Exploring Animation - End of Semester Reflection

It's finally here. After almost twenty weeks that honestly felt like four days, the semester is over. And after a semester of work in my Animation Class, I have plenty to show off. So without further ado, here are five of the animation projects I'm most proud of.

Project 1. Multiplane Animation


The multiplane animation project was one of the only projects to have a bit of a history lesson attached, telling about how multiplane animation is used and how it was created in the early days of animation. I picked this project because it was so much fun to work on and was surprisingly easy to animate. A funny story- I had actually spent a REALLY long time on making the animation look good in Photoshop before I put it into After Effects, until I realized I had done everything backwards and made the layer lengths the wrong way. I was pretty bummed, but it was an easy fix nonetheless. I wouldn't change anything in this animation at all, because there are no glaring errors aside from maybe a bit of scrolling speed issues, but I'm proud with what I've got.

Project 2. Maya Castle

Jumping from After Effects to end-of-year Maya projects, we have a castle modeled in Maya in order to teach us about textures, extruding, and booleans. I picked this project because out of the total three things I've made in Maya, this one is the second best-looking in terms of model and texture, as well as it being a crucial step in learning the basics of Maya. While I'm not the most adept modeler, I'm proud of this castle because it's a good way to show my understanding of Maya at its simplest. If I had to change anything, I'd make the door something other than a flat rectangle balanced against the castle wall. Even though this project literally had me grinding my teeth at some points due to lack of understanding, I'm happy it turns out as well as it did.

Project 3. Polything

The Polything was the third project I made in Maya, meant to build upon boolean and texturing knowledge while also teaching about three-point lighting. I picked this because it's undoubtedly the nicest looking thing I've made in Maya thus far. It was also easier to make than the castle, because I didn't have to fiddle around with jagged armaments and seamed textures the whole way through. This was a fun way for me to learn about lighting in Maya. I actually wouldn't do anything different here, because there are no glaring flaws that need polishing -- and I'm completely fine with that.

Project 4. Walk Cycle

The walk cycle was our third project in the 2D animation chunk of the semester, and it was one of the most fun projects to work on. The point of this project was to teach us how to animate a basic walk cycle with a character of our choice. I chose to reflect on this project because it's one of the cleanest 2D animations I've ever made, as well as the first complete walk cycle I've ever made. My greatest strength in this project was the movement of the joints and (in my opinion) the overall drawing, which looks very nice for being haphazardly scanned in from an old sketchbook and painstakingly colored in Photoshop. My greatest weakness is, and forever will be, timing the walk cycle with the movement speed of the character to prevent sliding. If I could go back and fix this, I'd try and get the timing to be more precise so that there's no slides to be seen. This was my second-to-last After Effects project, and it's one of my proudest works yet, trumped only by...

Project 5. Story Animation



The story animation was by far our biggest and most complicated project in the class. We had to put our knowledge of every previous project to the ultimate test in a full animation that not only looks good, but tells a story. I chose this project because it is, without a doubt, the BEST thing I've made in this class, if not my entire life. The entire process of creating this animation was fun -- from drawing the characters and background to animating everything in After Effects. Although it was a fun ride for sure, the animation stage was extremely clunky and disorganized. I found myself getting lost more often than not and having to make multiple files of the same asset for different scenes, but this issue didn't change the fact that I had a blast the whole way through. The ONLY thing I would change is, once again, the speed of the walking animation -- which has a bit of floating and sliding. But other than that, this is my sophomore animation magnum opus, and by far my favorite thing I've made in this class.

Conclusion

My first semester of animation was more of a learning experience than anything- guessing and checking, working blindly with no idea how things would unfold, and LOADS of trial and error. These projects were all meant to develop my skills and help me take the first steps to becoming an amazing animator. And I can safely say, that after five months of skill building, I've come a long way from the little flip books I made in second grade. I can't say enough about how proud I am of myself and what I've created. If only younger, flip book-making me could see where I am now -- on the road to fulfilling one of my lifelong goals of becoming an animator.

Thanks for reading, and see you next semester.
-Tate

Exploring AV Final Project Reflection- ONW Now Sophomore Edition

For my semester final in Exploring AV (The sophomore video class), we had to try and recreate the school's weekly news show -- ONW Now -- with our classmates. We as a group were required to plan and film different stories and current events, make our own intro, and anchor the whole thing. I originally wasn't planning to have as big of a role as I ended up with, but the thought of being an anchor alongside my best friend was too good to pass up.

The Roles- What They Where and What I Did

We first started out by splitting into groups and assigning roles, such as production manager, sound booth people, and anchors. As mentioned before, I landed the role of anchor alongside my best friend Maddie. But we weren't done yet. Despite having specific roles for filming, we still had to decide what stories and current events we would have to film. Everyone had to do that -- therefore, I decided to do a story on the Underclassman Play, which was only a week or two away at the time and perfect for covering in the broadcast.

