to refresh my 3d skills and learn how to use a facial expression control board. In the future when I make 3d models, I will definitely take the time to make joints and vertexes that are easy to control as that project would have been infinitely more difficult if it hadn't had the controls. If I had more time I would have added more movement to the places that don't show the emotion such as the legs or body as realistically no part of the body is perfectly still. On top of that I would also sort my way through figuring out how to render it. If I could've changed something about it, I would have fixed some of the joints that didn't twist quite right. Over all it was a pretty painless project and worked out fairly well.

My 2d character project was a massive learning project. I experimented with a program I hadn't used before: Character animator. For the majority of the project I didn't realize I was working in the beta of the program so I was running into a lot of issues I couldn't figure out. As soon as I did figure that out, the project went smoothly. As I said in the video, I will only use this program to sync mouths in the future as I am not a huge fan of the process or output of the movement of the other body parts. For the most part I did reach my goal, If I were to redo this project, I would make more variation in the mouth shapes as some of the phonetic shapes were used for more than one sound so it looked like it wasn't moving when the program read that it was. over all I was happy with the final project.

The rotoscope was a nice way to end the semester as it wasn't too difficult but turned out decently, I learned again how to animate and export using photoshop. If I were to continue working I would add a background that i made but in the end this project turned out nice and I will definitely use this in the future.

end of year

As far as technology is concerned I have progressed further mostly in cell animation/ stop motion, at the beginning of this year, and as would be expected, I have furthered my efficiency in the adobe suite mostly after effects and Photoshop. With communication and collaboration, our main project was our stop motion animation. I think our project could have been a lot cleaner but we were able to accomplish as a group roughly what we were going through. Project management was probably my weak point this year and is going to be my main focus next year. I have begun to consider animation more as a career route and I want to put emphasis next year on building a portfolio and focusing on and improving my adobe skills. My leadership I feel is most present in team settings like the stop motion we made, which I felt like I was able to lead fairly well.

I focused a lot this year on 2d animation and cell animation; however, next year I would like to work on game design. I would like to, over the summer, try to learn the technical side or at least get a start on it so next year I can work on the animation portion. e-comm. If I could redo this year, I would probably sit where I could focus better which is my plan next year.

In the end I feel e-comm was a very positive experience and I have hopes to pursue an animation based career, I am not for sure yet but I would like to take it far more seriously next year and see if it truly is something I would enjoy.

Mickey and a Series of Impossible Events

We are accustomed to seeing elevators frequently in our everyday life; however, this situation is not so common as the elevator is actually a phone, Mickey pulls on the cord to simulate requesting a floor and the ring emulates the sound an elevator makes.

Aside from the obvious fact that cards are inanimate, and as cool as the spring move is, it is not possible. The cards look awfully thin and would not have the strength to move a mouse or the coordination to; however, this makes sense to us as the viewers because we are used to seeing accordion or spring effects.

A mouse would not be thin enough to be shuffled into a deck not to say that it couldn't be shuffled but it wouldn't be this smooth. They were still able to accurately portray Mickey giving him the qualities of the cards.

Owning a fountain pen myself, it is possible to have a leaky pin; however, weaponizing it and projectile squirting ink is not possible. The animators created a wartime scene making the basket look like a barricade  and giving Mickey a helmet making it plausible.

Finally, the cards are incapable of removing the markings printed onto them and throwing them. The animators make this seem plausible by continuing the wartime effect.

professional article review

The article describes Liaka's techniques to water, mainly focusing on Kubo and the two strings. It covers their process and their improvements from older movies.  Their goal was to create realistic water, which was no problem after they recruited an expert in making realistic water. The challenge came when they had to go beyond that to make it match the Japanese wood art style the rest of the movie was made in.
They reference older articles or concept art. The articles strengths are that it is developed. It references previous work and how they went about that and then how they went through it this time along with different steps they took and what they used. Some weaknesses would be that it doesn't actually show all of the things coming together, it just shows the planning stage and final product. the author concludes that the final product really fit what they were going for. I feel like the article explained the process and regardless of if the main point is good or not it gave me an understanding in the subject.
At first I didn't understand what they had mean from Japanese wood block art; however, after research, I found out it is a traditional art where a block of wood is glued to a print and then the design is meticulously carved out and then it is like a stamp where you paint on the block and stamp it onto paper. From there I connected what the animator meant when he said they integrated the wood texture into the water. I thought this article was interesting and useful because it showed  their whole process and the steps they take on the professional level

project

I am going to start off by saying this isn't my best work and I am not proud of it; However, I have definitely learned a lot from it and I have been bitten by the "stop motion bug" and I look forward to many more stop motion projects in the future.

