In this project I learned a new type of animation which is called rotoscoping, which is the process of drawing and tracing a video for each frame. It took me a few weeks to make a animation that was 1 second long. I thought it was fun to do this the of animation but it just takes forever to do this much drawing, for this video there are 35-40 drawings. I might try again eventually on a new project with this animation, but I would need plenty of time to do so. I started to run out of time in the end so it doesn't repeat like I wanted it to.
Rigging
This project uses Maya to animate this 3-D Fish. I modeled the fish and colored it then I learned how to rig models, which is not an easy thing to do. The lines that are inside the fish is the skeleton that I put into it. The skeleton is different colors because it shows where I did the rigging. I could have spent more time rigging it because the sides still stretch off of the fish. It was interesting to learn how characters are rigged for animations and how hard it is. I haven't learned how to animate in 3D but when I do start learning how to, it is good to know how to do this.
For my project, I am creating a game called Evertide. The player is a robot, who's name is revealed in the game, that starts up on a island. It is a RPG style game, the player has to find weapons and armor to protect himself from what lives on the island. He will find villages to help him on his adventure. The robot on the right is the main character (This is not the actual game). This is my first game to ever create, so I am slowly learning how to do certain things.
The blocks have physics on them, so when
the player runs into them they fall
Inspiration
I decided to base the game off of The Legend of Zelda, which are RPG's. I like the mechanics of 3rd person games, it takes more time to set up all the animations, but it looks good in the long run.
I learned many new skills during my sophomore year in Web Design. I've learned many skills and tricks in how to create websites using Dreamweaver. I had no clue how to use this software before this year and my first website was not the best, but I improved throughout the years. I had to ask lot of question but eventually I improved and each website got better. During this year I learned how to do coding for sites, use dreamweaver, making CSS, and animation on websites, which could come in handy one day even though I'm not going into Web Design.
Strengths/Weaknesses
I have improved drastically this year in web design because I was bad at it last year during e9, I only knew how to do a little web design but I did not know what CSS was or how to code it at all. The way I was taught during this year was way easier than how I was taught last year. I just wasn't good at picking good color schemes and making the websites look good but they did improve during the year. I was never good at graphic design and web design had this involved in it.
Future Use
This class introduced me with coding and introduced me with new softwares like Dreamweaver, Flash, and TextMate. So if I ever have to use those other softwares in my career life, I will have a little knowledge on how to create websites. If I had to change more things about my websites, is to work more with the color schemes and make sure they go good with each other. This class was fun and taught me a lot about websites and how to make them.
I learned many new skills during my sophomore year in Exploring Animation. I've learned many skills and tricks in how to animate using Maya and After Effects. I had no clue how to use either of them before this year and my first full animation was good for never using After Effects before. I also had to do a lot of collaboration with people especially during the final project. The final project was mostly communication and collaboration to come up with an idea and to plan out who will be doing all the parts. I had to take leadership a few times and some times someone else took charge. It shouldn't just be one person that is telling everyone to do their job and planning out what they want. It should be a group effort on the ideas for an animation. During this year I learned how to do 2D animation, 3D animation, special effects, and green screen animation, which i will probably be using these skills for the rest of my career at school and for my future job.
First Full Animation:
Final Group animation:
Strengths/Weaknesses
I have improved drastically this year in animating, I only knew how to do a little animation using frame by frame animation in Photoshop. The way I was taught during this year was way easier and helped me understand what I am signing up for, for my future career I plan to get. I just need to practice more on how to model and animate using Maya because Ive seen some cool and interesting things people do on it. I also need to make rendered animations look better. In the animation labeled "Ball Drop Animation", the animation itself looks good and the timings for the ball drop is spot on with the real thing, its just that the whole scene is darker than what it was before I rendered it. I need to find out how to make the animations look brighter and the texturing more realistic.
Ball Drop Animation:
Future Use
The future career that I want to do is be an animator or a video game designer. Both of those careers use animation, which this class helped me get prepared for what I'm signing up for and established if I really enjoyed doing it, and I do. Next year, I am going into Animation because I want to learn more and get better at it, hoping to get a good scholarship for animating. I am going to be carrying the skills I've learned this year for the rest of my career. This summer, I plan to practice using Maya because I got the application on my computer at home. And I've always wanted to learn how people add special effects in movies and now I know, I wish to learn more on how they make explosions in movies.
City Explosion:
Conclusion
I wish I started learning how to animate when I was younger and learned how to use the software. I enjoy animating and I wish to continue in this branch till I graduate high school. I'm wishing to learn a bunch of new skills across the years and become good at animating so that I will be ready for a real animating career.
A simpsons episode starts with someone having an idea on what the show is going to be about and that is presented in front of the writers and directors of the shows. After that is passed a draft is made then the timing and scripts, and then its animated. The author is explaining how much work actually goes into making one 20-minute animation takes. It takes whole team and a lot of drawings, stories boards, and planning to make it all happen. The article does a good job on going step by step on how it made, starting at an idea to the final review of the episode. This article is good at talking about what kind of work people go into making TV shows and how much planning it takes. They have to story board and draw out every scene and write what each character is going to say.
This animation was made by Disney and tells the story of a storm cloud that can only make dangerous animals, while the pelican delivers them. The normal clouds make nice animals like puppies. The beat up pelican leaves the storm cloud and comes back with football gear and they are still best friends. The animation was really well done with the coloring and smoothness of the animation. There was good squash and stretch when the cloud pulled the porcupines needles out of the pelicans head. If I was to grab a element from this to pull into my animation would be the squash and stretch and also the look of the animation in general, and to also over exaggerate things to make my animation more life like but remain cartoonish. Disney is known of their animation so there are no mistakes that I could catch they are always well done because it is a whole team making these animations.
The picture in the background is from a hallway of my school and the truck was created in Maya. This took a lot of time to prepare and make this final animation. The main point was to learn how to make a 3D animation in a normal photo. This was made in Maya, the image was imported and I had to adjust to it then. I learned how to make the ground of a plane become opaque and match with a background image. If I would do something different, I would work more on the lighting because it is a little off and the shadow disappears in the middle of the floor. I did good on modeling the truck and I would try to base more models of objects off of this object. This will help me import animation into Maya and make an animation out of it and putting it into After Effects.