So, I stayed after school one Tuesday, checked out a bucketload of equipment, and slowly shuffled down to the flex theater to film b-roll. I had originally planned to film an interview with the director that same day as well, but due to time constraints and technical errors it had to be pushed to a later date. Filming of the b-roll went very smoothly nonetheless, and I was able to get all that I needed.

I was able to schedule an interview with the director the following Wednesday during the first half of Power 50 (our lunch period), which went very well. Out of all the questions I asked, I eventually narrowed the selection down to why there were four short plays this year instead of one or two longer ones. There was a lot of good information, but due to time limitations I sadly wasn't able to include it all. Overall, filming and the subsequent editing went great -- the only real problem I had was having to lug around all the camera equipment and the tripod. At least it made for a good arm workout!

How's Everything Going?

I'm not 100% sure on how the sound people are, but from what I've seen I'd assume they're doing just fine. All the stories (aside from one that was cut for a reason I don't remember) have been filmed and edited, and we're ready to film. As of the time I'm writing this, we actually haven't filmed- the other group is filming as I'm typing, though. Here's hoping that when we do film, everything goes well!

And after a few days, we've filmed -- and I can safely say that it went very smoothly! The second take, at least. It wasn't too hard to read off the teleprompter, maintain a smile and good posture, and sound interesting to help grab attention. There were a few hiccups, as one would expect, but they were mild (light coughing, accidental touching of the microphone, and someone saying 'What's up raisins' instead of 'What's up ravens').

Reflection and Conclusion

If I had the opportunity to do this project again, I wouldn't make too many drastic changes aside from maybe putting aside more in-school time to film and edit, adding some polish to my work. I'd do everything else the same, because of how well everything worked the first time. Working on this project has taught me a great deal about filming, properly interviewing, editing, and anchoring.

This final project is more of a preview into the world of news and journalism, rather than a thing some people slap together and pass off to a teacher. I don't plan on staying in the video field for a long time, but this has been a great learning experience that I'll keep with me for the rest of my life.

Until next time,
   Tate

THE ULTIMATE STORY ANIMATION OF WONDER AND JUSTICE

Ahoy There!

Our BIGGEST project in Exploring Animation so far is finally complete! *confetti and party horns* And what is this project, you may ask? It's none other than the 2D story animation! And finally, after weeks spent in Photoshop and After Effects, it's finally complete!

Here it is for your viewing pleasure-


THE PLOT

The main plot of this animation revolves around a girl named Micah, who is walking sadly along the street with a camera in her hands. She looks down at it, upset that she has a camera but nothing interesting to take a picture of.

Not before long, she's blasted with a strong gust of wind, causing her to turn around and investigate. When she does, she is met with a strange, white, pulsating sky blob. Intrigued, she whips out her camera to take a photo. The viewfinder slowly shifts around the blob, before the blob forms into the shape of a person -- a ghost. Before Micah can snap the photo, the ghost zooms away, leaving her confused and alone. Thinking that she didn't get the picture, she turns back to continue walking and once again takes a look at her camera -- to see that she indeed snapped a picture of the ghost. The animation cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot, before slowly zooming out to reveal the ghost watching over her as the screen fades to black.

THE PROCESS

As with all story-based projects, I started out by drawing up a storyboard. It's nothing special, just sketching up the major frames of each scene as if it were a comic, along with any necessary notes. After the storyboarding phase came the creation of any necessary assets (such as character bodies, backgrounds, and effects) in Photoshop. This was probably the most fun part for me, because I love drawing. After each and every asset was created, it was time to import them into After Effects. The way I did it, I imported each character file as a separate pre-composition to keep things tidy, but it was still fairly fickle (especially with anchor points, who are now my worst enemy). Many pre-comps, layers, and Gaussian Blurs later, it was finished and exported!

I mainly learned how to deal with lengthier projects and multiple pre-compositions in one main composition, along with making backgrounds (which I am terrible at). Aside from that, most methods used were ones I had already learned and (somewhat) perfected. The main obstacles I overcame were working around same files that needed to be in two places at once (prompting me to duplicate a bunch of the original files), making sure the right animations happen in the right place at the right time, and... anchor points. I'll never forgive those anchor points.

But with that, I've completed the final project in our 2D animation unit! Up next is my first step into 3D animation in Maya!

Thanks for reading,
Tate

FEATURE STORY PROJECT

Hello everyone, I'm back with another project for my Sophomore Video class! This time, we had to make a feature story like on you would see on the news. It's like the previous interview project, but a little more fleshed out and requiring more work and attention.

