Quarter 2 Project

   

Team Bubble Wrap



       For the second quarter, our class was tasked with making a stop motion animation. We were split into groups of four or five. I took the role of director. i was looking for inspiration on what i wanted to do and came across a video of these guys fighting on grass using coolers and rocks to run and jump on, so I'm thinking a fight scene would be really cool, and the others agreed.


     The  story was basically every time the bubble wrap is popped the gravity shifts. so each would be fighting over it while humorously falling in every direction on the gym floor.
unfortunately we couldn't obtain enough time in the gym to use it. so we had to make due in the hallway.

















       Since we needed a high space to shoot from we grabbed the schools video strand's crane. Once the camera was on the crane we were off shooting for about three days of classes straight. My job souring the filming was to make sure every one kept on track and that the filming was smooth.

      

We came to a few complications with school trips as two of the group were gone for about a week, but we still managed to complete our video. i hope you enjoy it.

 To view my group members blogs click on them here

Sam
Travis
Spencer
Noah
Shawn

Post render critiuque

Looking back on my project (sorry i couldn't post a video it was too large) it was honestly pretty terrible. I plan to go back and fix it by adding more light and render from more than one camera so i have reference points. The ship actually looks pretty good, but the surroundings need help. i plane to find a seamless texture for the sky dome. Hopefully i can fixed everything I need to, and make it look good in the near future.

Sun Timeline

The sun is currently the main reason for the crashes. when I created it I put a giant glow on it then lit the whole thing on fire on the highest settings(it looked awesome for the two seconds I could look at it before the computer crashed)

To fix the lagg problem I turned down the glow and the intensity of the fire. The result was good it appears as lines of fire which gives that alien atmosphere feel.

Track Timeline

Originally i set finish track on my timeline but after i got the dome fixed i realized that it didn't need much to make a good fly through ( not to mention that with all the effects i already had going on i crash maya like 2-8 times a day). So i added some planet stuff.








Anything else added to the track really wasn't needed as i originally thought. funny how projects sometimes work themselves out.

Skydome Timeline

Finding a texture for my sky dome was a harder task than i would have hoped. this was the original and i was so stretched across the sphere it looked awful.

After several tries at trying to find the perfect texture i found this one. I added it to the sphere and it looked amazing.

This is what the texture looks like in rendered view. With the planets i added to the track it is starting to look like a real solar system.

Project 1 timeline

Thursday Sept.25= Fix sky dome, be half way done with Track- The Image wrap around the dome is funky is some places so i need to find a more versatile picture. The Track needs work so its not just flying around i want the ship to be flying a round and through things.

Friday Sept.26  = Finish track- Totally have all the extra flyby objects in place.

Monday Sept.29= Fix Sun fire effect (less buggy) -It is majorly slowing things down right now so maybe i can play with the settings and fix that.

Tuesday Sept.30= add other planetary objects-adding background stuff to give the animation that space feel.

Wednesday Oct.1= render out,fix bugs- Pre-render and watch to make sure it is working properly the way i designed it

Thursday Oct.2= Final Render

Q1 Project Grade:11

 I started my project wanting to do something 3D. So i went to mud box and picked a model.
Then i pulled squashed and burned him (not on purpose i don't understand this program so i just kinda went with it).

I then opened the model file in Maya and gave him a skeleton (i can't even explain how hard it was to get the fingers in the right places).

After the skeletal rig was in place I used Human IK to be able to move my zombie in the way i wanted him to go (I forgot to mention he is a zombie...oops)

Next after the Human IK rig was in place i started to add skin weights. (this was the most painfully boring thing I've ever done in my life, it is like watching grass grow while the most monotoned teacher gives you a lecture about his childhood)

Well... something went horribly wrong the weights got all messed up and he was stuck to the floor. It was a monumental mess that i was not going back to square one for. So this is where this idea ends and the new idea begins.










The new project Is a spaceship flying scene

After i Modeled the ship to the way i wanted it I created a track for the ship to follow.



