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.
Maya is a 3-D animation program that lets you create and sculpt objects then animate them how you want. This tutorial will go through on how to create a simple shape and how to animate it, using a different camera.
Setup
1. Open Maya
2. a. Click on File
b. Project Window
c. Click New
d. Then type in where it says current project, "SimpleAnimation"
e. Click Accept
3. Go into the polygons tab and double click the cylinder to create a simple cylinder
4. Click on the cylinder then into the Attribute editor
5. Rotate the X - 90 degrees, so that it is lying on its side
6. Lift up the cylinder, by pressing W, so that it is lying flat on the plane
7. Squash the cylinder, by pressing R, so that it is a wheel shape
8. a. Create another cylinder and make it longer and skinnier than the original one
b. Then center it in the middle of the original cylinder
9. a. Click on the original cylinder
b. Hold down shift then click the second cylinder to select both of them(make sure that the original is white, while the second is green
c. Go to Mesh
d. Under boolean, click on Difference
e. This should create a wheel
Animation
Red bar should be at Frame 1, the slider should be on 120
10. With the wheel selected, press S (This will create a keyframe, which sets the position of the wheel)
11. Move the slider of on the keyframe bar, to 120
12. a. In the attribute editor, make the X translation move 12
b. Right click on the 12 and click 'set key'
c. This will create the animation of the wheel moving
Texturing
1. a. Hold down the right click button
b. Go down to assign favorite material
c. Click either Blinn, Lambert, or Phong E
d. In the attribute editor, choose a color or if you want to get technical, find a texture and use a bump map
Rendering
1. Light the wheel any way you want (I am just going to use a spotlight)
2. a. With the light selected in the attribute editor
b. Click on the shadows drop down menu
c. Click on the check box for "Use Depth Map Shadows"
d. Turn up the resolution
3. Under the rendering tab, click on "Create Camera"
4. a. Go to panels
b. perspective
c. Then select Camera1(This will put you in the eyes of the camera)
5. Align the camera with the animation so that you can see it all
6. a. Go to the rendering settings
b. Make sure the Image Format is set to JPEG
c. Under the Frame/Animation ext:, set it to "name_#.ext
d. Set the end frame to 120
e. Set the "Renderable Camera" to Camera1
f. Change any resolution settings if wanted
7. Change the interface from modeling to rendering
8. a. Under the render tab at the top, click on batch render
b. This will create 120 jpegs in your images folder
c. Wait till all 120 frames are done rendering
d. Then open After Effects
After Effects
1. a. Create a new composition
b. In the projects window, right click and select import, then File...
c. Find your images folder
d. Select the first image and make sure JPEG sequence is on
e. Then click Import
f. Drag the sequence into the composition window
2. a. Under the composition tab, click on Add to PreRender Queue
This extension analyzes the text that you type and helps you fix every error, from spelling errors to punctuation errors. It will give you options on ways to fix the errors that you make when typing a essay, blog, or any other thing you need to type.
Steps to Use
1. Download the extension
2. Start typing in a document
3. If you mistype a word, it will be underlined with red
4. Scroll over the underlined word and options will pop up on what it thinks you are trying to type
5. Click on the fixed error
I would recommend this extension to a student or writer that wishes for the errors t be fixed automatically.
This extension analyzes a Youtube video and tells the amount of views, how much money it has made, how popular it is, and the monthly revenue. The purpose is to tell people about the Youtube videos they are watching. There is not really a specific attended audience but it just for information and people that are curious.
Steps to Use
1. Download the extension from the Chrome store
2. Go to Youtube and find a video
3. Click on the extension at the top
4. The menu will pop up on the side that will explain all the statistics for the video
I would recommend this extension because it is interesting to know how much money they get and all the statistics that go along with videos.
This extension analyzes the website checks the CSS, which is the background color, font color, and the font of the words. It shows how the text is aligned which in this photo, I checked the CSS of my blog. It can analyze any website from Facebook to Youtube.
The purpose is for web designers to see what colors and font websites use. The intended audience are web designers that like the color or font of a website, and wish to find out what it is.
Steps to Use
1. Download Font Finder
2. Go to a website that you want to find out the CSS for
3. Click on this icon (The picture to the right)
4. The menu will pop up that will explain what the font and color is
I would recommend this extension to other people that wish to find out what the CSS for a site is.
Takeaways
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