To save anyone the trouble from having to critique the project I will do it myself. I was originally planning on shooting 15 frames but I was shooting as though it was 4 fps. In the end it looks quick and choppy. I had set the camera I was using to manual focus and my lighting was consistent however I believe my camera was automatically white balancing or changing the color of each shot, so when strung together at the end, they appear to flicker. I was originally planning on a space themed stop motion using an armature and a cardboard background; however, the armature ended up not functioning correctly and would not hold positions which makes it quite difficult to create a smooth animation. When I switched to legos I had a whole story planned out and only ended up having time for two scenes though. I do not plan on finishing the lego story, instead, I plan on investing more time into creating a more pliable and rigid armature and creating a new stop motion. 

As I have torn down my project enough, I would like to go into what I did well however tough it may be to see over the negative aspects. I utilized a multi-plane environment in the background of the car scene with 3 layers, the foreground or road, the mid ground which were blank grass tiles, and finally the mountains off in the distance. I tried to use ease in and ease out or at least was consciously thinking about it in situations such as when the female character turns the corner and her arms go limp and sway, and in other little parts like that such as when the male character lifted and lowered his arm. finally however choppy or quick the final project is, you can still tell what is going on which is a start. 

The new Laika movie Kubo was a huge inspiration for me and I have spent a lot of time watching behind the scenes and videos about how they created all of their scenes. I also watched a few videos from other Laika movies but I mainly focused on Kubo. With the combination of watching professionals and failing on my project, I have learned a lot and anticipate a successful next stop motion.

Individual Project Research

For my individual project I have been working on stop motion. A large portion of this has been spent outside of class; however, I have researched much of it in class. I have watched multiple videos on the "behind the scenes" of a few different professional stop motions such as Kubo and the Two Strings and the Box Trolls. The purpose of these videos in my mind, is to not only draw inspiration from the new stop motion technology or seeing a professional project all come together, but to analyze the techniques used by Laika. One of the big things that I have noticed from Laika is the multiple creative ways they have accomplished a water effects as seen in this video

Other research I worked on, went into designing my armature. There are generally two types of armatures, wire and ball and socket, I began by designing and creating a wire armature and i was about half way through decorating it when i realized it wasn't going to bend very well which is certainly not going to work. I then switched over to a ball and socket style armature I'm making out of small pieces of wood, popsicle stick, beads and screws. At Laika and really in any professional stop motions, the clothing used on the armatures has wires in the fabric to bend it and make it realistic because when working on that small of a scale it is easy to notice hints like that such as how the fabric bends that indicate it is small.












In class I have also worked on the background that I will chroma key out of my raw footage, blogger only allowed for about half of the footage to be shown.

Graphic Design Reflection

I learned many useful skills starting with making a pattern. We learned how to make it from start to finish. We created a pattern and then found where it repeated. From there we isolated it and made it into a pattern so we could apply it on other shapes. We learned many other skills from how to add a shadow, to creating layer masks, to making a picture in photoshop look painted. One of our bigger projects was our logo design where we sketched out lots of logo ideas in our sketchbook and then took the best from each one and incorporated it into one on illustrator. From there we continued to tweak and critique until we came up with our final logo. The main skill we focused on and learned was the process behind designing and how to sketch before bringing that into illustrator. This ultimately creates a higher quality final result.

These skills we learned are important because they are applicable to more than just graphic design. Lots of ecomm focused on the process or how to work well as a team and that will always be a useful skill. Then on top of that the skills I learned from photoshop, illustrator and indesign will continue to be useful as I pursue animation.

Some of my greatest strengths are that I can work well with photoshop and illustrator when I know what I’m going for. With that you could probably guess that my main weakness is actually coming up with the idea to work from.

I feel like I have improved more everyday. I started this course barely even knowing how to use the adobe suite if at all. From there I have managed to become quite proficient and if you give me a task I could complete it quite efficiently.

From what I have learned, I will continue to apply it to any work environment and more specifically apply my adobe knowledge to any future projects in ecomm and after. The adobe suite is very useful to know and could potentially land me a job in the future.

If there were anything I would change it would be my attitude towards it. I feel like I could have put a lot more effort into it but i didn’t realize until the end how beneficial this class will actually be in the long run.

I would recommend this program to anyone, it is very helpful and I learned a lot from it. I plan on continuing to use this knowledge in the future.