Professional Project Review

Western Spaghetti

Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion Film

Main Idea of Stop Motion:

     For a professional review, I wanted to review a project that I think is neat and different from normal computer animation. So I decided to pick a stop motion animated film. For those of you who are not familiar with stop motion, stop motion is a type of animation but instead of pure animation, it is a mix between film and animation. It sometimes uses real life objects with animated objects and combines the two. The thing about combining both real life objects and animated objects is the fact that you have to move objects around, frame by frame which takes FOREVER! The film I chose to write about is Western Spaghetti. Western Spaghetti is about taking real life things that you wouldn't normally use to cook and using them as food, and cooking utensils or whatever is needed to cook spaghetti. 

Elements from Stop Motion:

Before

After

     The stop motion uses elements that relate to the foods you would use to make spaghetti but it's not exactly those foods. Honestly at first, it was somewhat difficult to pull out what the idea was behind this film and whether it was make for fun or enjoyment or if it had a story behind it. I believe it was make more for viewing things differently, and seeing the creativity of using yarn type materials and sewing materials to create spaghetti. For example, you see the person boil long colored toothpicks which later come out of he boiling water as colored rubber bands. This refers to when you put in hard spaghetti noodles and when they boil for long enough, they come out soft and flexible like. This of course isn't the only neat aspect that catches my eye but there are many things that pop out as neat to me.

Design:

     The design of the stop motion film is very creative and I thought the idea of using cooking to show that is a good way to go. If I had to guess, i'd say the title of the stop motion film refers to the west as normally being a place where knitting is used a lot and when cooking spaghetti they incorporated the knitting and sewing in with it to form western spaghetti. Not only is the stop motion creative but it uses elements that would show comparison to the food you would put in spaghetti. For example, it uses yellow post it notes to be used as butter being easily sliced. They also use a rubber cube and chop it into smaller pieces which I thought was really neat since it showed the work and effort that had to go into making that rub cube split up into all of those pieces. The use of needle holders in tomato form to create the spaghetti sauce and the aluminum foil being squirted out of the water holder was neat. I wonder how much time went into this process because based on how the aluminum foil was used and was perfectly formed to look like real water took. Same with the tomatoes being smashed and turning into tomato sauce.

Conclusion:

     Overall, the creation of this project was worth while (obviously shown through views) and left a confused, shocked and curious face on the viewers of this video wondering how in the world this video was created. I hope to someday incorporate this style of animation into my work and really be shown the hassle it is to make one of these stop motions come to life.

Before

After

Stop Motion Short Link To Video: https://youtu.be/qBjLW5_dGAM

Castle Model (Part 1)

Castle Structure Model Stage

Coming up with idea:   

     
     For the first semester of Animation, my job was to come up with an idea for a project which I would be working on for all of semester 1 and probably part of semester 2. I had about a week to come up with my idea and finalize what I wanted to do with my idea. I wanted my idea to be challenging but not too challenging, I also wanted to model and rigg later on in the year. I came up with the idea to model a building of the Prague castle. I met up with groups to talk about my ideas and get input and give out input. Originally, I had planned to model off of the Prague castle, but unfortunately, throughout the modeling process and after finishing the base of the structure, my file corrupted due to too much boolean. Booleaning is essentially combining and differencing polygons (shapes) to form a new shape. So with a unfixable corrupted file, I had to restart which was pretty frustrating but after restarting I realized that I was glad to have restarted. My reason being that the first castle I was creating wasn't original and was based off of an existing structure. After restarting I decided to come up with my own castle and make it original instead of being based off of the Prague castle.

Beginning modeling process:

Front center piece of castle (starting point).

Front center piece of castle (wireframe view).

     
     With the idea of modeling an original castle which I do not yet know what I will call it, I could being remodeling. To start off, I created a simple rectangle polygon and continued to add castle features, such as arcs, fancy doors, windows and basically a lot of little details to make things pop when the castle model is finished, After finishing the simplistic front to my castle, I continued to add and build on that shape. When I say build on the shape, I mean keep adding larger polygons to that shape to make the castle much larger. Once the castle fit the size I wanted for the final front piece, I added balconies and railing to make the castle pop and appear taller (shown in the screenshot shown to the right). When satisfied with the front piece of the castle, I created more polygons, mainly simple shapes like rectangles and square shapes, to come off of the front piece. This would enlarge my castle and give me more room to add important components that you would see on any royal building like stain glass windows and roofing and pillars or columns.

Patterned borders.