We were split into groups of four, similarly to the last project, but from what I can remember there were no specifically assigned roles. All we needed was for someone to shoot the footage, get the b-roll, do some voice-over, edit it, submit it, watch it, regret it, re-edit it, and submit it again hopefully with less mistakes. Requirements for the finished product were two or more interviews, a delayed lead, and overall a generally high level of quality. Also B-roll. Lots of B-roll.

My group decided to interview a French student and one of the French teachers to get some insight as to what goes on in French class, along with some thoughts regarding the Summer 2018 trip to Paris. It was cool to hear about, because I almost went along but decided not to because I am nowhere near ready for international travel.

But I digress. Two of my teammates were in charge of interviewing and getting most of the footage, while I took up the job of editing the clips so that they were easier to work with, along with editing my own video separately from the rest of my team. I also had to put together my own delayed lead with voice-over, because I don't think we had gotten it finished in class and I was too awkward to ask if it was done and I didn't want to bother my teammates by asking every five seconds. So I put together the delayed lead in the comfort of my own house, and recorded voice-over using my own microphone as well. I chose to go with a staccato delayed lead, and while I usually hate the way my voice sounds I was proud of it.

After the first edit, the video was actually four minutes long- MUCH more lengthy than it needed to be. But with perseverance and begrudging removal of solid yet unnecessary footage, I was able to splice it down to two minutes and was left with (what I think is) a fairly interesting peek into the ONW French program.

Here it is if you would like to see it...


If I did this project again, I would continue to clean up the footage to make it more visually appealing and try to include footage that provided better context as to what was going on. I'm happy with the re-edit, but as we all know, nothing's perfect. I would keep everything else the same.

To finish, I'm happy with the end product, and I hope you enjoyed it as well.

And please don't make fun of my voice. Please.

Thanks for reading,
Tate

Multiplane Animation- A Bite of History, and How I Did It

Hello, all you wonderful people.

Multiplane animation is nothing new- it's been around for decades. It may often be glossed over because of how simple it seems, but it's an integral part of making dimensional animations that can really set up the scene perfectly.

The History of Multiplane Animation

In days of old (and by that I mean when Walt Disney was alive), multiplane animations were made using large glass frames, each with a different part of the scene. Sort of like a traditional animation cell, but on glass. This was so it could be put in a sort of camera, where multiple glass layers would be layered upon each other and moved at different speeds using a crank. The movement would then be captured as a frame of animation, creating a scene where all layer of the foreground and background and such are moving at different speeds and directions to create something that feels truly alive.

So How Did I Do It?

In recent years, as we've moved on from large manual animation machines and such to computers and more convenient forms of animation, we've discovered a newer (and MUCH easier) way to produce multiplane scenes of animation. It's very simple- to make a three-layered multiplane animation, I created three layers of an environment plus a sky layer in Photoshop. After the scene was set, I popped it into After Effects to animate it! The closer the set piece was to the viewer, the longer it was, allowing the front layers to move faster. The middle layer was a chunk shorter and moved more slowly, and the back layer was the shortest and moved the slowest. The sky can also have some animated parts such as clouds and birds, but I opted out and just made the sky pan to the side a little. After all the keyframes were set, my animation was rendered and completed! Here it is if you'd like to view it.

(Not-so-fun Fact- My first attempt at making the layers was a hot mess and I ended up making the front piece too short and the back piece too long. It was an easy fix, but boy was I upset.)



I am EXTREMELY proud of the final product! I love the way the sky looks, the way the weird space-bubble-needle things look, the way the land itself looks, the way the house looks, and the way the character looks... I could go on forever, but then this blog post would be exceptionally long and boring to read. Whoops.

As always, thanks for reading!
-Tate

Coat Dog Does a Walk (Walk Cycle)

Hello!

Our most recent project in animation was quite a big one- making a walk cycle using after effects! When I first heard the project announced, I was quite overwhelmed and had many questions. Such as "How will I make this animation?" "How will I draw the character?" "WHICH CHARACTER WILL I USE?" While at first I was a little uneasy, it would go on to be one of the most fun projects I've ever done in Animation!

The first thing we had to do was draw the character- on paper, that is. This was to make life a little easier, rather than drawing the character with a mouse and shaky hand (I'm shivering just thinking about it). After that, we scanned our drawings into Photoshop, refined the lines, and added color. The hardest part of building the character was separating the character into chunks (head, body, legs, etc). I had to refine lines using a mouse, which was... painful. While the recommended shading tools were the dodge and burn tool, I used my preferred method of cell-shading. After the character was done being built, I animated it in After Effects by keyframing the limbs, to make the character look like it was walking. But animating the legs wasn't enough- to make it look more convincing, we had to animate other parts of the body too- such as a head bob and swinging arms. (My character doesn't have arms, so that was a bit of a Get Out Of Jail Free card for me.)

