Reflection

Technology

During this project, we used Maya and AfterEffects as editing softwares, and filmed footage in front of a green screen. We used Maya to create a boulder that the "coyote" character would carry up the stairs. For the green screen, we used Keylight and editing in AfterEffects. With this project, we learned how to do green screening and Maya modeling through past example assignments as well as practice. This was important because it gave our project a bit of a theme and push in the more silly direction. We did face difficulties getting the boulder into the video, as well as keyframing it to move with everything.

Collaboration

I think our collaboration in this project went pretty well overall. It wasn't too stressful of a group, nor was there many conflicts in filming schedules. Overall, we pretty much knew how to collaborate well from knowing each other and also dealing with group projects in other classes. 

Communication

As said above, there wasn't much of an issue in regards to scheduling issues, nor was there much of an understanding in project details. I think our group had overall good discussions with criticism, filming, editing, and blog making. After doing many critiques and communicating on other assignments, I'd say it was fairly easy to do so with this one.

Project Management

I'd say getting this assignment done on time was not a problem. Mostly because we chose a very simple video to do but, even then, we all filmed on time and edited on time. This is probably due to how compact video deadlines can be, at least for the kids in video. 

Leadership

In my opinion, I think everyone took a bit of leadership in different parts of filming and editing. It was important for us to all have leadership parts so not one person was necessarily in charge, but everyone was still having a say and role in everything we did. This helps reduce conflicts and make a smoother video production. This was probably learned through prior projects as well.

Strengths

I think my person strengths is editing and putting my own twist into projects assigned to us. However, with that comes my weakness, not getting things done on time. With trying things a bit differently, it can also slow down the process in which I get things done. This can either make my work turn out nicely, or quite rushed.

Overall, I would've changed how quickly the pace of the Maya unit went, but other than that, this class was very helpful and overall fun to be in.

How to Add Keyframes in Affter Effects

Adding Keyframes in After Effects

The Project

Before you add keyframes, you'd, first, want to import your project. To do this, you can go to the File tab in the top left corner and click Import > File.

After getting your files imported, you want to drop in the files to the queue in the bottom of Adobe AfterEffects

Next, you want to drop down the menu for the clip you want to edit. You'll be met with this menu

                       

                     

Effects, Transform, and Audio are the sections you can add keyframes to. Say you want to change where a clip is going. You first want to open the menu to Transform.

                             

You'll see these options appear. Anchor will change where your anchor point is, Position will, obviously, change the position of you clip, Scale will change the size of your clip, Rotation will change the rotation of your clip, and Opacity will change how clear your clip is. 

Before adding a keyframe, make sure both your scrubber and the beginning of your video are lined up. After making sure they are, click on the stopwatch type button next to what you want your video to do. 

In the screenshot above, you can see all the seperate blue numbers. You can click and buffer the numbers to change which aspect you want to change. Once you make that change, you should get something like this under your clip

                               

Those are called Keyframes and you just entered them! Huzzah! 

woo

Reflection

This year...

I think this year has been both extremely enjoyable and exciting, but also extremely stressful. I have loved doing a bit of both convergence and entertainment in this class, my favourite having been convergence and filming our own mock ONW Now. Though, it was stressful due to the groups I was placed in a couple of times. Those groups included people who wouldn't work, and people who wanted everything to center around them. This was not a healthy group to work with and we did not get our videos done either of those times. This does not speak for the independent projects and other groups I had worked with, in which my/our videos turned out fairly well. Being with the negative groups has better helped me work around restrictions and set backs, however.

There were also a few technical errors with the quality of mics, cameras, etc, but that doesn't mean I haven't learned how to get around those mistakes with a bit of editing. I feel I have a better grasp on the dolly, boom mic, camera settings, and editing softwares we use.

Difficulties

Managing a project is always difficult in a sense that, in my personal life, I have work scheduled almost every day and activities the day I don't work, so staying after at all is a struggle. This, I feel, is the only real thing I need to work on. Though this was a drawback, I can say I effectively worked with people best I could on a tight schedule and got to editing what I can with such little resources.

Conclusions

If I were to take away something from this year as a whole, it's how to use equipment for convergence when working on ONW Now, and I am glad to know that I can work on such a big project at our school. The only real thing I need to work on for this before we start is being comfortable in front of the camera. Other than that, I feel like this year has readied me for the next years to come.

Improvements

In next years, I think making sure groups are being handled properly when there's drama is key to a successful video. 

