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.

Tutorial: Head Turn

Head Turning from Profile to Full Front:

My character in the first scene I wanted to turn from looking forward to turn towards the audience. So  I had to learn how to make that turn happen. You have to draw out each frame carefully, starting with the first, middle and end frames. To make it better, add in-between frames to make the character flow better. This could help people learn how to do better 2D animations to help express the movements of their characters, as well as help give an insight into the proportions of the character the turn is given to. Helps people wanting to further developing their characters.

Here is the end test result:

1) Actually Prepare an image.

Have a character that is not too complicated and you've drawn several times that you want to move. It is best with characters with few complicated details in order to achieve this well.

2) Have a picture of your character in profile view and in full front view

This displays the total motion necessary for your character to face from one direction to another. Take note of how you move your own head, or account the animal that animation is based off of. Are they quickly turning in fear? Responding to another character? Take these into account when creating these things.

3) Draw In-between Images

The turn will seem choppy and very unfinished, so draw the midpoint between the profile and full front, the three-quarter turn. Also, keep in mind the proportions of the characters and the features, as it wouldn't look good if the character didn't look consistent. 

 4) Color!

Color is key to making this character look professional. Make it a color that matches the personality of your character and make sure that it is the same for all necessary frames.

Use these resources for more info!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLbqmyE8OvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQjfVVWk_cE

Results:

The results should be a satisfactory, flowing animation of your character turning to look at the audience from looking forward. Use these skills to help make a unique animation instead of using the same position or angle for a project. I will be using these skills to help keep my animations flowing smoothly. These will help define the movements of my character and characters I want to animate in the future.

The Life of Death- A Review

The Life of Death: a review

Story:

The story of this short 2-D animated piece was about a spirit of Death of the forest slowly growing to love a beautiful doe and become friends with her, which she then has to teach Death that dying was essentially a part of life. Essentially, this story was to teach the viewer that even though Death is inevitable, as long as one makes their life a memorable one, it could be a happy one.

Process:

It appears as if this animation was made using Photoshop, evidenced by both the background, the look of the characters, and even the movement is somewhat similar to my own animation made primarily in photoshop. Perhaps Adobe Premiere was used to help finalize the project, as the quality of 'The Life of Death' was very well done for a student animation. It appears to have the flow of hand-drawn animations like that of Beauty and the Beast as well as the Lion King, with detail not only given to the characters, but to the entirety of the environment as well.

This story was told through the observant eyes of the viewers, watching a somewhat unusual tale of friendship unfold in front of them.

Elements I would take from this would be the ability to add detail to background, as well as having an outline, as it made everything feel smooth and flow easier, while this project could probably do better at attempting to move the Death character, as some scenes like at the beginning when he was floating, it felt a bit awkward when he moved.

Conclusion:

This was a well-created, student made project that I hope I can one day aspire to. This has movie quality and it drives me to try and create more beautiful animations. This project also reminded me of why I want to be an animator, to not only teach others a moral of the story, but because I want to give life lessons I've learned to others and inspire others to do the same.

"CGI 3D Animated Short HD: "The Life Of Death" - by Marsha Onderstijn." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 09 Mar. 2016.

A Midnight Flight- Behind the Scenes

The Entry

This animation would be the first time I would try my absolute best to get a Pixel at eMagine, I decided when the concept first came to paper. This would be the animation where I could show off what I've been learning for the past two years, and where I can finally show people that this is the career I want to follow. Chute, this small green dragon, would become my personal Mickey Mouse.

The Story Behind the Animation:

Chucho's story began as a sketch within a sketchbook, a single doodle that soon grew into two, then ten, and then a hundred different drawings of this same character. I just knew that I had to bring him to life, as he was the first character I kept drawing repeatedly. So I found an animation online called Reversal of the Heart, an animation revolving around dragons that I took inspiration from. The details of some scenes are actually my attempts to do the creator of Reversal of the Heart's own style of detailed backgrounds. So I decided that this animation, that I would hand draw frames and walk cycles and tests, would be a simple concept. This little dragon would wake up in his cave and decide to got out in the peaceful night in order to take flight, therefore, ' A Midnight Flight.'  I had always liked hand-drawn styles better than 3-D, despite the benefits given to 3-D animators. I also attempted to put in influence from Lilo and Stitch into my animation due to that movie being the reason I want to animate in the first place.

