Animation Personal Project Review

My personal project consisted of another kinetic typography project. This project started out as an emagine entry project, however, half way through the song, I began to lose interest. Therefore, the project became a trial project. I used it to try different ideas and techniques. I wanted to add much more color and transitions and effects to the words than earlier projects.
    Throughout my project, I learned different skills and techniques to use for future projects. The end product took about 1 week to do and is fairly complete. The pre-editing process took a few days as well. Perhaps the most difficult part of kinetic typography projects is finding the perfect song, speech, etc. The audio has to be easy to comprehend (Same with the text), appropriate for whatever you're doing, and last but not least, it has to be appealing to you.
     If I redid another typography project, I would keep the opening sequence of this project, and change some of the images and texts used. I learned how to use more colors and lots more transitions in this project.
     I am overall content with my project and am looking forward to any other future projects as I know they will only continue to get better and better.

Animation Technical Tutorial Kinetic Typography

How to create a Kinetic Typography Project:

1. Find a song that you won't get bored listening to
2. Find a style of editing for the song

Things to keep in mind:

• Kerning
• Making sure everything stays aligned
• Timing
• Colors
• Transitions
• Font

Everything on the list makes up a solid kinetic typography project. Timing, transitions, and font/color are the most important factors to make up an appealing project. Kerning and keeping everything aligned falls into the "easy on the eyes" feeling and also makes the difference between an amateur project and a proffesional one

PeRsOnAl PrOjEcT

     My project is another kinetic typography. This time around, with much much more experience, I was able to hit the ground running. I tried to use a lot more effects and styles while at the same time maintaining the same theme throughout. Like my previous project, I based my lyrics and background off of the song. For my project, I used the old styles for the intro. I however, did the same thing I did last time. I based my background off of the song. I painted my own background and imitated the same colors throughout. This project had to be done in a very short timeframe.
     The entire project was to be done within one month. Kinetic typography is time consuming and each text, alignment, font, effect, etc. has to not only show the correct wording, but be entertaining and express the thought in it. The project was 2/3 completed within the first week and a half. However, following this, motivation and inspiration began to fade.

Project Summary

Overview:

     The scope of the project is to create a video with overlaying sound effects and visual effects. The end result is a combination of stimulating visual effects and a pleasing visual presentation of the audio.

The Process:

      The planning of the scene/plot is just as important as the actual scene/plot itself. Conveying a message/story is important.

1. Storyboard, storyboard, storyboard - the first storyboard is usually drafted and then remade
2. Preparation: Preparing time and place to match the scene/mood is important and planning the scene will make the actual execution of the scene more efficient
3. Editing in manageable pieces: Editing a massive collage is much more difficult to manage and locate (especially if the project were to become corrupt). Editing the project in small pieces will make the project easier to manage and edit (IE- Slicing all footages together, render, place audio in footage, render, put final effects in video)

Examples:

 

Final Result:

The final storyboard is a result of a draft storyboard. The end result is a shortened film while maintaining the story/message.

Reference Videos:

Videos in Courtesy of Peter McKinnon

End of Year Reflection

Reflection:

       Technology. What is technology? technology is a large meme. One thing I've taken from technology is the in-depth knowledge of the adobe suite, After Effects to be precise.  I learned this through extensive youtube videos and online tutorials for specific effects I needed. This is important because these skills have enhanced my basis of learning and will be used in future projects. I faced challenges such as un-cooperating effects, but trial and error fixed most of it.

        I've learned important social skills such as talking. I learned this through my communication and collaboration with others. Most of these conversations consists of one's flaming. I faced challenges such as rude classmates that assaulted my work of masterful art.

       Time management is a skill I have acquired through my journey to enlightenment. I've managed to control my time to better suit my needs and meet my deadlines.

      Since the beginning of my junior year, I've become a leader of my minions. A tyrant of my people. A, god among men. This skill wasn't learned, it was an inherit trait that was brought out through necessity. I faced challenges such as my challengers; they were put down regardless to say.