Evolution of Video Game Animation

Evolution in Video Games

This article discusses how video game animations have improved over the years. From 1972 to a 2017 prediction, the author points out the many milestones of video game history. The author shows exactly what changed throughout video game history including graphics, style, and quality. Of course, the author states that video games have improved, citing evidence such as the improvement between Pong and Donkey Kong (1981) and Doom to Halo; Combat Evolved.

The author has extremely strong points but I also think they could've cited better and use different sources other than video clips, however, I can understand that, in this topic, it's a little more difficult to get varied sources. I belive they also had a good run making this article, with so many different gens of video games to compare and choose from.

From a non-biased standpoint, I think the author could've done more comparing between the video games instead of showing a video and describing the video. This would've made for a more in depth analysis on the change in video game animation. Other than that, I believe the author strongly supports what they're trying to state.





Read the article here: Witness the Remarkable Evolution of Animation in Video Games

Shelter Review

Shelter Review

Shelter is a piece of music created by song writer and maker Porter Robinson. However, the music video for Shelter has a marvelous set of animated visuals and a deep story behind it. 

In this story, a young girl named Rin, is shown in a small bedroom. As the video progresses and the song begins, the room starts to dissolve, showing an empty world all the herself. With the help of a special tablet, she creates the world around her and she states that she is never lonely. Though, things start to appear in her world that she did not place there. Curious, she goes up to them and starts to have flashbacks of her times as a little girl with her father. The both are happy. She doesn't quite realize the smaller child is her yet, but she gets emotional watching. As she comes to the conclusion that it is her, she finds that Earth was about to be destroyed by another planet. Her dad had built a machine to be launched into space and kept her asleep, in her own mind. This machine gave her the power for her own world and, with these memories, she can live in her own space knowing who she was.

          

With this piece, I loved the different emotions they showed with colors and the mixture of 3D animation and 2D, and would love to put this into my work some time. On my own, I have learned to do 2D animation similar to this using frame-by-frame and some tweening. I, personally, believe the creator did a great job of telling the story with the music and made quite a unique story, at that. Though, I do think some portions of this, the animation isn't as smooth as it could be, but that is to be expected from anime at times. Overall, I still deeply love this music video and the premisce of it entirely.

Picture Here

The Anything Bottle

The Anything Bottle

The Making Of

During this project, we were instructed to model an item of any choice, making our own twist to it or making a product all in its own. For me, I created and modeled The Anything Bottle.

The Anything Bottle allows anyone to create whatever flavored drink they want. Just drop in a flavoring that came with the drink or anything you'd want a drink flavor for and shake it up; tada! You have your drink. 

With this assignment, we first had to sketch out ideas. I knew I either wanted to do some flower pot, can, or a bottle. Sketching out the flower bot can were easy, however, making the bottle was a bit tougher to sketch, as I was more fascinated with detail in the bottle. After successfully sketching The Anything Bottle, I was able to model it. 

First, I made a label with a little glass fish mascot, as well as listing the information about the bottle, how much it holds, and any other info needed.

To model, I first made a polygon and modeled it in wire frame mode, editing small things in shape mode. After that, I put the label on. After that, I got my finished project prior to putting it into an animation.

Behind the Project

During this project, I encountered a few issues including texture issues with the label as well as how to make separate areas separate textures and colors while keeping them separate yet together. However, I had a fun time messing with lighting and background colors, as well as the label making process itself. If I were to redo this project, I would definitely work on the overall shape of the bottle. It just doesn't look like a bottle. Though, again, I am very proud of the label and would keep it as it is. I will take into account the new tools and techniques I used to create this bottle. 

Music Videos

In this portion of the project, we had to watch two music videos and pull out parts of the video that we thought were creative and wanted to use for our own. The videos we watched were Season 2 Episode 3 by Glass Animals and The Legend of Zelda Rap by Smosh. We gathered very good ideas for our own music video from this porocess. However, for this blog, I will be talking about only Season 2 Episode 3.

In this music video, the video opens up with an old school room with a TV playing, cigarettes, batteries, old food, and other knickknacks litering the floors and shelves. It then shows the main character, a woman, laying on a couch in front of the TV. She changes positions to the beat, something we are taking in a sense. She starts searching for the remote and, as she finds it, she turns the TV on to a strange 8-bit commercial, before eating a spoonful of mayo and a pixel animation of a mouth changes the screen to black. The middle of the video is now an 8-bit like game where she tries to save the singers of the band. After they reward her with a TV remote, she is transported back to the real world on her couch, the camera unmoved from its original position.

With this piece of work, we would take from it the video/beat line ups as well as the story telling, waking up as something else aspect to it. What I already know from this video is, in the live action parts of it, they're doing wide shots and a few closeups.