Overviewing eComm

Wow. High School is done for me.

eCommunication helped get me where I am now, and I'll be forever grateful for it.

Seriously, I can still remember the first day I stepped into the eComm room making a Keynote animation, thinking I'll never make it through. But here I am now, endorsed and ready to make animation my career of choice. I wouldn't have been as confident or as sure of myself without the people or the experiences I have had in this classroom setting. Basically, without collaborating or communicating with my peers, I wouldn't have learned as much as I did.

Technology

I learned how to time animations with 2D and 3D engines (Photoshop, After Effects, Maya), as well how to utilize Adobe products to help improve upon the initial project. I learned through trial and error as well as tutorials over what exactly I wanted. Of course I faced challenges (mostly crashing the networks) but it was important to me so I could learn what I needed to improve on for the future.

Collaboration/Communication

For me, this goes hand-in-hand, as my projects couldn't have been as good as they were without the constant inputs from my friends around me, giving me advice over art, flow, story, or scene ideas. Again, through trial and error, I learned through other people. Challenging aspects were trying to decide when I wanted vs what was better for the project at hand.

Project Management

I learned how to manage my time due to dates for eMagine, as well as stuff done for Netterville. I learned it through much struggle of meeting due dates on time and wanting to make the best work I could. It is vital to learn this skill for the future due to me wanting to be an animator for Disney (have very strict deadlines)

Strengths/Weakness

My strength, I believe is that I give effort to each project and I do them on time. (Thankfully my art has also improved since freshmen year as well). While my weakness is probably having inconsistent styles, which is something I'm improving on, but it's still a work in progress. With this new knowledge, I hope I can further myself for future endeavors. But I wouldn't change a thing. Because without every success/failure I endured, I would be a different person than I am now. And I'm proud of what I am now.

End

Welp, these last 4 years have been a ride. I learned so much that it's weird to go back to my first projects on here and there's a definite improvement. I'm proud of myself, and I can't wait to see myself continue to improve. Thank you Netterville, and thank you eComm for making me what I am now.

Professional Article Review: Doctor Strange's "Strange Effects"

Purpose of the Article:

The article discusses the laboring process of making the strange effects of the magic within Doctor Strange. The author also explains the inspirations behind the effects behind bending and twisting reality in the movie were similar effects used in Inception, and that the process of making, creating, and implementing the methods to create Doctor Strange. They use the evidence of both speaking to the VFX production supervisor, having watched the movie, and the supervisor explaining what they did on previous projects that helped create Doctor Strange's world. The strengths of this article is the feeling that this person who wrote it is generally interested in how Doctor Strange's animation was created, and having some evidence to back it up. But that is also is a weakness, as the author only really has one reliable source for his article so there's nothing else really backing up his claims. The author seems to conclude with saying that the impressive animation was created by the tenacity of the people involved, who worked with similar deadlines in Guardians of the Galaxy. 

My Own Conclusions:

Generally, my critique of the article is that even with the only resource being that supervisor, I found the article sound and informative. It is interesting to see the time and effort and thought that went into scenes of Doctor Strange like the final battle with Dormamu. It is significant due to the need to show others how exactly the movie was as spectacular as it was. The argument stands up on its own to display the work that went into the movie and the methods used to achieve the effects. The evidence is convincing as well if one of the main head honchos behind the effects agrees with it. I believe these effects inspire me as an animator to see what others can achieve in deadlines like 6 months. I honestly understand most of the article, as the author took the time to explain what each difficult term meant and the reasoning behind his writing. So all in all, it is a well written work attributing the credit for the animation to the people who deserve it. Well done Disney, yet again!

Read the Article for yourself! Link

Professional Project Review: Shelter

The Project:

Shelter was a collaborative piece from an American music producer, a French Music Producer, Japanese animators, and distributed by CrunchyRoll. This was made as a music video for Porter Robinson and Madeon's song "Shelter", which was released on August 11th, 2016. It was then announced that both the producers had been working for over a year to create a music video with a story and plot to accompany the music. So it was released on October 18th of the same year to large success, as the deep, emotional story connected with the music as if both were made for each other. The hand-drawn animation looks beautiful, as the backgrounds and environments created are gorgeous and inviting.

