Final Reflection

Emotion Project:

In this project, I was assigned the emotion disgust. The project goal was to animate a pre-rigged model named Max. In order to execute this project, I needed to understand the body movements and reactions that were associated with someone who is disgusted by something. This was a fairly easy research process that turned into a challenging project process. The easier parts were making the different joints and facial expressions move when and how I needed them to. However, getting these to move in tandem with the other parts was a greater challenge.  It took me a few tries to get all the moving parts to match up properly and actually simulate the expression of disgust, but when I did get it to work, it was well worth it. I really did enjoy doing this project and I hope that at some point we can revisit this project and do more with it or even try out other emotions that we want to do. There is a change that I would like to make and that would be to include some sort of object that is the reason for Max to be disgusted, as it would provide greater context for the scene being shown. Overall I really did enjoy this project, and I felt like I learned a great deal from it. 

Personal Project:

For this project. we had to come up with an elevator pitch about a project that personally interested us. Before presenting, we had to research the project and find at least one example of our project that could be used as an example. For my project, I wanted to 3-D model a set of floating islands and then create a world around it. This seemed very doable at first, and I even had some new methods I was wanting to use that would allow for easier modeling and more creativity to be expressed. I was very excited to get started on this project as I had a very grand vision for what I could turn this project into. The creation of the islands themselves was a relatively easy task and I thought that the project would've been a breeze from here on out. However, when it came to adding effects and some more environmental items, I hit a new wall of difficulty. The effects that I wanted to use such as fire and the growing of vines, didn't work out as well as I had hoped. The fire effect, a preset given in Maya's FX tab seemed like a given to use, as all the tutorials I watched had used it too. For whatever reason, it didn't work with my project and I ended up scrapping the fire idea until I could figure out how to do it. The answer came in a very challenging way. I ended up having to use a liquid emitter (think of a spout spraying water into the air) and then I had to change the visual effect from being water to being flames that transitioned into smoke. This was a tough but rewarding process, as I am very happy with the results. The vines however, did not work out so well. I originally planned on using an extension made using Python that would procedurally generate vines around the islands. Sadly I couldn't figure out how to get the program to actually run in Maya and I had to scrap that idea. My teacher however, had another idea, and that was to hand create curvy vines using the EP Curve tool and wrapping a cylinder around it to create a vine-like object. This worked at first, but upon actually playing the animation out using the new vine, Maya would crash therefore negating that idea as well. I decided to move on despite this and continued to work on the rest of the project. I am already planning a return to this project with several changes in mind on how to improve it and make it fit the idea that I originally had. Overall the project was a great learning experience and I really enjoyed working on it.

Rotoscope Project:

For my rotoscope project, I was tasked with filming a video and then drawing over it to create a rotoscope video. This project was very difficult for me as drawing is not my strongest skill, especially on a computer. However, despite the lack of drawing ability I really enjoyed this project. I really felt like I gained a much greater understanding on how 2-D animations work and how much work goes into making one. I definitely think that if I was able to spend more out of class time on the project it would've gone much smoother and looked much better for the final result. I would like to go back and draw over the animation to add color and hence style to the project, but for what I had completed I am very happy with the results.

Independent Project Overview

 For my project I am working on a series of floating islands and methods of which one could go from one to the other (mainly through means of teleportation). Anyways the islands are being created using the sculpting tools on basic polygon shapes in order to mold them like clay in order to create their island like characteristics. I gained this inspiration from a YouTube channel called 3D Artcore as he made his own floating island with a very well designed mansion and electricity system. Here are some pictures of his work:

For my islands I wanted to something a little more simple yet more expansive just to see how everything would turn out in the environment and make changes where I see them to be fit. I'm not sure on where I might possibly take this project as I might just model it and learn from the experience, but we'll see how things turn out. Oh I almost forgot to show some of the work I have started already! Here ya go:

Professional Project Review

This is a project for a design for a company called Fractal Design and one of their new products. The animation showcases the ins and outs of the computer and focuses on specific parts of the product. The 3D design was very well done and looks incredibly smooth and sleek looking and the model accurately shows off the specifics of the computer. The figurative "story" of this animation is how sleek and incredibly powerful this computer is and all of the parts that go into it taking it into the "next-level" of computer technology. The way the animator made smooth transitions and crafted each piece with incredulous attention to detail make for an amazing product reveal and entices the viewer to want to know more. These key elements are something that I hope to include in my own work along with my own knowledge of camera arcs to hopefully replicate this process and to create a piece that even comes close to this type of animation. I feel as though the animator did a very well job of showcasing the product and does it in such a way that it blows away the competition and beats out the animation of even some businesses and their designs that are done by a team of animators. Despite this, I believe the animator made a very poor choice in the text in terms of color and placement that didn't make it really stand out and was often in places that just didn't attract attention.

Source: https://www.behance.net/gallery/50608963/Fractal-Design

The Plausible Impossible

This scene shows Donald Duck meeting his cousin Gus Goose. Gus greets Donald with a handshake that is seemingly impossible. For one, geese and ducks don't have the same hand bones as humans do so a "finger clasping" handshake should be impossible for the two relatives. The second impossibility is the fact that Gus makes Donald squash down and spring up again. Handshakes are a human like trait that when applied to humanoid like creatures, such as the human like Donald Duck, we as viewers believe that that is a-ok and nothing is off about. While the handshakes we receive often feel as though the other party is trying to throw you around with a shake, we know that this is highly unlikely to happen in a standard handshake.

The next scene shows Gus beginning his very extravagant meal by literally inhaling a bowl of soup. Gus does not eat soup how soup is even considered to be eaten. Gus is using two spoons to literally shovel soup into his mouth in gigantic quantities and appears to be spilling quite a bit despite there being no evidence of liquids on the table or on himself. This is impossible because liquid cannot be "shoveled" in such a manner that it flings itself into a persons mouth and they are able to eat it at that speed. This is plausible however as the term "shoveling down food" is often used to describe someone who can consume large quantities of food at an extremely fast rate.

The Next scene I chose was the one in which Gus goes to sit down to begin his feast at Donald's dinner table. Gus gains a massive amount of momentum and jumps into the chair which causes it to act like a spring thats just been flicked and it reverberates back in forth drastically. This is impossible because chairs do not have that level of springiness to them that would allow them to do that. On the other hand if you do run at a chair full speed or even just run at a chair it will get knocked backwards and possibly even fall down due to momentum of your body hitting the chair.

The next scene was Gus making a sock out of spaghetti noodles using knitting needles. This is impossible as noodles are not very structurally stable and are very fragile. However, in theory this could work if the noodles were tough enough and the person knitting was an expert knitter and could create a sock with ease.

The final scene is one in which Gus is making a sandwich by folding the ingredients like a deck of cards and shuffling the ingredients together to form a gigantic stacked sandwich. This is impossible because there is no way to shuffle the lunch meats and cheeses into stacked slices of bread and effectively make a sandwich. This could be possible if you went slowly layer by layer stacking the ingredients in a card like manner and made a giant sandwich out of it.

S.P.Ooky Final

This was a stop motion project that was set to a horror/scary movie theme. The goal of the project was to create a horror villain that was to chase a group of teenagers. This was a kind of play on a horror movie cliche with a teleporting villain and a group of "dumb teenagers" involved. We wanted to create a sense of urgency and to escape the villain. Overall the project turned out very well being our first stop-motion animation film.

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