End of Year Reflection

This year started like many others with a project in mind and a team to do it with. This year in animation was slightly different, however. This year there would be no little projects to waste time. There would only be semester long slogs of huge projects. The first project was a super hero spoof called Bagman. Issues arose from the very beginning with models and animation. Along with this being the first long term group project this was a lot to manage. It was a hard to get everyone on the same a page, but through hard work we were able to make it work. One of the things that was hardest to learn was rigging and modeling people. Luckily Zac did all the rigging but it was still hard to animated it. The other huge problem we had to solve was Maya’s less than settler lighting system, but we made it passed that as well, mostly by guess and check.

            the second project that was created was a pirate cove. I still feel that it the best project I’ve created. There were so many new things we had to learn. For instance, we had to learn about particle effects and found out about the generation tool. The biggest issues by far was getting the water to work, and by the end we were able to make it work, it didn’t look particular good, and we had to sacrifice all lighting to make it work. Rendering took so long after that it seemed the project would never get done, but we made it just in time.

            For both projects one of the things that surprised me was how hard it was to work with a group, even one your good friends with. Everyone has their own ideas on what they want to do, and sometimes these idea conflict with each other. That combined with the amount of things we could actual pull off lead to many problems, but in he ends the projects got done and it worked out to where everyone could at least be satisfied.

            I sometimes wish that I could have done I third project and that we knew something going into the projects that would have really cut down the time, but overall I’m happy with how everything turned out. It’s a shame that nothing we created one emagine, but that just shows use that other people worked just as hard s we did. This year, by every stranded, was great and I’m glad I got to experience it.  

My demo reel consists of projects made from my junior and senior year of high school. I didn’t want to put anything prior to that because I felt the quality of that work wouldn’t reflect my current skill level. That being said some of the projects I did in included were all my entries into eimagine like my loon and the group projects of Bagman and Pirate cove. These were by far the best projects I had to show off, but in order to pad out the demo reel I added an hourglass piece that I made for the time animation. I’m not really happy with that project, but I felt it was good enough to included for a brief moment. The other project I include was my ferries wheel that I was working on up until the deadline. It didn’t get completed in the end so it was just the model with any textures or lighting, but I still thing it was a piece worth showing.

My actual experience with the senior show was a mix between excitement and boredom. If people came up to talk to me then I could rattle on about my work and really get in to it, but for those long periods of time when I didn’t have anyone show up to my booth I got very bored and walked around. That being said, for the most part I had people talking to me. The only time I was truly bored was the first and last thirty minutes. Overall I would say it was helpful experience. I feel I’m have ab better grasp of what I should talk about and when I should stop to I don’t ramble on forever. I’m sure this will help me in the future and make me a slightly better communicator.  

Demo reel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Ehgok98nk
Web: https://alanw6626.wixsite.com/website
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkZr2rZVffLA-bxYFK38xyA

Texturing a Brick Wall Tutorial 

Texturing is not as easy as it seems there is a lot of work to be done for even something as minor as a brick wall. In this tutorial I will show you the basics of texturing.


1. To start you'll need something to texture. Create a cube that will be used for your wall.


2.
Next you need to right-click on the polygon and selected 'add texture'. After you do that a screen will appear in the side-bar. Hit he black and white button next to color and apply your brick texture.

3.After you get the texture on the polygon you need to set it. Click this button to crop the texture to the polygon.

4. That won't be enough however. It will be likely that your bricks will be too big or too small. In order to fix this you must go to the UV editor and scale the vertexes of the bounding box.








5.Then to give it some depth you apply the say brick texture to bomb mapping.












6. And that's how you texture a brick wall with some depth.

Animation and Virtual Reality

As the way we consume media had changed, so has the way it is produced. With things like virtual
reality sets and 360 degree video animation is becoming easier and harder. For example virtual reality is letting animators get up close and personal with their creations. they don't have to model through the confines of a screen. Animators and step into the world they are creating, and the audience can too. The down side to this is it's hard to get a good feel for what the viewer will focus on. With 360

video they don't have to look at any one spot. They can move their heads in any view they would like even if that spot has nothing going on. The other issues is that nothing can be hidden. Movies can have huge lights sets and multiple cameras because the viewer will be able to see those things. in animation this means that everything has to be model. There can no longer be an empty void behind the camera. This will require much more for but to keep up with the changing industry.

Related article: http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/03/limitless-lets-artists-create-animations-within-virtual-reality/

Hero

Hero

Over the last couple of months my group and I have been working on a hero project, and it is complete. (Full Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSeHYUNBnoo) My main contribution to the project was creating the majority of textures, creating the story, and helping with the animation. My animation was kept entirely in the first scene while my partners worked on editing and the animation for the second scene.
 
 For the start of the project we all a agreed to not use any images from google and create out own textures. I have done the most texturing in the group so I have created the most textures.