Beginning

It took a week to think of some good storyboards that would pass along to be able to show the scenes I wished to bring to life. So began the attempts of doing plenty of drawings and sketches and tests in order to ensure that everything I wanted to do was doable. Every movement of Chucho was hand-drawn, from his wing movements to his walk cycle to even his ability to blink. The colors of him came from the Slytherin logo from Harry Potter, which I thought would be not only a cool spin on the classic 'dragon',  but a nice little Easter Egg of the preferred house I would be in if I were in the Wizarding World (Unfortunately I'm a Hufflepuff). I created this in Photoshop, painted and drew the backgrounds within the program, some of the animation was done in After Effects, such as the moving when Chucho is flying. The music I gained from Youtube from a game named Ori and the Blind Forest, which i loved playing and felt that this track sounded like it would fit when the animation was made.

Editing

Editing I'm pretty sure one can assume that took awhile, especially in a file with multiple test renders, different animating styles, and even scenes that I had to cut to fit the time period allotted to me. There was well over fifty individual files within the Chucho folder I placed within my desktop, but I brought all of the frames together in After Effects, uploaded a cut version of the soundtrack, and did about 50 seconds of the 1:24 that the song actually was. After six rendering attempts, the project was complete, and I loved this cute little animation. "The Midnight Flight." was the best animation I had ever done before. 

What I learned

I learned about the fundamentals of animating in Photoshop, the benefits of After Effects, how to animate from first person POV, and even how to make a character look like they're flying. Basically, the entirety of the animation was new to me and I enjoy that it was so successful! I couldn't have done it without the assistance of Madison Redmond, Hannah Fales, and Hanna Brady; who helped me make better decisions while animating the project, like having a first person POV in the first place. If I had to do anything different, I would make animated leg movements for when Chucho was flying to make it look more natural. I would keep the type of scenes the same, but add more outlines and define characteristics for the animation background and character. I hope I can make my next animation smoother and better for next time, as well as improving my hand drawn skills for animation. I hope that next time, I can put more Disney-esque influence into the animation, like the old cartoons from the 20s, as I loved those when I was a kid. But I hope to continue down this road of improvement!

Reaching for the Stars

Making the 'Star' of the show

This semester was my first major animation project, to make an animation of my own design and concept in order to test the skills I'd obtained over the past two years. I originally wanted to do an entire animation about this star and its protector trying to find the little star named Sirius after he goes missing, but the scope and magnitude of the project at hand soon made me realize my dream animation would not only be wrought with difficulties, but I would only have time to rig the star completely and model the protector. I believe that was the purpose of this project was to show the difficulties that come with these freedoms I now have to make something entirely original.

Concept

I liked the cute short animations that Disney has done, with normally inanimate objects like something as big as a volcano to a small lamp on a desk. I chose to do a little star, due to the many possibilities I can make with them due to their names and characteristics. The star I made was Sirius, the dog star, which is why I gave my star small dog ears. My original protector character I gave a large, fuzzy imaginary-friend kind of character, as the animation I was going for was a whimsical fun tale that would've interested me as a child.
So I quickly drew them, put them on the computer, and modeled them within Maya. The star was simple to handle. The protector, on the other hand, was challenging. I had originally had fur on his character, with a bunny-like muzzle. Yet the fur tool on Maya was difficult for me to use and couldn't even utilize correctly. So, in a heavy heart, I scrapped the idea for a simpler design of stripes down the sides and arms for him. The protector had a skeleton like that of the star in order to make him move. Using the bone tool, I constructed a custom bone structure for Arcturous (the protector's name), but the types of faces I used had caused problems. So, on both Sirius and Arc, I converted the faces into triangles to attempt to get them to move properly, yet even as I painted weights upon the character, it still didn't move correctly without issue, so I had to abandon my story altogether, with me quickly replacing it with a walk cycle completed for Sirius. I toon-shaded him using the toon color tool within Maya, made him look like a cartoon, and quickly finished the little star walking within the vastness of space. The rendering went without a problem, for once, and I ended the animation in about 49 frames of animated walk cycle.