The Story:

The story follows a 17 year old girl (named Rin in the description) who lives alone in a simulated reality, which she controls by drawing on a tablet to shift the reality on what she wants. She then discovers scenes that she didn't make and discovers (through flashbacks, newspaper articles, and past memories) she was once a child in Tokyo who lived with her father. But Earth was about to be in collision with an object the size of the moon. So her father, while still being loving towards her, built her a ship with life-support system for Rin to escape the doomed Earth. So she has been in space for the past 7 years, waiting for someone to make contact with her. At the end, a message comes up as Rin vows to make her father's sacrifice worth it.

My Thoughts:

I honestly love the animation to bits, as it was gorgeous to follow the story. I would want to apply the interactions of the environments to my own work, as it looked fluid and clean to me. I believe the shifting backgrounds and different angles for camera shots are applied well to this piece (which I've done before). The creators did well to have an animation serve the story and song justice so it was explained well, but they could improve upon maybe the ending. The ending was a bit confusing and left up to interpretation on how Rin will handle the message received at the end. But overall, I loved it. It was so beautiful and nearly had me in tears at the end of it. I recommend anyone to watch the differences between American and Japanese animation, as well of the power of collaboration between all these different people.

Semester One: Done!

Magical Mischief: The Project Summary

The semester project that I've been working on had finally concluded in a timely manner. My animation, the sound effects, the music, and even credits were done in the past week and I feel proud. I believe my quality of animation has improved since Midnight Flight, and I added a story element previously missing from the previous animations beforehand. I followed the storyboards more than my previous venture, added as well as subtracted scenes that would either hinder or help the animation win the coveted Pixel at eMagine that I desire. I observed various different animation styles over the course of the semester, such as the scene of the boy's toy flying through the desk utilizing the ability to put in 3D elements in a 2D animation. I enhanced my hand-drawn elements by adding a hand-drawn background painted in photoshop, so it has more definition in both characters and backgrounds. I pt more detail into my characters as well due to the comments from last year that my characters were not that detailed or visually interesting.

What to go from here:

I hope to make another project to implement more 2D elements for another fun project like this (probably if anyone knows me, involving dragons again), maybe another short story animation. Perhaps even adding more complicated elements into it to maybe get two Pixels at the same time (like my goal I set for this year). Hopefully I can get another decent idea to try and attempt before this year ends and I can start ASAP.  The Story-Boards below are sections of what I did to animate for my project.

 My animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcFPttYzfIE

New School Year, New Project: My Own Sorcerer's Apprentice

To Boldly Try What I Haven't Tried Before

Why this project and idea?

One of my favorite animations growing up was the Sorcerer's Apprentice section from Fantasia, as I loved the thought of mischievous Mickey Mouse messing with magic, only for him to lose control of it to get his just desserts. It began my love, I believe, of mythos and magic that continues now.
But also, I wanted to make a more story-driven project compared to last year due to the comments and concerns given to me last year from my project entered into eMagine. Also, I wanted to try to animate a human character alongside a creature this time, taking more time to make them look decent and realistic.
The main reason, however, is to show that I could accomplish this project in it's entirety, and not procrastinate and make something that could be both cute and cool.

The Scope:

Beni

I plan to have three characters; Beni the Apprentice, Keiter the Senior Wizard, and Austie the creature companion of Beni. Beni is an apprentice wizard who is powerful, but very untrained in magic. Keiter has to leave to gather more supplies to a potion, and cautions his charges to not practice anything while he's gone and leaves. But Beni decides to entertain himself by flying a small dragon toy around the room, which hits a glass jar containing a fairy. It escapes and now Austie and Beni now have catch it before their master gets home.

I do have walk cycles completed for both Beni and Austie, as well as a run cycle for Austie that I will display here. I am currently working on the backgrounds and sets as well as the other scenes. The links to the tests are Austie(run), Austie(walk), and Beni.

Austie

Conclusion 

So far, where I'm at for this project, I'm confident in my abilities to make this coherent story as best as I can make it. It's both exciting and exhilarating to attempt a project at this scale, and I am hopeful to pull off my best animation so far within the program! So for now, I will continue to create new animations to try to wrap the story together.

End of the Line (Or Year)

Welp, I guess this wraps things up.

I learned this year that in order to make a project that you will truly be proud of, you have to be able to take criticism for it as well as use your own skills to balance out the help you get from other people. This year I've greatly improved my ability to both know when to step back and let others pull their own weight as well as take leadership if need be. Collaboration projects like the Montage animation that we did for stop motion showed our willingness to work together. But it also showed our inability to be patient and look to make sure things were perfect before actually putting the animation together. I also learned how to crete good flowing animations like Midnight Flight and the start of the Time animation and Itzal. 