Here it is if you want to watch it-



Overall, I think I did great! I'm VERY proud of how the character looks, how the background looks, and how fluid the animation is. The legs do slide a bit, which I didn't go back to fix. Looking back, I should've fine tuned the keyframes to prevent sliding. Another thing I would do differently is in regards to timing. The timing is a bit too fast, causing the character to look like they slip along a bit. However, extending the project when I was already this far was a nightmare so I just left it as is. Other than those faults, I'm super proud of the end result.

Thanks for reading,
Tate

INTERVIEW PROJECT THAT HONESTLY COULD'VE GONE BETTER BUT I'M ALRIGHT WITH HOW THINGS WENT DOWN

Hello, all you wonderful people.

Our second video project in Exploring Video was to make an interview. An interviewer would ask the interviewee questions, and the interviewee would provide answers, giving an insight on the interviewee and their life.

We worked in groups of four- the cinematographer, the location expert, the interviewer and the interviewee. We had to write down 20 questions for the interviewee to answer, pick an appropriate location for the interview that fit with the context of the topic, record, edit, obtain a chunk of b-roll in between somewhere, done. I was the cinematographer, so I was in charge of manning the camera. All I really had to do was maintain a steady camera angle and make sure nothing turned off, fell over, or exploded. The interviewer would ask questions to the interviewee (who would answer, of course). I think that the Locations Expert was meant to find appropriate filming environments and make sure that the location was available, suitable, and non-combustible.

The topic of our interview was in regards to Ashton (our interviewee) and her life in sports, specifically soccer and track. We chose to film on the track surrounding the football field, which wasn't the most fitting location due to the massive football field. In retrospect, we should've focused our angles more on the track. We were able to finish filming in one shot, and went back inside to start editing. There was just one problem- one tiny, little problem that we couldn't fix. And that was because of good ol' Mother Nature deciding to prank us with insane gusts of wind that we couldn't edit away. So, we just had to make do. It was hard cutting down our footage to less than 2-ish minutes, but we did it! With sparse b-roll, jump cuts aplenty, and heavy wind. So after the initial upload, I jazzed it up a bit with a title transition, more b-roll, and removal of a chunk of blank space at the beginning.

Here it is if you want to watch it.



If I did this again, I'd obviously choose a different location than the windy annoying track field so that we could more clearly hear our interviewee. I'd also reposition the b-roll to hide those sneaky jump cuts, and maybe add some light background music to make it more fun. I'd also keep the camera more steady.

Thank you for reading about my flop of an interview.

Until next time,
Tate

POPSICLE'S GRAND ADVENTURE- THE INCHWORM ANIMATION

Ahoy there!

I've finished my second project in Exploring Animation! It was once again done in After Effects, but this time I used a strange, foreign new tool- The Puppet Pin!

The project was to create a little inchworm along with an environment for them to crawl across, and then subsequently make the inchworm scrunch up and scoot across the screen through use of After Effects's Puppet Pin. The worm and background were once again created in Photoshop, and then animated in After Effects. The Puppet Pin was a little weird to work with at first, but it's proven to be an essential part in the animation toolbox. It can make something move with just a click and a drag- fascinating! After the worm was fully animated, I made it actually move using a sub composition, and gave it a shadow by copying the worm itself, flipping it, darkening it, and lowering the opacity.

I learned a lot about the puppet pins, how they're used in animating things like inchworms and limbs, and apparently how much they don't like being copied for me. (-_-); I also learned about subcompositions, parent layers, and making simple shadows.

Here's the animation itself-



Overall, I think it went very well! The worm could have used a bit more TLC (and puppet starch) to look more natural, but I think the animation is smooth and appealing. I actually managed to get most of the animation done in one day, thanks to the helpful and in-depth videos and actually staying on task rather than goofing off every three seconds.

Next up is a project I'm SUPER excited about- making a character walk cycle! For me, this will be a big step forward in my Animation life... the only problem is, I have to choose one character out of the dozens I have to animate!

Thanks for reading,
Tate (^^)

BOUNCING BALL 3- THE BOUNCENING

I'm back again.

With another bouncing ball.

please send help

So my first project in my sophomore year of animation was, surprise surprise, a bouncing ball. I walked into class expecting the same hullabaloo from last year, except with maybe a bit more of that sophomore polish. Sit down at a computer, spend hours upon hours perfecting frame placement in Photoshop, export and upload, profit. Except my teacher had something else in mind. A different trick up his sleeve that I previously had no experience in, but I'll get to that in a bit. To sum it up, this bouncing ball project was a lot more fluid that what I had made before- truly making me feel like I'd improved!

First of all, we didn't animate in Photoshop. We made the layers in Photoshop, but we actually animated in After Effects! It was much smoother and easier to work with, seeing as how it was mostly arranging arcs and squash/stretch stuff through keyframes on a timeline. In Photoshop, you had to manage each separate layer and each separate layer was its own frame, making everything a nightmare to work with. Animating in After Effects was both a lot easier and produced smoother results. I really only learned the ins and outs of After Effects, how arcs/keyframes/everything else works in AE, and some stuff about rendering. Everything else was really just a refresher on what I learned last year.

How did it go, you may ask? Well, before I say anything, I'll let you guys see it.

I think it went alright, actually! It's a lot smoother and more aesthetically pleasing than my previous bouncy ball animations, with no weird jumpy frames and the occasional continuity error. Everything feels more detailed, from the shading on the ball to the background, along with the grass being ACTUAL GRASS rather than a green rectangle with a gradient along the bottom of the screen. If I did it again, I'd try to pay more attention to the speed at which the ball travels in order to properly ease it in and out. Other than that, I think I did pretty well!

Thanks for reading,
Tate

PROCEDURES VIDEO- THE ALMIGHTY RETURN

It's been three thousand years...

And by 3,000 years I meant around 4 months.

I'm back and better than ever, with the first video project of my sophomore year! It's more or less a conglomeration of techniques we already know, sort of a make-this-to-prove-that-you-haven't-forgotten-everything-we-taught-you-last-year kind of thing. The video was about school procedures, which is a fairly broad topic to cover- so my partner and I chose to make our video about lab safety procedures.

Here it is if you want to watch it...

Funnily enough, it took us a whole day just to figure out how to work the camera only to realize at the end of the day that we weren't using the SD card properly. Ooooops. But once we figured that out we were able to finish recording and move on to editing!

We planned for the video to have spoken dialogue, mostly consisting of instructions from the teacher that were either followed or ignored due to the consumption of monochromatic paper bread. Unfortunately, the audio wasn't recorded, so any spoken parts were done in post-production. I also wanted some part with a slow zoom transition (such as during the hot objects part, where the video would zoom up on my partner's hand and then cut to the low-effort explosion) or something similar, but I guess I'm not advanced enough for that kind of stuff. But I'll get there... soon enough...

I didn't learn much new stuff technically, but I did learn a thing or two about team work- such as staying calm if things don't work, and while a collaborative editing effort is nice it's best to produce two videos each, both being edited by their respective team member.

If I did this project again, I'd try to add more variety to the shots, alongside actually capturing the audio properly and making sure everything is in place and even. I'd also try and add the complex effects I wanted and possibly make the video just a little more clean and professional.

Overall, I enjoyed this project. It was a good transition into my second year of video, and I can't wait to make more like it.

Thanks for reading,

Tate

E9 Final Exam- 4th Quarter Reflection

For the entirety of my 4th Quarter in my Freshman Year, I worked with a team in my E9 class to create a product and various forms of advertisements and media to go along with it, presenting after a grand total of a little over a month spent working.

Our product was called the MyPhone, a highly advanced a futuristic smartphone that could be customized however you see fit. While it isn't as creative as some of the other teams' products, I think it was very interesting and I could imagine it being a real-world product. Each part of the project was done in rotations, coming in at a grand total of about 4 to 5 weeks spent on work. Some challenges I faced were lack of time to spend working outside of class, no access to proper resources following rotations, and occasional lack of team input. I built upon the basic skills I had learned in the previous three quarters in order to complete the project. The feedback I received was mainly some requests to fine-tune the assets in order to fit with what was envisioned, and feedback regarding the presentation was mostly revolving around having all parts of the project done and having a better understanding of our script. Many things changed, including the product itself (which started out as a tablet with a built-in printer that could print the screen at any time onto a sheet of paper), the web banner and other various assets, our color scheme, and so on. The change that affected me was the most was in regards to the product logo- I designed it about two weeks in advance only to be told to rework it and add typography (which, to me, is probably my least favorite part of design). I feel that the work I did in 4th quarter paid off and was definitely worth the effort, despite the rough designing periods and often unbalanced work loads.

I used most of my time in class working, mostly on designs and animations. If I somehow managed to finish something before the deadline, I would show what I had to a teammate and have them critique it so I could go back and revise it. Rinse and repeat until we're all happy with it. Outside of class, I tried to continue brainstorming ideas for our project and product, even coming in early one day to work on the commercial, only for it to be postponed to actual class time. During the allocated time in our second rotation for video, we hardly did any work and spent most time either brainstorming or preparing (and shortly calling it off). Some of my teammates even ignored the working process at times, and while I know it wasn't to be mean or inconvenient (they were trying to help others) it still rubbed me the wrong way.

After a whole year of e-Communications, I feel that I have learned a great deal about the basics of electronic media, and even a bit about entrepreneurism and advertising products. The areas in which I plan to work the most are animation and video production. In order to achieve this goal, I'm going to try practicing video editing and animation in my down time (which shouldn't be hard at all, because I very much enjoy doing both of those tasks). Overall, my strongest area is animation, which is good since this is the field in which I plan to major in dreams of becoming a full-time animator/cartoonist.

An area of mine that needs improvement is web design. While I've been fairly good at it during the allocated times during the year in which all students were required to fine-tune their web design skills, I doubt I could do very well on my own without the templates provided and Mr. Olson's helpful tutorials. I'm good at designing assets for websites, but my skills in coding are highly comparable to the finest form of crud. I plan on making a webcomic someday, possibly with its own site to go along with it. If I'm going to do this, I should consider trying to hone my web design skills in my down time.

The thing I loved the most about this semester was being able to collaborate with others in order to produce something amazing- not just my own team members, even. I would often give a few tips to friends and team members alike, making this project feel less confined to a small group but more like a community effort. (I also enjoyed working on our animation.) If I could change something, I would provide a very small rotation for work on web design, and not just putting it there for people to work on in their down time. Someone might be too consumed with other work to put aside time for the website, leaving it as the last thing to do and forcing them to cram in order to get it done. I speak from experience on that one. I've not only learned more about digital media from this semester, but I've learned about how different people collaborate and work in groups, alongside some employee and business skills. In an earlier paragraph, I mentioned my dream job of becoming an animator/cartoonist. I have some plans for long and short-term goals, such as practicing whenever I can (short-term) and producing a fully polished character animation before my sophomore year ends (Long-term).

My final thoughts on this project can be summed up in one word- Rewarding. There were many gaps, bumps, and potholes on the road to the final product. Design changes, group disagreements and agreements, lack of time... the issues we faced were undeniably difficult to overcome. But once we reached the end goal, everything we had done felt 100% more rewarding. I love everything about our final product. And with the assets provided, I hope you think so too.

All I have left to say is... thank you so much, and hopefully I'll see you all sometime soon.

-Tate

THE PRODUCT PROJECT -- WEEK THE FIRST

Ahoy there, you beautiful people!

IT'S TIME. THE FINAL ROTATION OF E-COMM. And what is it, you may ask? Well, we've all been put into groups and given the task of creating a product, along with graphics, animations, videos, and a website to go along with it!

My team (Simply known as JTKT) decided to make a beefed-up smartphone that's 100% customizable, and has features+add-ons one could only dream of. And since the main gimmick is its customizability, we decided to name it the MyPhone!

Our first rotation was Animation. I decided to take on the creation of the 2D animation. And while I'm very proud of it, I'm not going to spoil it by putting it here. Here's a single frame for you to look at.

Spooky.

And after I finished that, I decided to mock up a quick prototype of our logo and a banner for our future website! Our logo is a Y inside of an M, because of how well the two letters fit together and due to the name of the product being the MyPhone.

Ten outta Ten.

Another team member has finished setting up the environment for the 3-D animation, but we've yet to begin making the scenes in SketchUp. We also need to set up the website. On the most part, our team is working together fairly well (aside from that one guy who's gone often and does literally nothing). Our next rotation is Video, where we will most likely have to make a commercial. Bring it on- I'm ready for anything!

Check back with you next week,

Tate Johnson

House Project of WONDER AND JUSTICE

Ahoy there!

For the past few weeks in Animation, I've been learning the ins and outs of 3D modeling through use of SketchUp. We had to make a doghouse, but then came the big part of the 3D modeling unit- MAKING A HOUSE. We had to pick a house off of a realtor website and recreate it in SketchUp. After we made it, we animated it using the scene function. Fun Fact- the doghouse we made earlier in the unit was actually imported into the house project. But enough talk- Here's a video showcasing what I made.



It's not the best, but I was on a bit of a time crunch.

The project was easy at first- make a house base, make the roof and porch...

But due to the elaborate shape of the porch, many glitches happened when I was trying to shape it. I literally worked until the last second trying to fix it, but I eventually did. I really like how it turned out. After the shaping and painting of the house, we just had to import our doghouse and slap in some 3D warehouse objects. Following that, we had to get specific shots known as "scenes" to make a little animation.

Overall, I found the 3D modeling project to be very interesting and even slightly calming at times- But on the other hand, the glitches had me grinding my teeth in frustration knowing that I had to waste time fixing them instead of moving forward. I don't think I'll get into the deep and nitty-gritty parts of 3D animation in the future. I'm perfectly comfortable in my little 2D animation corner, thank you very much.

Thanks for reading,
Toast

CSS and CARP design

Ahoy there!

This week, we did another project involving web design- this time, we had to fix up a simple HTML page using the CARP process and CSS styles. If you're confused, CARP is an acronym for Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity. CARP was applied to the first HTML page to make it more eye-catching and to improve its overall interest.

Contrast was used to draw interest to certain parts and easily show the needed info. On the first page, Everything looks the same- but on the CARP page, contrast was used in order to draw interest to the important parts of the page. In this case, the title of the poem.

Alignment helped to organize the page and keep everything looking nice and in order. On the HTML page, everything is all over the place- nothing is perfectly aligned. On the CARP page, alignment was used to line up the headers and paragraphs in a neat and orderly way.

Repetition is easy enough- you have to keep it consistent. There seems to be no hint of consistency on the HTML page- but the CARP page is consistent and flows easily.

Proximity, or grouping, makes sure everything is connected. On the CARP page it's most certainly present- the paragraphs are nice and neat with no flyaway sentences. On the HTML page, one of the sentences was removed from the group by the dog! With proper alignment, that could be fixed to help fine-tune proximity.

Something new that I learned about CSS is simply proper and organized design- Draw interest, Organize the page, keep consistency, and group everything together nicely. Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, Proximity- CARP. With this project complete, I hopefully have a better grasp at proper design and will be able to apply it to future projects.

Thanks for reading,
Tate

My Personality Type

Ahoy There!

We've been doing something a little different in animation! Instead of moving pictures, we've been discussing something very different- personality types!


My Myers-Briggs Personality Type

For the past few days in e9, we've been focusing
on personality types. On Tuesday, we took a quiz to figure out what we were. My end result was INFP, which stands for Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving. In a brief summary, INFPs are idealistic and imaginative people who are loyal to what they value and believe. They're also quite accepting, fairly caring and creative. Some famous people who share this personality type are Bill Watterson, J.K. Rowling, and even Lana Del Rey and Tim Burton.

How Well Does This Apply To Me?

When I first read the summary of the average INFP, I was quite shocked at how accurate it was. I consider myself to be imaginative, acceptive, loyal, and most certainly creative. Although I'm not the most idealistic person in the world, and while I do follow my values and beliefs, my life and actions certainly don't center around them. After taking this test, I understand a lot more about myself and the way I function in everyday life. Often times I'll make choices based on my heart rather than my head, and sometimes I do things more intuitively instead of using my senses- which sometimes includes not using common sense.

The Roles of my Personality and Past Personality Issues

In a group setting, I often tend to stay quiet and do whatever I need to do while trying my best not to get sidetracked. Despite that, I still try to put my best foot forward and out in as much effort as possible when doing team work. When the role I need to fill matches up, I can perform it with relative ease. Otherwise, I may struggle depending on the role I'm given otherwise. Due to my preference to keep quiet and often avoid discussion, the people I'm working with won't think that I'm participating as much as I should be. And when it comes to people that I "have issues" with, it's usually due to our contrasting personality types. I tend to be more calm and imaginative, while people that I have issues with might be a lot more assertive, vocal, and sometimes a little by-the-book.

LOBGR Results

The LOBGR test is kind of similar to the Myers-Briggs one, but I found this one to be a lot more limited and a little inaccurate (at least in my opinion). The personality type I ended up with was Otter. According to the test, Otters are social, enjoy popularity, and often goof off and rush on given tasks. Aside from the occasional goof-off and quick conversation with a friend instead of working, the Otter personality type doesn't fit me or my Myers-Briggs personality at all. I'm not an overly extroverted, popularity-loving social butterfly who goofs off more than they should and craves the attention and approval of others. Instead, I'm a more calm and reserved person who dislikes heavy amounts of social activity and prefers to spend time alone. I also don't excessively goof off- I enjoy the satisfaction of getting things done and try my best to take initiative. Overall, this test doesn't match up with me whatsoever.

What'd I Learn?

In doing this project, I've learned a lot more about myself personally. Now that I know my personality types, I better understand how I currently function in modern society and possibly how I'll do in future situations. I'm more aware of how I do in group work settings and the roles I fill in these groups, alongside achieving a better realization of why past group relationships didn't work out too well. With my newly gained knowledge of my personality type, I've gotten to know one specific individual better than anyone else- that individual being myself.

I also learned that Otters are most definitely NOT my spirit animal.

Thank y'all for reading,
Tate

Ten Words Animation

Ahoy there!

I'm back at it again with another animation! BUT THIS TIME, IT DOESN'T INVOLVE A BOUNCING BALL! I know how crazy that may seem, but it's true!

Joking aside, the purpose of this animation is to help ease me into using the PhotoShop video timeline. I was given the task to create a short animation with my ten words from my blog- They're over on the side of this page somewhere, but they're not really words, per se. So I just paraphrased the entirety of the sidebar and made an animation out of them!

THE PROCESS OF ANIMATION

The animation was fairly easy to make- Find a picture that describes me, add some words that describe me, animate those words, profit. Using the video timeline was fairly foreign at first, but I was able to easily grasp the basics and finish the animation. The timeline is actually pretty similar to the one I used in video. I tried to vary the font and animations for every word, and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

WHAT DID I LEARN?

The only new thing I really learned about was the PhotoShop video timeline, and even then it was extremely easy to get accustomed to. I guess I learned a bit more about transitions, especially keyframes (which I have a bad history with...).

HOW DID I DO?

Simplicity aside, I think I did pretty well. I probably could have touched up the beginning a bit more, to make the whole animation a bit more fluid overall. If I did this project again, I would also flesh out the transitions to make them more interesting. I also would have spaced out the individual animations so that they don't just fly onto the screen at the speed of light.

Thanks for reading, and see y'all next time!
-Tate

Bouncing Ball Animation 2- Electric Boogaloo

Ahoy there!

I'M BACK WITH ANOTHER ANIMATION! ...Of a bouncing ball... But hey! It's good, I promise!

THE PATH OF THE ANIMATOR
(The Big Steps, I mean)

This project was made extremely similarly to the previous animation, except for the movement of the ball. It moves in arcs instead of straight up and down, and bounces lower as it goes on. Squashing and stretching is still there, of course. And to add a little more flair to the animation, we had to give the ball a face that changed when it hit the ground (I made mine a little blue duck) and have a little ending to the animation. While most made their ending something silly (such as the ball inflating and flying away), I decided to make my little bird ball yawn and go to sleep. The timeline was a little weirder to work with this time around due to the massive amount of frames.

What Did I Learn That I Didn't Previously Know?

I learned about arcs, and how adding them can make movement feel more natural. I also learned about tweening, which is the process of fading in and out (which is what I did with the title card). Another thing I learned is exaggeration, which really helps when trying to show dynamic movement. Exaggeration is present when the bird yawns, as its body stretches out before it flattens out and falls asleep. Finally, I learned something very important- to have patience when working with the deadly combo of 100-something frames and the Photoshop timeline!

How'd I Do, In My Opinion?

I think I did pretty well, given the amount of things to do in order to finish the animation. The frames and timeline kept messing things up and throwing the integrity of the animation out of the window! But, I had patience, worked through it, and finished it so I could share it. I think the final product is really cute, and fairly well animated. If I did it again, I'd most certainly pay more attention to the timeline and order of the frames (which kept tripping me up). I want to learn more about exaggeration as well- it's really fun to make exaggerated things!

Anyways, that's all, folks! See you in the next animation!

Thanks for reading,
Tate

Bouncing Ball Animation

Ahoy there!

The time has finally come... The grand transition from Graphic Design to the almighty Animation! And with a new class comes a new first project (specifically an animation of a bouncing ball that I made) that I have to write a blog post about for a grade. So here we go!

A (Not-so) Brief Summary of the Given Project

The main goal of this assignment was most likely to ease us into animation and introduce us to the basics of animating. To start, we had to make both a sky and the ground, each in separate layers, along with a ball suspended in the sky. (I added clouds because I'm just that cool.) Next, we added a fancy little gradient to each object. And after we had set it all up, it was time for the challenging part- creating a bunch of layers to show the ball moving. All we had to do was make a new layer with the ball in it and NOTHING ELSE, and very slightly move it downward and squash/stretch if necessary. Following that, we set up a timeline and created all the needed frames in order to bring the animation all together. The final step was to export the animation, and then blog about it.

What did I learn during this project?

This may sound a little weird, but... Before this class, I didn't even know that Photoshop was capable of animation! I thought it was just a photo editing/drawing program. In terms of what I learned about actual animation, though, I mainly learned two basic processes- Squash and Stretch, plus Ease in/out. Both can breathe more life into an animation and make the whole thing feel more real. By use of squash and stretch, you can tell that the ball clearly has a bounce to it, and that it doesn't just hit the floor and roll away like a bowling ball. Easing in and out allows the animation to show speeding up and slowing down as it falls and bounces back.

How'd it go? Would you change anything if you did it again?

I think that the whole process went very smoothly- I was quick to understand what I was taught and managed to finish this animation with great results. If I did this again, I would try to brush up the stretching a bit more- in some places it looks like it either shrinks or gets too long/narrow. It may look a bit unnatural to me, but nothing too strange or noticeable.

So, there you go! An in-depth review of my first project in my new animation class. I had a lot of fun making it, and I can't wait to see what we'll do next.

Thanks for reading,

Tate