      What are my greatest strengths/weaknesses you ask? I have infinite strengths and no weaknesses. The great Lord Ng fears none and rules with shivering power. I have improved for the better and have gained many skills and fixed many fears such as a crashing maya. I still need to work on skills such as ruling with mercy.

      My acquired skills gained are to be used for future projects as discussed before, and as many of my minions know; the Great Lord Ng does not take kind to repeating one's self.

       If I were to change one thing, I would change my student minions for a more modern sense. Maybe Malibu Minions? Why you may ask? For more style and education.

       As I write this blog, my time is near. I leave you with but one thing, e-Academy 4 lyfe and e-Communications Academy is for the weak. #eAcademyUp!

      

The Plausible Impossible

The Plausible Impossible: Donald Duck

Top 5 Plausible Impossible Moments:

1) 

 

     The first plausible impossible is a two-part scene illustrating Donald Duck's cousin unknowingly knocking the door to hitting Donald Duck's head. The ability to be unaware of the change in an involved surrounding is unlikely but in this case, is considered humorous and comical.

2)

         The second example is honking with their fluff butt. A duck's ability to honk with their feathers are highly unlikely and therefore seemingly impossible. However, it is plausible for a duck to honk with their feathers due to the fact that honking and other communicative sounds are this duck's only ability to interact with others.

3)

        Here we have a duck shuffling sandwiches. A rare scene indeed. A duck's ability to shuffle sandwiches, however impressive, is highly improbable. But in the world of animation, the duck's ability to shuffle bread and other means of eating is used to convey the duck's very specific set of skills.

4)

          The fourth example is the scene following the bread shuffle. It shows the duck's neck being squashed and stretched to illustrate the digestion of the sandwich mountain. The realistic capability of a duck to turn into an animalistic accordion is far from real. The plausibility of this effect is to illustrate yet another impressive feat of Donald Duck's cousin.

5)

            The final example is the knitting of spaghetti. The scene is made to appeal comedic and cartoonic emotions within viewers. Once again, the possibility of such a feat is 0 to none. But the plausibility of this is possible because of the duck's impressive capabilities of eating and flashy showmanship while doing so.

Animation: Professional Project Review

    Pixar: Lifted

 In the animated short by pixar named "Lifted," the entire short film consists of comedy without words, and a lot of emotion. One thing I noticed is how big of a role sound effect and music play in telling the story.
     I think the story was very well told and definitely entertaining even though there wasn't any words said.
    Throughout the animation, the lighting and effects were spot on and very realistic. The most important part, in my opinion, was the fluidity of its movements. The smooth movement was extremely appealing and satisfying to look at.
    Pixar's "Lifted," offered a very insightful learning experience. I took quite a bit from watching this, but the most important things I've learned are: Music & sound effects play a big role and fluidity/ smoothness are extremely important. These factors create emotion and make projects much more realistic.

Animation: Professional Article Review

 

Game Engine History

  In the article written by Linda Selliheim, it goes in depth into how to create 3D games with substance. This is explained later in the article.
     Sellheim claims most 3D games are lacking concept and structure/substance. The article explains the technological advancements of game engines. The main contrast in the article was the age difference and how technology and techniques have changed. Comparing older based games' techniques to modern day techniques. Pre-modernization of video game editing, many aspects of video games were faked. The article explains how light would be colored in and bump mapping was the main way to make things look realistic.
      The next generation of creation following this drastically changed. Game engines were much more advanced and enhanced. Game engines are now capable of creating realistic environments and characters. To top that, the interaction within environment and character are extremely complicated now versus older editing. Environments are now interacting with characters such as having light bounce of different objects in different ways.