These are both textures I created. The top one is the texture the hero wears on his shirt (he's not a very good hero). It is made to look like it was just slapped together in a few minutes with a can of spray paint. The logo on the bottom is for the evil corporation (really just a regular pizza place) that the hero will be fight. The logo is supposed to be a regular logo, but is created in such a way that it gives the hero the smallest reason to assume the place is not on the up and up. It's based off many bar and grill logos that i found online.









On the modeling side I have created the first scene of the animation. The alley and the street isn't much on it's own but with all the little details i've added like the dumpster and bench it really pops. I also did a lot of lighting along with adding a moving light to the moped. The rest of the group also made things for the scene like Zac's building and rigs and Jeremy's moped base.

 The top image  is the alley the hero will start in (and possibly live in). The bottom picture is the street the the moped will drive down. The grey area will been hidden form the camera.











Though handwork and determination we were able to finish the project before the end of the semester. It was not and easy task considering the amount of work and all the problems we had. A few of the major ones were getting all the scenes to fit with the same assets which required a lot of scaling a manipulating. The second big issues was trying the animate wit hate less then stellar rig we were able to produce, and the final and by far most annoying problem was lighting the scenes. Light never seem to want to work and overtime we were shown one thing the render would look completely different either being to dark or too the light. The fact that e choose the animation to take place at night made it that much harder.

In the end, though, we were able to pull through with some valuable experience like gaining some lighting and animation skills. I'm sure we have a lot more to learn and that new problems will always appear, but i thing this project was secures because it gave us the knowledge to deal with these issues in the future.

Updated: 12/20/16

Aug(de)mented Reailty

Aug(de)mented Reailty is an animation series by Marty Cooper. He created a new animation technique from something really old. It's more or less stop motion animation, but instead of clay figures or notepads he uses transparent paper so his drawings can interact with the real life environment.

 

And he does it all with an iPhone and some pens. This gives it a unique feel and brings life back into an old art of animation, and the best part is that they aren't hard to make. Anyone could do these types of animation with only a phone and a lot of time. Cooper's Aug(de)mented Reality really shows that anyone can do animation.

Aug(de)mented Reality Youtube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpum4nK2wOM

How it's done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivQKRnGwNmQ

Alan Seidl Reflection

One of the main things I set out to learn especially in the second semester was to draw. Drawing is a crucial skill for animation even in 3D as backgrounds and textures still need to been drawn. I also learned a little about 3D like how to make environments and more complex polygons. These two skills allowed me to craft the Loon, which took third place in eimagine. Drawing as also allowed me to become more confident in my sketches.

I learned to drawn from online videos. It was along struggle to get any of my pictures to look even somewhat presentable. The third quarter was mainly spent learning the ends and outs like shading, depth and outlining. To get a feel for how hard it is to start getting drawings to look good I spent and entire week only drawing basic shapes and lines getting the spacing and proportions down. On the 3D side I didn’t learn anything completely new but I improved the things I did know mostly texturing since my texturing in other projects had look spotty at best.

The drawing is important because all animation has drawing in some way. 2D is clear since everything needs to be drawn, but for 3D it’s a little less clear. For 3D the drawing could either come into play with the background or with the textures. Unlike in the classroom Google images are frown upon in the real world so they all must be drawn or painted. For my improvements in 3D the payoff is clear with faster times and better models. For instance, I am in the process of making a great sword to honor my great friend Tyler. It is a hard project since the sword has many parts that each need to be create for the vertexes to work, and while it is not done I will not give up because my friend deserves the best.

I have many strengths like modeling and creating unique environments, but I still have a lot to learn. One of the things I really need to get better with is my drawing. While I have gotten pretty good at drawing charters I can’t drawn environments at all also I haven’t even touched colors yet. The other issue I run into often is vertexes overlapping and while I know there has to be a easier way to fix this problem I have no idea what to look for to fix it. The other is while my texturing has gotten better it is still underdeveloped and needs a lot of work to improve.

I plan to use what learn as profile martial as a lot of animation schools or art schools require some drawing to apply. Foe example my college od choice is Ringling college of art and design in Florida. They require a complex profile full of animation a drawing to even be considered. I will also use what I learned go make more projects which I will be able to make at a faster pace. The main reason however is to build off it to learn even more complex animation skills, which I will be able to use to impress my peers, and most importantly to honor Tyler.

If there was one thing I could change is that that wish I put more effort in my Loon. By the time eimagine rolled around the Loon had been setting forgotten for a while and when I decide to use it I was already in the mist of practicing drawing, so I didn’t do to much to round out the edges. If I could go back I would have tried a little harder and then it maybe could have won. Although maybe it wouldn’t have been a good idea since I would have sacrificed drawing practice that is something I really needed. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

Do I feel that I made the best out of my year of animation? Probably not. There will always been times where I could of fixed things or worked a little harder, but I do feel like everything I did was worth it and I’m proud of what I accomplished, and I hope next year I will be able to make even better animation with a faster pace of work.