Lessons Learned

I not only learned abilities to follow specific tutorials within Maya that I hadn't discovered earlier, but I learned how to put in fur within 3-D animations. It was a simple matter of creating an X-Gen file within an animation within Maya, select the type of fur that one would want (custom or premade), and apply it to certain faces upon the character. Getting advice from my peers is something entirely to me, but it surely did help, for when I got stuck within a creative rut, one of them would point out a flaw that could be corrected simply, or even a new idea that helped push me past my stubborn wants for my own animation. They helped me see the flaws within my own work and learn to be more critical of my work. Lastly, I had learned much about the importance of modeling and pre-planning animations, as I went into this animation preparing to learn on the fly and wish to make something good based on ideas made on the fly. I have since been reminded to always plan out what I want to happen within the animation, otherwise I will get lost and lose inspiration from an animation I previously had loved from the beginning.

Same? Different?

I would honestly change the protector's design to closely relate to my star and make it look like he belonged in the same animation with Sirius. The design colors as well, as even some of my peers noticed that the blue stripes down the sides looked similar to those from Tron. But I would keep the concept and the star. I loved everything about them, despite their own individual difficulties I had with them at first.

Epilogue/ Sirius' Last Bow

Generally, this project seemed more of a wake-up call of the difficulties of animation more than anything else. But I did like this project nevertheless. Despite my misgivings about the fur tool, the complete redesign of what I planned to do, and my protector character not working properly, I am very proud of what I worked on throughout this entire semester. I decided for my next project within Maya that I will design them after I had drawn out what I want with them, and that they'll fit the layout design I've planned to make them with. Already, modeling for it is easier the second time around. Perhaps maybe I'll learn to use the fur tool this project, but the skeleton and mesh are much easier to move now that I've considered how my new character will move. I loved this project, as it helped me assure myself to be the best animator that I can be, despite all the misfortunes that may occur. I hope that in the future I will retain the knowledge I have and add to this ever increasing plethora of animation knowledge. Using the new information I learned from this project, I will make my next animation even better.

The Sweet Tune of Animation

Main Melody (Main Idea)

With the (then current) success of Frozen's soundtrack, it was about the successful nature of many new animated films, such as the Happy album from Despicable Me 2, or Immortals from Big Hero 6. It was about how the soundtrack can make or break a film, how the soundtrack can give the animated feature a new life, and how it can make a movie more popular than anticipated.
The author was arguing mainly for how the music within Disney movies, (as well as some from other companies) can make a film rise to Stardom, the prime example being that of how the new film Frozen's soundtrack outselling the record holder Lion King. He also uses prime examples that are both support that the music can make more money for a movie, like Snow White for it's revolutionary music that set the precedent for all future Disney musicals, to the time where test audiences wished for a completely new track in Pocahontas. He has backed up his sources using other interviews from both Disney employees and DreamWorks as well. However, the main weak point for this argument is that they don't discuss any of the repercussions for bad soundtracks. But another, smaller weak point is that it doesn't focus on any movies abroad, like say Wallace and Gromit, whose soundtrack is phenomenal with the movie. Yet there are several strong points in her claim, by using well known examples and success stories, as this will resonate with a broader audience. There is also the fact that she explained some of the success by using quotes from the directors of some of these films. Her conclusions being that the movie industry is booming with the new advancements and brilliant compositions of music within the film.
I do believe that the argument is important, as the movie industry with all of its advancement from the first animated feature or cartoon with sound, have come to expect pieces that match the story's feel and emotions perfectly. If a film is not up to par with the score, the entire piece, no matter how moving or emotional, will feel off and leave audiences dissatisfied. The evidence seems to be convincing, and I do not see any wide range of ramifications to be made to the argument.
The applications of an animator is that we have to be sure that if we do choose to have music, that it must fit the animation, and it can make or break a movie. But yet what I don't understand is what the author meant by it was odd to hear about how "...it was still considered unusual to make a song-heavy animated film.[in 2006]", as I had thought that other animated features were influenced heavily by its music before that, such as Lion King or Beauty and the Beast.
But now using this knowledge, it helps me realize the importance sound can give a viewer, about how music can help make or break the success of an animated feature. If I were to make a great animation, it is only fitting to have correct score in it as well.


Keegan, Rebecca. "Animated Movies Sing a Happy Tune." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 19 Apr. 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.