For this project we revisited a previous project where we modeled a scene inside an ice cream shop. We made a cone inside a cone holder, a scoop and some more ice cream in a dish. We came back to this project after the pen and added a lazy susan that would spin in our animation to display the tasty ice cream.
What I Learned
In the first half of this project I learned a lot more about how to add textures and bump maps to objects. For the ice cream, cone, table and floor I applied a blinn or lambert texture and then added a bump map to them. The ice cream was made with a cloud bump map, the cone with leather, the table with wood and the carpeted floor with gravel. The other objects like the cone holder, scoop and dish had a blinn or phong E material added to it to make it look like shiny metal or glass.
On the second half of the project, we learned how to make keyframes and animate in Maya. First, we had to select and group all of the ice cream and the lazy susan into one group. Then, we opened up the animation settings and made a timeline that had 120 frames and would run at 24 fps. We set our first keyframe at frame one by pressing S on the keyboard. Moving over to the 120th frame, we set another key that had a rotation on the y axis going around 360 degrees for the selected group on the table. By right clicking on key all in the channel box we created another keyframe, if we pressed play the lazy susan now spun all the way around, displaying our models. Our final step was to remove the ease-in and ease-out on the animation so it would play seamlessly. We rendered it and exported it into a QuickTime file in Adobe After Effects.
Overall, this project was a lot of fun because we have started animating our 3D creations and I can't wait to see what else we can do!
For this project, we were asked to choose an interesting and complex pen to make a realistic model of in Maya. Above I have included pictures of the real pen that I chose to model. In Maya I used the NURBS Curve tool and revolved it to create the shape of the body. After that it only needed a little resizing and manipulation to make it look correct. I used a cone and sphere for the pointy end of the pen. For the clicker end of the pen I used a taurus, cylinder and a sphere that was covered in a lofted material that was a kind of clear plastic spring. The final step of modeling was to create the clip of the pen with a NURBS Curve that I duplicated and then closed with a planar surface. To make the polka-dotted material on the body of the pen, I had to make it myself in Adobe Illustrator and then import it into Maya which was very interesting. Finally I threw in some spotlight lighting and paired the pen with a piece of paper. I was very satisfied with the way this project turned out because it ended up looking a lot like the real pen. The only thing I wish I could change was the end of the pen was not as rounded at the real pen, I had originally used a cone and pressed 3 on my keyboard to give it a more rounded view but it did not stay during rendering. Next time I would possibly try a revolved NURBS Curve for the tip of the pen.
Our first video of second semester and the beginning of our entertainment unit was the music video. For our music video we chose the song Telephone by Lady Gaga. The story follows a girl who has just experienced a breakup, her friends are there for her and throw a girls' night to cheer her up. By the end, she has regained her confidence and she moves on from the bad relationship. The theme for our video was uplifting and overcoming to show that you can move on from hard times and even become a better person from them.
Pre-Production
Our pre-production stages consisted of storyboarding, beat sheet preparation, song choosing, location scouting, and casting. We first had to decide what song we wanted to do. Our three songs we were deciding between were Fireflies by Owl City, Party In the USA by Miley Cyrus, and Telephone by Lady Gaga. Then we planned out our story, we were originally going to film inside/around outside a store like Target or Walmart and use a payphone in different locations all around town. We had issues with getting permission to film in the public spaces so we brainstormed our next idea which became our video. One of our final steps before we began filming was choosing and actor and setting up a date to film that would work best for them. One of my group members knew a girl from another high school that would be a strong choice for our main character. We got to know her before casting her, and we filmed the next Saturday in the basement of my house.
Production
While filming we had a few issues with getting a variety of shots because of the limited space and time we had to film in. Another obstacle we found out later was that some of our shots looked a bit yellow because of the lighting in the room, next time we are going to pay more attention to this and make adjustments accordingly. It was easy to get off track and distracted since the environment we were trying to create for the film was similar to a party scene. If I were to film another video like this I would try to steer clear of any party-like environments because they prove to be rather problematic. In the end we had plenty of shots but many of them couldn't be used due to actors looking at the camera and low quality.
Post-Production
Many of our mistakes from the production stage of our video carried over into editing and post-production and made it a bit difficult. Our original ending for the video did not make sense with what we had envisioned and we had complications with finding a time to reshoot with our actor. We decided to end the video with a flashback type of edit in which all of the previous shots were played in reversed order at a sped up speed and closing with a shot of our main actor smiling. During reedits we are going to revise this and make sure it isn't as abrupt of an ending. I believe we did the best we could with what we had and it turned out decent. I consider this project to be a major learning experience for all of my team and we are hoping to treat the next project with a more serious and professional attitude.
When creating the salt shaker in this project we used the lofting tool. We started with a NURB Primarive Circle that would outline the body of the shaker. We made four evenly spaced primative circles and a normal circle on top of each other. To make the outline into 3D, we used the lofting tool by going to Surfaces>Loft. The finishing touch for this was to close the bottom by selecting the bottom curve and selecting Surfaces>Planar.
Revolving
To make the cup in this project, we needed the help of the revolve tool. First, we drew a profile curve in the shape we wanted the cup to be. Next, we found the revolve tool by going to Surfaces>Revolve with the curve selected. This repeated the curve multiple times around the axis to create the 3D cup shape. When doing this step we had to make sure that the curve was drawn on the y-axis so the cup would be standing up.
For this project we expanded our knowledge of the extrude tool to make a hammer and a nail. We started with a cube which we extruded into a long rectangle. We closed off a section at one end, splitter it in half, extruded it again and divided it into six sections to make the claw of the hammer. We made the curve of the claw by going into vertices mode and selecting the vertices we wanted to bend and using the manipulation tool. Opposite from the claw we made the hammerhead by individually extruding four sections and widening/shortening them using the manipulator tool. On the last section, we beveled the corners to make it look smoother and round. Next, we shaped the handle by bending the vertices again. After that, the final step of modeling was to bevel the edges of the handle. We were also told to make a nail to go along with the hammer this was achieved by placing a cylinder and extruding both ends. On one end we widened it to make the flat face and on the other and we shrunk it into a point.
The Shading Process
After modeling we began shading our hammer and nail. On the nail and head of the hammer we applied a phong to make a shiny effect instead of a lambert or blinn. We kept the end of the hammer at a grayish color and made the nail into a dull gold. On the handle of the hammer we applied a regular lambert and changed it to brown. The final step was to add a texture to the surface that our hammer would be lying on. I chose a raw wood texture to look like a workbench.
The 3-Point Lighting Process
The finishing touches of this project included lighting it up with spotlights and using the method of 3-point lighting to give off the best shadows and display the details. We started with the key light on the right which was closer to the subject. The fill light was on the left and farther away/less bright than the key light and was used to fill in unwanted shadows cast by the key light. Finally, the back light topped it off which was put in between the key and fill lights but on the opposite side of the subject. After placing all of these lights I went into render view and made my adjustments according to what I wanted my render to look like.
Overall this project was very interesting as I got to implement skills of lighting from the Polything project and adding textures and materials from the Castle project. We dealt more with extruding and manipulation as well as more complex wireframes. I can't wait to see how we will expand upon these skills to make more elaborate models and animations.
Our second video of the year was a feature interview of a student from our school. We collaborated in teams to find a suitable location to shoot the video and choose good b-roll to incorporate in with it.We had one week of planning to prepare a list of questions and decide what we were going to interview the subject about and another week to film and edit. During this project, we struggled to find b-rol that was good quality, many of it was shot vertically from a phone and it was hard to resize inside Adobe Premiere. Another thing we struggled with was the jumpcuts. When I was talking I moved around a lot, making it very obvious whenever a cut happened. For the final product we were able to cover most of this up with b-roll. The first time we edited the video we had included the interviewer's voice saying the question. We learned for the reedit that we were supposed to either have voice overs introducing what the subject was going to say next or have title slides saying what the question was. Due to time constraints, we chose the title slide option. Feedback wise I believe people enjoyed the video except for the low quality of the b-roll. Considering it was one of my first videos of the year I am happy with the way it turned out and I learned a lot regarding the transitions between different shots and questions.
Feature Story #2
For our second feature interview of the year we interviewed another student about a book she had recently written and published. We spend a few days preparing the list of questions and setting up a good time to film with the subject. After that we spent a couple days filming and the rest of the week editing. Our weakness with this project was the first day we went to film, the equipment we chose wasn't charged all the way and by the time we had swapped it our there was no more time to film so we had to come back and film the next day instead. When we finally got around to filming the video we forgot to check if it was focused or not and the whole video turned out to be a bit blurry. Our communication issues with the subject also led to a lack of b-roll but we still made it work. In comparison to our first feature interview I can tell we definitely made some improvement. The flow of the shots is much smoother with the voice over and there are less jumpcuts.
The finale for this semester was our sophomore edition of ONW NOW which we produced as a class. We chose production roles and split into groups to produce news stories to put in. We spent one week learning about the requirements of the project and deciding what would be included in the final product. Another week filming and editing and a third week filming the live show. We had students who wrote and controlled the teleprompters scripts for the anchors, other students who monitored sounds, cameramen, directors and more. Our group made the band concert segment, we struggled with finding time among us to work outside of school and film. Our second interview was very last minute but we ended up making it work. The only thing I wish I could improve about it would be the volume. The interview with Nathan was very quiet as was some of our voice over even though we edited it to full volume. I learned that I need to be prepared for all situations and if something goes off from the original plan, I should have a backup. Overall, the sophomore edition of ONW NOW looked like it could almost be aired to the full school! All we need it a little work on cues and facial expressions and we will be all set to air live!
Time Management
My time management has been pretty good in class, I have only had to stay after school a few times to finish up small things. On days where we finished early we always make sure that everything is done on google classroom before working on another class. Outside of class I sometimes look into the work of other students or people around the world to see what I can do differently about mine.
