Final Animation For this Year: Inferno's Retribution

Inferno's Retribution

          This will be my last blog post about animation for this year, but do not worry because I will return once school starts back up. For my animation final we had to film and edit a video that contained a 3d object, special effects, and use of a green screen. 

        At first, my group and I did not know what kind of story we were going to do. Eventually we decided on this story about a hero and his fight against the evil Inferno. After we had our story made we had Jake make this beautiful storyboard. And as soon as we were able we started filming. I don't quite remember how long filming took but trust me, it took a long time. after we finally finished filming we got to work on editing. I was assigned to make all the special effects, but I did get help from Jake. Jake made the title and end credits scenes along with the final green screen shot. Madison finished all of the editing that Jake and I might have forgotten to do, and then she gathered all the scenes and put them together into the final product. My team and I came in after school multiple times to finish editing and attempting to make it a quality video. Along the way I learned that time management is very VERY important. Also I learned how to make somewhat realistic effects using color corrections and masks. 

If I could do anything differently next time it would be being more prepared and not having such a complicated story. It is essential to keep things simple when working with video and animation. A thing that I would do the same would be to put as much time and effort as I put into this into all of my other projects. I will remember the techniques I used in editing to enhanced any of  my future projects. 

I feel like I could have done a better job on this project, but I am still proud of what my team and I accomplished.

Final Video for the Year

            This has been a great year and I'm rapping it up for now with this great short film. This video is my semester 2 final and I feel like I improved greatly since the beginning of the year. This short film is about  a young detective named Jenkins who must save his rookie partner Reynolds from a great threat. We did have some requirements however. The video had to include: the spoken phrase "lights out", a hat, a water bottle, and an obvious and intentional source of light.

  

         First my group got together and decided on what the story would be. We finally decided on an LA Noir style detective theme, but before that we had many different ideas some of which included a school over run by mafia members, and a boy who is followed by an angel and a demon. Once we decided on our story we wrote a script and made a storyboard. 

         After we finished with pre-production we jumped straight into filming. We recorded our shots simpler shots first and then recorded the bigger scenes such as the climax and exposition. There were many days when we could not film because one of us was sick or had school work to do. But we did finish eventually and started to editing.  

    During post-production I had to cut out a lot of the original footage in order to make the motion continue. Another hard part was finding music that fitted with the theme of the film. I eventually settled on "Black and Blue" by the late great Louis Armstrong.

      Along the way I learned how camera movement can be good but not if it is overused. I also improved my skills on making quick edits. If I could do anything different then I would go and film more transition shots so I could make the final film smoother. I would continue to follow the come in early and leave late rule. In the future I will remember to always get multiple angles of the same scene and to make it as smooth as possible. I feel like this is a fitting conclusion to this year of video making and i hope to continue making videos and animations in the future.

SoS

Carter Interview

The Ancient Tools of the MAYA

                                                    The MAYA Tools


          Welcome back people of the internet,

                             In this post I will be explaining to the best of my ability what tools the MAYA        software uses and what they do. Lets start with the different types of lights, the first kind is called a directional light. This light is what I used in my project "polything". This tools makes light go in one direction all throughout the scene, casting a shadow on whatever is in its path. The next light is called an ambient light, this makes light shine from a specific point in all directions.
One last light is a spot light, this one is similar to the directional light in that it shines light all in one directions. but the spot light does not produce light throughout the entire scene, only in a specific region.
       

         The next tool i will explain is called the cut-face tool. this tool is able to cut the face of an object into two separate faces. I used this tool to make the claw part of a hammer. I also used the tools extrude and bevel. Extrude selects a face and allows you to extend it in any direction. Bevel simply smoothes a selected surfaces by adding more faces.




This next project I made a couple of cups using NURBS, curve tool and the revolve option. I started by using the curve tool to make a line and then once I finished with that I revolved the line to make the shape of a cup. NURBS stands for Non-Uniform rational B-spline.





In this project I used the curve tool again, and the lofting tool to make a salt shaker. The curve tool I  used was a circle and i adjusted the key points to form the shape of the shaker. Then I duplicated the curve and placed it above the original, however I adjusted its dive and shape slightly. I repeated this until I got the shape I wanted. Finally I used the lofting tool to connect all the curves to form the face of the shaker.


These last projects are actual animations made in MAYA.  I used keyframes and the graph editor to make this animation of bouncing balls. You set a keyframe in MAYA by moving the object to where you want it to be and pressing the s key. You can also go into the graph editor and adjust the ease in, ease out of the animation and adjust the keyframes themselves.

And in this final project I made an ice cream stand and animated it to rotate. I used numb mapping in order to create the texture of the ice cream and the cone. Bump Mapping is a tool to make textures that have a 3d look to them. It make the darker areas of the object sink but it can also be set so it is reverse. I used the graph editor to create the rotation of the ice cream.

winter interview

Blood Drive/ Lego

                               

             
              During these last few weeks i have been working on a couple of videos. One of these includes a film about a student named Jason who was donating blood at the recent ONW blood drive. The other is about Liz building a with legos for the first time ever.

The Blood Drive: With the Blood Drive being just around the corner we decided that were going to make a video supporting the blood drive. Our task was to find a subject and film their journey throughout the blood drive. About a day before filming I made a list of questions to ask the subject. When I arrived I found Jason and he agreed to allow me to interview him. While I was filming time was a big problem. I only had a limited amount of time to get all the shots I needed, but Jason was getting bis blood drawn as I needed to start wrapping up. I feel like I was still able to get enough shots to tell a good story though. During editing I had to organize all my shots in a sequence that made sense. I wish I could have gotten more shots while still asking the questions I did and organize them in the same way.
                                          Lego: In this video I recorded Liz building with legos for her first time. I think i was able to tell a good story with the footage I got. Only problems I had with this video was just getting a large variety of shots. During editing this i learned many new techniques, mostly I learned how to properly adda voice over and how to use J and L edits. J and L edits are points in the video where I cut to another shot while the noise from the previous clip is still running. I personally like this video better than my blood drive video just because I got more shots and it has a better story.