Professional Project Review

League of Legends 2016 Mis-Season Invitational 

This was an animation for a tournament for League of Legends that happened earlier this year. It showcased the mascots representing each region that was participating in the tournament. This was all 3-d animation and the creators used a smoke-effect around objects that were 3-d modeled and animated. They also had glow affects to symbolize certain aspects about each mascot like the eyes of the Wolves or the crown on the Angel. The story of this was to announce the teams from each region that would be competing in the tournament. I would definitely try to apply the smoke affect to animations that I might create in the future, especially when applying it to an already existing 3-d modeled object and animation. I have already learned how to 3-d animate objects and living things so adding a smoke affect to anything wouldn't be that much of a problem. The creators did a very well job of introducing each team and the mascots representing them. The introduction of each mascot was also very well done as it flowed incredibly smoothly and moved right into each scene as it comes about. The one thing I recommend is for the narration that is supposed to be there is very distorted and not very loud so it was hard to understand what the announcer's voices commentating in the background. Overall this is a very good animation and is put together with major attention to detail and a strong sense of excitement is built for any fan of the game and teams that play professionally.

Link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/36592183/LEAGUE-OF-LEGENDS-2016-MID-SEASON-INVITATIONAL

Professional Article

The Future of Animation Is... A Look into Industry Professional's Animated Crystal Balls


This article is an article about the future of many different fields of animation from several lead designers in their fields and their opinions on the future of animation. The author's and their comments help to provide insight into what the future of the animation field could look like. Many animators state that the industry has never been more booming and increasingly more and more demanding every day. With the success of animated movies that continue to roll out, Arthur Kautz states that, "animated movies have outperformed all other genres of film at the domestic and worldwide box office." This goes to show that animated movies is going to be an increasingly high demand field in the future for anyone interested in starting somewhere. Another point brought across by several animators is that animation is headed off into the realm of mobile devices. These authors state that with many app development kits being able to run off of PC and Mac operating systems, it allows more creative and innovative animations to come to life. One example is a game called The Little Fox. The Little Fox is a polygonal platform adventure game produced by Oleg Batrakov. This is the first highly successful game in this style of animation and hundreds of other developers have hoped on that train and started producing their own games in that polygonal style. Personally I feel that these animators all make valid points on where animation is going in the future. As someone who frequently watches and plays a variety of movies and games, I have a wide spectrum of animation styles to make my own biases on. I agree that animation will more than definitely start to have a bigger role in the mobile word, and not just when it comes to games. The proof lies in apps and switchboards that allow you to customize the animations on your phone and even on your computers as well, which according to many of these animators, will become a very prosperous industry in the near future.

http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/future-animation-look-industry-professionals-animated-crystal-balls 

Technical Tutorial

The skill that I will be teaching today is how to create a shatter effect on any flat surface in Maya. You start off by selecting the surface you want to shatter using the face select tool.








 Then go to edit mesh and mouse over to the small white square next to the tab "Add Divisions." A window should pop up with setting changes for adding divisions, and to start make the division levels 1 and mode on triangles (Note: This can be changed to quads if you want to start with that instead of triangles). After making sure that is all selected properly go ahead and click on apply.

Your surface should now have a pattern made with lines on it, this is how you know it worked. After making that first set of divisions, go ahead and click apply once more to add another layer of-

divisions using either the quads or triangles setting, in this example I used the quads. After your second divisions are added go ahead and add your third and final division to the wall using your method of choice. After that start selecting faces in the divisions, roughly half of your faces should be used, but that's all up to personal preference. After selected your desired number of faces click on the extrude button and proceed to push the faces into the wall creating indents where the faces are. After pushing these back into the wall start selecting other faces that aren't indented, roughly the same number as the other set. After selecting these faces select the extrude tool once again, and begin to pull these faces out from the wall just slightly, created a staggered look across the wall. Now to make the wall look even more shattered, go into vertices mode and select the centermost point on your wall. Then, turn on soft select mode by pressing the (B) key, (B key is defaulted for soft-select), after that the lines should get a yellow glow around them to signify that soft-select is on. Once it is on, push the centermost point in towards the wall to create a warped wall effect as if and object had struck it. After that your wall should be completely done, so at this point feel free to add any textures you want, or even go through it again and change up the type of divisions you want to have in it.