End Of The Year Reflection

  There were many things that I learned in animation. This was the first time I have ever used a true 3D modeling and animation software to create projects and animate them. I learned so much just about Maya in general that it's just too much information to correctly restate and list out. However some of the key things that I learned, not just in Maya, are as follows. First and I think the most important was how to use special FX to edit a video to make it look all snazzy. This was done in our first explosion video and our final for the quarter. The second is how to batch render key frames in Maya and properly transfer them into After Effects to create a well rendered out video, which was done in just about every project. More specifically, the snowflake project had a lot of editing with the colors and gamma so rendering it out took just a little bit longer than expected. Finally I learned how to create a motion path and attach an object to it in order to create movement for that object, which was totally awesome because I was able to make a spaceship fly around and have my coin logo roll down the collection ramp of an arcade machine. This was all acquired through the wonderful instruction of Mr. Netterville and the tutorials he provided for all of his classes. He was always there to support us when we needed help and always had some sort of a tutorial or other resource to give us if we had a question about anything. Netterville helped me out so much with my logo project that honestly, I don't think I could've finished it on my own, and I am so thankful that he devoted so much time to helping me. He is someone who has kept me going in animation and I can't thank him enough for the work he has done. He always has a smile on his face and tries his best to make class enjoyable while focusing down on the work that needs to be done. Animation is something I never thought I would do as it just never occurred to me that I was able to create these things myself, so knowing what I know now, animation holds a special place in my heart and is a pastime I enjoy at home. It's a way to express my own unique outlook on certain projects or to just pour an idea out and have it come to life through maya. That being said, I still have a lot of work to do in order to make my projects more outstanding and unique than they are now and I look forward to the challenge of making them better. I feel as though simply designing and modeling my objects is what I'm best at as I can model something relatively quickly and make it look good, like the grenade I made which according to someone who was actually in the Army, was almost spot on. On the other end of that spectrum, I am pretty bad at making an animation for my object(s) unless it's a simple stationary movement, which is just easy in general. I hope to get better at animating as that is the strand I have selected for next year. This summer I hope to find a summer workshop on how to make my animations better, but as of right now it's still up in the air. I have also been talking with a few potential business partners and I hope to be able to work with them over the summer and create a few projects for them. This is all in part to what I learned in Animation class and I wouldn't want to have it any other way. The only downfall is that projects were often times rushed due to time constraints and when you after school job like I do, it can be very hard to try and squeeze time in to work on those projects after school. Overall I really enjoyed this class. I appreciate all the work Mr. Netterville has done and I appreciate the collaboration and praise of my classmates even more. I love this program and I cannot wait to continue in it through the rest of high school.