Once the track was formed i began to create planetary objects as well as a sky dome. The sky dome is just a sphere with the whole project inside of it. Then i gave the sphere a space texture and then boom you have a space dome.

                           

      I changed the sky dome later because i didn't like it (i should have kept it) This texture is not seamless which looks bad. At this point i gave up on the sky dome.

   The next thing i did was create a sun. this sun is the sole reason that maya crashed like 8 times. The sun is basically a giant ball with a yellow glow and then lit on fire.

      This is what the sun looks like rendered out.                                                            

Personal Logo

This is the process in which i created my personal logo.

  Honestly when we started i had absolutely no ideas i spent about a class period and a half thinking about what i was going to do. after the thinking process i started to sketch my ideas out on paper.

I went through a variety of sketches, some of which i don't know what i was thinking because they are awful and need to be burned immediately.













The next step i took was to finalize my favorite sketches then present them to the class for review and ideas. after the review I picked my favorite and fine tuned it, and here it is my new personal logo.

e-comm Magazine cover

    For this project we were tasked with creating a magazine cover for our e-comm program. It took some thinking but after a while i realized that the Rolling Stone cover was a perfect template for what i was wanting to do. So rolling ravens was born, i tried to find a font similar but not exactly the same as Rolling stone. The next thing i did was put a mac on their and covered up the apple symbol with the e-comm logo. i liked the mac idea but it was missing something so i went to the programs website and downloaded one of the free desktop wallpapers and slimed it down to fit on the Mac. After the main chunk was done i added some page numbers and catchy phrases to the side as kinda a pre index and ended before i could add to much so here is the final product.

Explosion

We were asked to folk a tutorial for making a building window explode.

the hardest part of the project was getting the masks just right. If they were off then you had a random brick engulfed in flame or pard of the lamp post which looked really bad.

After the fire was set you had to add the glass and dust which wasn't hard but you had to get the timing just right to look realistic.

This is the final product, I'm very happy with it. 

Video Copilot Tutorial Project

   Alright so my latest animation project was a tutorial from the site videocopiolot.com. The project was creating a vortex of destructive energy. Instead of using their NY pic as a background i took a picture of my high school's courtyard.

Starts out  simple, import the shot create a cc particle world

At this point I'm far along in the project and fairly happy with it, but i haven't started to mess with it yet. I have changed the settings on the cc particle world to twister to get the vortex/ tornado feel.

 The hardest part of this whole project is keeping track of the particle settings. Personally I think the way its set up is confusing.

So i just duplicated the twister adjusted the size and added an effect to make it dark and kinda out line the original twister. I have also put in kinda lens flare like objects from the tutorial on the bottom to give the energy effect.

 This is the final product with darkened background and scary twister it is complete.

Personal Logo

   So for my personal logo i wanted to keep it simple but tell about me. The G is obviously for my last name, the guitar head is because i love to play my guitar. Finally the speaker is because i love music, its what motivates me in everything i do, and i like it loud!

   This one is an old logo of mine (I'm not proud of it). While it is creative the quality is lacking. It also doesn't tell my story, all this portrays is that I'm a human being. The logo above has a better quality and appeal. 

eMagine Media Festival

     I recently went to the eMagine Festival hosted by my school Olathe Northwest. many schools attended and many aspiring animators, graphic designers, and movie film makers entered their art into the respective categories for judging and the first place prize.
     It was a very fun night with a lot of creative artists. My experience taught me that handwork really does produce the best results, and prep and pre writing and drawing is essential. Im looking forward to next year when i submit my own work and hopefully win, if your on the boarder of coming defiantly come its loads of fun and you learn a lot.

1970's movie poster remade

    My task for this project was to pick a movie from the 1970's or earlier, then use Saul Bass posters as inspiration and modernize it. The movie i chose was Revenge of the Pink Panther. Remaking this was difficult because the original was cartoony and was kinda modern on its own. This is what i came up with.













   Like Saul, I implemented objects that give an idea of what the movie is about. The gun barrel to depict a spy/detective movie, the panther to add the sense of comedy. In the movie poster that Saul Bass created, he add the famous ruby slippers and the yellow brick road. Without words you know exactly what movie it is. While he is significantly better than I am, I think i achieved my goal.