Source: https://www.lynda.com/articles/3d-games-substance-pbr

Animation: Personal Project Animation

      All Time Low: Kinetic Typography

      My personal project is also my e-magine project. My project is another kinetic typography. This time around, with much much more experience, I was able to hit the ground running. I tried to use a lot more color and images while at the same time maintaining the same theme throughout (Font). Like my previous project, I based my lyrics and background off of the original song. For my project, I used the album art for the intro background. I however, did the same thing I did last time. I based my background off of the album. I painted my own background and imitated the same colors throughout. This project had to be done in a very short timeframe.
     The entire project was to be done within one month. Kinetic typography is time consuming and each text, alignment, font, effect, etc. has to not only show the correct wording, but be entertaining and express the thought in it. The project was 2/3 completed within the first week and a half. However, following this, motivation and inspiration began to fade.
      The project is 2/3 completed as shown:

Animation: Technical Tutorial

How to create a Kinetic Typography Project:

1. Find a song that you won't get bored listening to
2. Find a style of editing for the song

Things to keep in mind:

• Kerning
• Making sure everything stays aligned
• Timing
• Colors
• Transitions
• Font

Everything on the list makes up a solid kinetic typography project. Timing, transitions, and font/color are the most important factors to make up an appealing project. Kerning and keeping everything aligned falls into the "easy on the eyes" feeling and also makes the difference between an amateur project and a proffesional one

Animation: Article Review

The Article: http://www.skwigly.co.uk/annecy-2016-moana/

     The Animation article is by Ben Mitchell and it talks about the process and the reputation behind the animator and animator. The article's main topic is the inner workings of the new Disney film Moana. The film was made through multiple different teams working together. The teams include a cg blending team, hand-drawn animation, and the complications that arouse while making the film. Some troubles include the logical and free-spirited side of the characters in the film.

Animation: Professional Project Review

     The professional project review is over kinetic  typography. The project is made by a youtube channel known as "Pixel Perfect." The project is as followed:



     Throughout the project, every text and transition is smooth and weaves into the next. The only part I feel doesn't fit is 46-47 & 1:12-1:25. Other than that, the rest of the project is fairly seamless. I loved the color scheme used in this and all the background changes and I applied these to my project as well. I think the entire project was very well made and every text had an equal effect to them and overall the project is very balanced and very easy on the eyes.

Animation: Personal Blog Post

My Project:

    My personal project consisted of another kinetic typography project. This project started out as an emagine entry project, however, half way through the song, I began to lose interest. Therefore, the project became a trial project. I used it to try different ideas and techniques. I wanted to add much more color and transitions and effects to the words than earlier projects.
    Throughout my project, I learned different skills and techniques to use for future projects. The end product took about 1 week to do and is fairly complete. The pre-editing process took a few days as well. Perhaps the most difficult part of kinetic typography projects is finding the perfect song, speech, etc. The audio has to be easy to comprehend (Same with the text), appropriate for whatever you're doing, and last but not least, it has to be appealing to you.
     If I redid another typography project, I would keep the opening sequence of this project, and change some of the images and texts used. I learned how to use more colors and lots more transitions in this project.
     I am overall content with my project and am looking forward to any other future projects as I know they will only continue to get better and better.

Kinetic Typography: Update

      For my personal focus project I went through multiple different project ideas ranging from 3D Modeling, 2D Story Animation, to my current project; Kinetic Typography. However, I have also scrapped an entire project to pursue another song. I did this because the previous song retained too many simple errors and the song itself seemed to fail in certain areas. This was my previous song:

      As seen, the video had a lot of simple errors such as spacing/kerning. The text itself didn't build off of each other the way I had anticipated it either. Therefore, I researched different kinetic typography videos to see how my project was different than theirs. I went through 10s of videos but here are a few that inspired me:





      Using these references, I built a new project while keeping in mind how each word needs to build off one another. I also put more transitions and spent a couple days on 3D modeling a background for one of the scenes.This was the finished product:





MY FINAL PROJECT:



The Process:
       During my project, I found out that my attention span is not long enough to stick with one song long enough to finish it. Starting with heathens, I ended up trying to create a mashup but didn't seem to fit, I ended up meshing one into the other.

What I learned:
      My final project wasn't my first project. I cycled through multiple songs and multiple styles before settling. I've made different songs with different styles and even tried speeches. In the beginning of the typography, my work was fairly amateur and didn't have much symmetry to it. I then made my second typography (Warriors). Between that and my final project, I tried lots of different things. On my final project, lining everything up, movement of text, and images were much more vibrant than before.