     It took a lot of thought into the development of the castle, mainly because I haven't seen a castle in real life, but luckily I had a handy dandy computer and keyboard at my hands so I could easily go and search up images of a castle to pull out ideas. Many ideas pull out from other pictures include bordering around the castle and the patterned borders on top of the castle. The patterned borders gave my structure the classic castle look at least to me because one of the first things I recognize when I see a castle is the patterned borders running across the top of the castle.

Roofing 3D texture on roof of castle.

     After looking at my castle from that point, there was something that bothered me and that was the roofing of the castle, I HAD NO ROOFS! So I created roofs on the castle, having a really hard time trying o determine what I wanted my roofs to look like. I decided to combine the typical house roof style with a diagonal surface going down across the front and back of the roof and a flat surface for the top of the roof instead of a pointed roof. After adding the big roof, I added more roofs all around the castle in places I thought would make the castle appear to have more than one level and much larger interior wise. I created roofing to fit on the roofs and give the roofs a pattern and 3D like texture instead of just painting it on. 

     Finally, after finishing the body of the castle, I added flags and other fun details to my castle. I then started on creating the landscape for my castle. I wanted to create some sort of mote around the castle and show the castle surrounded by water. I am working on creating the the path coming off of the castle and a bridge to go over the water. I then plan to add more hill details to landscape. The second part of my castle which will be worked on during second semester will be the texturing of the castle. 

Reflection:

     
     To reflect on my creation, I would say that it is turning out to be pretty awesome. I do feel like this model is taking longer than expected since I still have yet to finish landscape and texturing, as well as lighting which will definitely bring out the details on my castle. But who said animation was easy? I would say i accomplished a lot in the time I was given, although not finished, this is an experience to learn from and it's better to learn now than later.

What I have of the castle so far.

Wireframe/selected view of castle (better look at detail).

     

Professional Project Review

Jinxy Jenkins, Lucky Lou

Animated Short

Animated Shortfilm

Main Idea of Animated Short:

    
     For a animated short, you want something with a story that pulls you in, with creativity that flows throughout the short and of course, appealing animation. An animated short I would suggest is Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou. This short is about a man who is cursed but wishes for luck (Jinxy Jenkins) and a girl who is full of luck but doesn't appreciate it enough (Lucky Lou).  Soon they run into each other and get to experience the worst and best.

     The professional work shown in this was very well done to me. It was more of an animation you would see in a movie or cartoon obviously, in other words it wasn't stop motion or anything like that. I thought the emotion in the characters shown at the beginning of the story and throughout to the ending really helped you to connect with the characters and understand the story.

Elements from short:

    

Jinxy jenkins being pulled by umbrella as mirrors break.
The breaking of the mirrors is suppose to give you 7 years of bad luck.

     The creators of this short did a good job of adding elements that showed the luck and bad luck of both characters. For example, the girl was walking past a store and through the window you could see slot machines going off and all of them landing on jackpot. An example showing the guys bad luck was mirrors breaking as he was pulled past them.

   I think what the creators could improve on is possibly showing the cause of them getting bad or good luck. Like why did the guy start off with bad luck and the girl start off with good luck?
But I suppose when making a SHORT FILM,you want to get to the point.

Design:

    

Emotion shown through characters.

     The opening scene of the short was very creative, it introduced the characters one by one and had them walk off the screen. From what I know about animation, I know it is hard to make characters walk. They did a great job of adding different walking styles for each person, the guy being more slouched over and the girl being more upright. Just the walking styles itself showed which was more depressed with all the bad luck and which was ready for their day of good luck. I really liked when the guy was being pulled by his umbrella because of the strong wind. It made me think about all the worked that went into just creating that one scene. I think making the characters silent was a smart move, it saved work time and it also showed the story through emotion.

     An element that I'll be sure to focus on when making animations is the emotion of the characters on faces when we start to do faces cause that is a difficult task and an important one. I'll also be sure to focus on story, that is the main focus cause without a story, there isn't a use in having an animation.

Conclusions:

    
     Overall I think the short came out great! It contained all the elements that are needed to enjoy a good animated short. But most importantly, it showed that any one person can lighten up your day no matter how bad of a situation you think you are in. I hope you think the same after watching the video!

Both characters share a popsicle after experiencing friendship. 

Animated Short Link To Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1W-OC7MTCY

Benched (Short Film) - Video Production

Short Film Creation!

Program (Final Cut Pro) used to create short film.

     Looking above, you may be wondering what that picture is showing. And for some, you may not be wondering because of the caption below that tells you what it is. But to go more in depth, me and my group of 5 people worked on a short film to finish off the school year. We were given a prompt that required you to include certain elements into the film. That includes: A hat, water bottle, "lights out" verbally spoken and lastly an intentional source of light.