Google

    While studying the multibillion dollar company Google i discovered some secrets about the famous logo we have all come to know. First is that the colors mean something each color has a number and all together is is a six number binary code, 36, 17, 8, 36, 2, 17. Google first wen online in 1996 and became a word in 2006. the time in months between the two events equals 97 months, you get the same number if you add the first four numbers together. the colors where originally made to be all primary colors until the L then they used a secondary to show that Google doesn't follow the rules.

    Every one knows that Google's logo changes from time to time. This program is called doodle for Google, the logo is changed to commemorate a famous person or group of people who helped shape history. so when you see one of these custom designs click on them you may learn something you didn't already know.

The very first doodle was to commemorate the Burning Man Festival of 1998 crated by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The Plausible Impossible

 What is a plausible impossible? Well, for example when a cartoon gets hit with a giant hammer he becomes totally flat, its plausible because it makes sense that being squashed would leave you flat, but we know that its impossible. The video Night On Bald Mountain has many plausible impossibles.

 The first plausible impossible i noticed was the beasts shadow. The beast is controlling his shadow down the cliffside. This is plausible because we can control shadows by moving, impossible because he moves the shadow without moving to cast darkness on the small town.

 Next, ghost riding ghostly horses. Plausible because horses are rideable so why not have ghosts riding ghost horses. Being ghosts and all makes it impossible, ghosts ether real or not don't ride horses and terrorize small villages . Under the circumstances of them being called from the grave by the beast-devil thing makes riding forth from the grave believeable.






 In  this picture demons are jumping off a cliff and turning into shades or flying beasts from below. It is plausible because their demons which are supernatural so morphing isn't unbelievable. Its impossible because things cant morph quickly into something. It makes since because the evil in the video is suppose to be scary so demons morphing makes since.

 Here the demon pulls the fire out of the pit and throws it in the air with his magical demon powers. This is plausible because fire can be coaxed, so the demon raising fire makes sense because he is a devil like creature with the power to control the underworld. This is impossible because fire cant be thrown straight up and come straight back down.

 Finally the demon being defeated, curls up his wings around him and turns into the tip of the mountain. This is possible because being the right shape and being magical,turning into a mountain top makes sense. Its impossible because becoming a mountain top is obviously impossible, going from flesh to stone isn't possible, but it is believable.                                                

Experience at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

    So my class was preparing to go on the field trip, and i could think of was how boring a museum was going to be as a trip. I mean they get boring after a while right? After the bumpy bus ride we arrived at JCCC (Johnson County Community College). We hiked through the intense cold and wind into the nice warm building. After awkwardly eating with college kids we walked around the hallways looking at art until it was time for our tour begin. Old pots lined the hallways, but somethings caught my eye the abstract art and pictures in the hallways were amazing. They were a mix of modern and architecture art, they were fun to look at, the straight horizon lines and structural lines were perfect. Me being OCD straight parallel lines make me happy. After about fifteen minutes of wandering around the halls it was time for our tour.
     For the tour we were split into two groups one started upstairs one began downstairs. We saw many cool pieces but my favorite collection was  Kaw's Ups and Downs. The works were very well drawn with lots of color. What I liked about them the most was how they looked like computer generated cartoons, which being an aspiring animator I thought that was very cool and inspirational. He Had versions of Snoopy, the Michelin tire guy, and a statue of a resemblance of Mickey mouse, But not quite. They were all changed in different ways and he has never been sued. He is an amazing artist and a true inspiration. If you have the time to go check it out I highly recommend it.
     Another collection that caught my eye was Dylan Mortimer's Illuminate. These were giant wall hung variations of halos. As you walked up to the structure the sensor goes off and all the lights come on in a glorious display. the halos were a great place to take pictures, and many of my class mates did. After our long field trip we went back to school. on the way back i realized that wasn't boring at all, in-fact it was a lot of fun and i cant wait to go back and experience new collections.