Strengths and Weaknesses
My strengths as a video student would be editing. I like making sure shots look as clean as possible and I am looking forward to seeing different methods to this. I am also looking forward to our Entertainment unit because I have some ideas for short films that I feel would be a lot of fun to make, I want to see what it would be like to be a director. I also really like writing scripts and lists of questions of interviews, I hope this can be handy later on in the year. My weakness would be performing on camera, I usually find myself at a loss of words if I am not prepared enough. My solution to this would to make a check of myself before I go on film and confirm that I know what my plan is.
Summary
I really enjoyed learning about life as a convergence journalist this semester and I am now considering taking the class next year. My favorite part was working as a class to make the ONW NOW video, I think we really got to know each other better and I hope we do more projects as a class later this year. I am happy to say that I am a lot more comfortable with the equipment and more familiar with the editing system and I can't wait to learn more about the hidden secrets they have. Next year I hope to learn more about how to incorporate animated texts into a video and how to check sounds more effectively on the cameras before filming.
This year has been a lot of fun so far! I have gotten better at character design, learned a lot about story structure and gotten to know the mechanics of the animating platforms better as well. I have chosen my favorite projects from the years so far and embedded them below with a little reflection to go with them.
Walking Cycle
I picked this animation to reflect on because I thought it was one of my best ones visually. The colors are really nice and even incorporated some of the skills I learned from the bouncing ball project to make a window. I became very attached to my character while working on this project.
During this project we learned how to make our own little characters be able to walk across the screen. It took me a while to decide on a character to animate, I had three options: a robot, a teddy bear and finally my dinosaur. I bounced some ideas off some friends in class and I eventually chose the dinosaur. First, we drew our characters in our sketchbooks and then scanned them into Photoshop to be colored. We divided the arms, legs and head into different layers so we would be able to animate them separately later. Once in After Effects, we set anchor points so the arms, legs and head would rotate correctly. Next, began the keyframe work. We had to be careful not to make the character look like it was gliding, to accomplish this we had to add a little pause after every step. We also had to make sure the arms and legs were alternating and that the legs were never in the same place at the same time. Once we finished this we created a background and a shadow that followed our character. I finished early so I made his eye blink and added a little more to the background. My weak spot in this project would be the slight glitch in his leg due to a keyframe placement issue. I also wish I could have made the background a little better because it looks very 2-D. However, this project really helped me understand keyframes better and how to work with timing. We also learned how to use the dodge and burn tool to make objects really pop. Overall, this project is probably my favorite from the After Effects unit.
Short Story
I choose this animation because it was one of my favorites to do. Even though I got behind and it didn't turn out the way I had originally intended, it was a lot of fun to think of my own story and see it come to life.
For our last video of the After Effects unit, we developed our own story by first analyzing Pixar short films and taking note of the structures of plot lines. Our goal was to implement everything we had learned form previous animations, such as puppet pin tool and walking cycle. I collaborated a lot with friends to give and receive ideas. Originally, my story was to be about a homeless man who lives alone outside of society. One day he goes into town for food and is mocked by everyone. He becomes very sad and starts to leave. On the way out, he sees a little homeless boy who needs help. The man wonders why he should help the boy when nobody helped him. Suddenly the man realizes that that is not the way the world should be and decides to help the boy. He takes the boy to him home in the woods and they build a tree house together. My weakness during this project came from how behind I got while sketching and coloring the scenes, so I got started on the animation very late. From the animation point forward I had to manage my time very carefully and work quickly which meant cutting out some scenes. I had to stay after school almost every day one week to get finished. I also struggled with the size of my drawings. Some of my scenes weren't colored in a 1080x1920p canvas so the ended up looking a little stretched in the final product. If I come back to this project I would like to add sound because it might help make the message more clear. Overall I think the style of the art looks really good and I hope I can finish the story sometime.
Castle Model
A few weeks ago we began working in Maya. We have only made three projects but my castle model is my favorite. Instead of just making four towers with walls, I added in two more towers in the middle where the royal family lives.
For this project we learned how to add textures to things by using pictures we found on Google. We had to look up "seamless ______ textures" to find ones that wouldn't have a line going down the middle of them. To apply them to an object we added a Lambert and then connected a file to it. This was I bit hard for me and I ended up using a texture with a seam in it for the stone. I worked over this by shrinking the texture to make it less noticeable. Hopefully I can find a trick to finding seamless textures because it will be handy when working later.
PolyThing and Lighting
(Maya render) (Arnold render)
This is our most recent project in Maya and it was very interesting to me. We studied the different types of lighting and then implemented it into our model to showcase the details and shadows of the "Polything" we made. This project was very quick and easy, the only part that took a little bit to figure out was the order to delete the cylinders to create the holes in the sphere. My final renders were also a bit dark so I might go back and change the color of the plane to a lighter color to reflect more light and show more shadows of the Polything. The Arnold render showed the shadows and shininess of the blinn material while the Maya render doesn't. I am excited to see what else I can do with the different types of lights in other projects.