I learned by both watching other similar animations on YouTube, in theaters, and on TV. I drew poses for the frames by watching the way animals moved and studying the walk cycles of the creatures. That's how I learned how to do Chucho's walk, which is mixed between a cat and a dog, and was able to create my own spin on how to make him move. I also learned to plan out the animations and storyboard before actually animating. It helped as I was watching behind the scenes to movies, I got an idea for an animation, and I just began drawing out a short story-board to help organize my thoughts.

This has helped me become more confident in my own ability, and grow as an animator. Projects like my Itzal project and Midnight Flight showed me that I could create cute animations with my own ability. I learned the importance of drawing out a story, and it helped improve my work quality. It even got me to win imagine despite my own lack of confidence of my work. The reason why the lessons I learned helped so much is due to the confidence it placed in myself.

Have I improved? Yes I believe so, and I'm able to now tell my skills and the abilities I have to practice getting good at. My greatest strength I would say was my ability to create engaging environments and my attention to detail in the background. One of the comments from an eMagine judges backs up the claim. However, this leads to one of my greatest weaknesses I believe I'm improving, which is my character animation. Yes, I am attentive and detailed for the movement, but the design of the character itself is what normally lacks. It's often that I simplify too much to ease the stress of animating. But slowly I'm improving that fatal flaw in order to make bigger and better projects for competitions next year for eMagine.

Over the summer I'm going to try and develop a new animation, involving new characters more complex than this year's animations. I could also start learning how to make a story animation, which is something I've never done before. I can use the skills I have, plot out the story, maybe even start animating on my own to test out my own skills without help. But I'm also going to try to get an internship to help improve the skills I have. Then I can get professional opinions and even information how to improve myself.

2D rendition of Maya Character

Some things that I wish I could change would be my failure of Maya animation. I designed a character in Maya that was fluffy and for months I tried adding fur to my Maya outline, but unfortunately I didn't know how to make it into the character. My biggest regret was leaving it unfinished and making stupid mistakes on the character like adding stripes, which ruined the look I was going for. I wish that I hadn't ruined and wasted those months of work that I spent trying to make the animation perfect. But since I can't, I can promise myself that I will not let this happen again and I won't give up next time and complete the project I set out to do.

All in all, this year was full of ups and downs in my animating career. I did flops and I even won eMagine, which was an unexpected blessing and it boosted my confidence in my ability. I began animating better each time I started new projects with more improvements upon both the quality and the animation itself. I enjoyed this year thoroughly due to my abilities starting to make a noticeable improvement upon my work. I look forward to the upcoming months to continue to better myself and I can't wait to test and surpass the limits I have now. I loved animation this year and I can't wait for more. So for now, my friends, have a great summer!

Professional Review: The Maker

The Project:

The Maker was a professionally made project by Zealous Creative in order to boost awareness for their own animation studio as well as to show off a fellow artists's creations, including the aforementioned Maker of the tale and the composer of the animation. The summary is that The Maker must race against the clock (Actually an hourglass) to make a very important, beautiful creation before it runs. This project obviously took them several months, maybe even years to complete as the animators had to create the set as well as a camera that would give the animation proper justice.

The Maker

The Stopmotion used in the film is beautiful, fluid, and realistic to the point I believed that it had to be computer animated. Accompanied by the actual animation was a behind the scenes video detailing some of the aspects needed to bring the Maker to its fullest potential. It is crafted delicately and I couldn't find a place where the frames felt choppy or unnecessary. One element I could apply from this animation is that I can use the amount of detail in my own animations in order to give them more life and beauty than I could before, while an element I do know that is inside this animation is that the camera had to capture every movement in every frame in order to create the illusion of movement for the animation, like in the Stop-motion project given to us at the beginning of the semester.

Based on my observations, the director and animator did beautifully on creating a life-like, beautiful little world with characters with personality even though neither speak. This work could improve on, however, its story telling abilities, as I had to watch it a few times before I finally got what the story was in the animation.

Conclusions

I believe that this is one of the pinnacles that could be reached with stop-motion animation, with an environment that provokes thought with characters that could move in and out of their world fluidly so that it doesn't disrupt the backgrounds, or the characters. I hope to one day aspire to goals like these and create realistic moving characters inside an engaging environment. I love this animation to bits and hope that I could be able to do this well at an animation.