Brainstorming process for film:

 
     Before starting the filming process for our short, my group had to brainstorm ideas for our film by story boarding, making a list (costumes, roles, schedule), and creating a script for our film. We grouped together and decided that we wanted a mystery film with suspense. The film is about a girl who is on a softball team and has two other friends who she is close with. One day while practicing, the girl finds herself on the ground and wakes up in the nurses office. She isn't completely sure what happens but knows that something is the cause for her accident. She must then put together the clues that she is left with from her flashbacks to figure out what happened to her that day. After filming, we individually edited our own video\ in Final Cut Pro.

Editing Process:

Editing shots in Final Cut Pro.

   
     The editing process for this video was fun and difficult. We used Final Cut Pro to edit parts of our filmed shots. The hardest part about editing was adding flashback effects and blinking effects to achieve the suspenseful look and since most of our filming took place outside, our some of our shots had windy noises which caused for distraction. Another hard part to edit was the audio. Our shots had different audio frequencies so some shots were filmed with low audio and some were filmed with high audio so the adjusting was hard. Overall I thought each individual edit turned out well.

Audio from shots.

Things to improve on / things done well:

    I thought some shots could use retake, especially the windy shots because it blocked out important audio. I also wish there was more time for nicer edits in the audio area. Overall, I think the majority of it was done well, we had creative shots and a great story line that included all components needed.

Things to pull for experience:

Different effects.

     Things I can pull from this experience is that cooperation is key to a good video. I also learned new effects and edits from this video, as well as color correction for fixing shots that were over exposed. I learned how to create a blinking effect using command P, dragging a clip to make the dark spacing appear then I set that in between clips to create the effect. Audio is important and its good to listen to audio on different computers if you get a chance because audio is different for every computer and you want to make sure the audio is equal. 

     Overall, I learned that setting your mind to something will help you achieve something.

Finished Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvx8XcITr0&feature=youtu.be

     

Avatar Bending (Animation)

The Four Elements: Water, Earth, Fire, Air.

   
     Some of you may know where this post is leading to and for some of you, you may be wondering what the title above represents. This title describes the animation/green screen avatar bending project that me and my group created. The project was a good way to end the school year and used all of our knowledge on animation that we had.

    The goals of this project was to firstly, find a group that you felt comfortable working with, discuss our ideas, create a story board, and figure out a way to film with the green screen and incorporate animation into it in some way. The theme my group chose was "Avatar the Air Bender" theme. 

Process of creation:

Using After Effects to key out green screen video and add background.

Using Maya to create rock and rock animation.

 
     The process of this project was somewhat long and required patience. In order to make this theme come to life, we knew that each group member would need an element. My group creatively came up with an idea to take an online bending test which would assign us our elements. Of course, I got Earth. After that we had to look at the movements for each bending style and practice the movements for the green screen shooting. We shot our green screen shots using key lights, spotlights, and LED lights so the green screen was well and lit up. After filming our every movement, we then needed to create elements accessories using Maya. For example, Earth needs a rock by their side that they can bend and Water needs water by their side that they can also bend. Since I was the "Earth bender", I had the job of creating my rock and the "Water bender" got to create their water. After using Maya to create those items each individual group member took their green screen video, keyed it out, and put a background in replace of the green screen to make themselves appear as if they were in a different area. We each also made a silhouette of ourselves to add a cool effect to the video. After completing the green screen video and rock, I had to then combine them by putting the After Effects rendered out video into Maya. I could then move the rock around and add key frames to make a animation of the rock moving with my movements. I got help with adding directional, key and ambient light to my scene to make the rock light up with the background color. Finally after completing all of these steps, I then rendered out the final product and handed it over to a group member to combine all of our clips into one and add in the recorded voice overs for each element.

What to pull from experience:

     

Rendered Earth Bending video (Not finished group project).

     I pulled a lot from this project, I learned how to work a green screen and correctly key it out. I also  learned how to import After Effect movies or images into Maya. I was shown how to make ambient, directional and key lights reflection on an object change color to match the color of the background so it has a comparison feel with the surroundings. But most importantly, I learned that cooperation is important in any group project. I also learned that the help from others are extremely important because you wouldn't be anywhere without the help of others.

Things to improve on / things liked:

     
     If I had to improve on something or do it differently, I would probably choose different backgrounds to go off of in our video and use moving ones if possible. I'd also use less key frames in the animating part of the rock because too many key frames caused the rock to sort of shake around and seem loose. Overall, I thought the project went well and had a unique theme to it. I wouldn't change anything else about the project if i could.

     This project was a fun opportunity and showed that you can really do anything if you set your mind to it. I hope to do more projects like this in the future and maybe even more complex projects.

Finished group "Elements" Project.