Future Projects:
     In future projects, I wanted to try to add a lot more effects and lots of different color changes. I tried out different ideas on this project as a guideline to future projects.




Behance Link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/46075821/Closer-Heathens-Kinetic-Typography

Animation: Professional Project Review

     This animated short film's storyline was the evil maid about to kill the dust bunnies but then there was one brave dust bunny that prevents any further killing of the dust bunnies. He goes inside the vacuum and tries to rescue his friends while fighting against time as the evil maid is on the way of plugging the cord back in. But all this happens before the plug is back in. At the end, the resolution is the evil maid being sucked in by the vacuum.
     The entire animation was made without using a single word and only sound effects and yet the story is still communicated across and the feelings are still felt. I would apply this to my animation skills by using more sound effects and less of "actually showing" everything. Sound effects and expressions can be much more powerful than just saying everything flat out. They even sometimes express the story better.
     The creators made the film very enjoyable by using the general stereotypes to express characters because no words were said, expressing characters fully are very difficult to do. The creators of the film can work on the ending. The ending was an expected one and maybe add a twist.

Animation: Technical Tutorial

The Product:






The Process:

1. Find a video or image to use as a background, either will work (preferably high resolution)
2. Place the composition into aftereffects (use the image's resolution as composition dimensions)
3. Create a matte around what areas of the image/video you want to be in front of the VFX (You do this by creating a new solid layer, using the pen tool to draw around the area, then alpha revert the matte)
   
   After interlaying the VFX and mattes, the final product will appear as a real explosion has taken place

Animation: Professional Article Review

What School Is Best For Me?
        This article covers what animation school would best fit you and your personal needs. The article provides where the school is, what alumni you will need, what they will be teaching, and how much experience is needed. It also goes into much deeper details about what the school will teach and provide to the students, if the school's teachers are capable of teaching what they need to teach that you can apply to the real world (Ex. Having a movie animation teacher that has actually done movie animations before). It also talks about which school would provide the best alumni to fit you.

Source Link: http://www.animationarena.com/animation-school.html

Animation: Personal Project Review

Intro:
The personal project review I chose to do is the final. The final was make a video using the skills we have learned throughout the year. It includes: Greenscreen, VFX, 3D Modeling, and a lot of editing. The final product looked a little like this:

The Process:
        The project took a lot of work to finish. Storyboarding the video was the first step followed by actually shooting the scenes needed. There were lots of bumps in the road that needed to be smoothed in aftereffects. Many of the shots were cut off and I had to find a way to fix it. After a lot of editing, matting, smoothing, and putting on the finishing touches, the video was finished. The video took a lot more work than expected but was still accomplishable.
        Throughout the project I learned that many of the projects that I will be doing will not turn out perfect or how I imaged it in my mind, but it is up to me to fix what needs to be fixed and learn on the job/ work with what I have. If I were to do something differently texted time, I would create a better work spread. In this project, almost all of the work/editing was placed on two of us. I would learn to spread the work evenly throughout the group next time we do a project like this again.

Thoughts and Conclusions:
        I think that this project had the potential to be very fun and intriguing. If this project were a solo project, it would've made the project much more enjoyable. I think doing whatever idea you wanted to do, no matter how much work, would've been much more enjoyable and efficient if it were something you'd wanted to do.

Graphic Design: Professional Article Review

What is Graphic Design?
        In the AIGA's "What is Graphic Design?" they talked about what graphic design is and how it involves daily life. Graphic design, or also known as communication design, is used to inspire and spread ideas/thoughts throughout the world using art. The article also branches into smaller parts of graphics design that make it up as a whole. The article also covers how graphic design can be a job.

Source Link: http://www.aiga.org/what-is-design/

Graphics Design: Personal Focus

The Box: Simplistic design and following the theme of vectors and geometric lines. It also contains the name of the deck, designer, and year it was made.












                                                                       BASED OFF OF:

MY DESIGN: