Senior Animation Year in Review

This was a very eventful senior year in communication animation. I worked on and completed multiple projects, got nominated for an award at Emagine, and showcased my many projects at the 2017 senior show. The two main projects I worked on this year were Bagman and my park. First Bagman was a group project that I Alan Seidl and Zac Schuh. It was a parody style animation of a "superhero" named Bagman whose is delusional and thinks he is a superhero. The second was a project that I did by myself and it was my park. It was a 3d environment of a park with playground equipment, basketball courts, and much more. I think both projects turned out very well even though they grew in scope and size from the original conceptions to the final versions. The first project, Bagman, was nominated for best character animation and it controversially got fifth place but that was still out of dozens of nominations and it was an honor to just be nominated.

At the end of the year we showcased our many works at the 2017 senior show. I made a demo reel of my many projects to be shown at the senior show. It included Bagman, The park, and some of my projects from previous years as well. Overall the senior show went pretty well. I got to meet with lots of people and show off what I've accomplished over my four years in E-communications. It was also cool to see my fellow Ecommunication members works and see how far they have come over their tim in Ecomm.

Overall my time in Ecomm has taught me many invaluable things that will help me in college and during my eventual search for employment. It gave me a substantial background knowledge of many applications that are industry standards like Maya and Aftereffects. I learned about the process of finding an idea for a project and going through the steps to make that idea a reality. It taught me how to work well in a group with other people and how to balance the work between everyone on the group and how to hold everyone in the group accountable for their own work. I also learned that appearance matters and that you must act professional when showcasing your works and talents if you want to be successful in this industry. Overall Ecomm helped me figure out what I want to do with my life by introducing me to the field and I believe it has given me a valuable advantage over people who didn't have a program like this in their high school. The demo real I made for the senior show is only a small glimpse at what I got from being involved in the Animation part of E-communiacations.

My Demo Reel:https://youtu.be/9XLzraMXFIo

Rogue One's use of CGI Characters opinion Piece (spoilers)

Spoilers for Rogue One A Star Wars Story:

Rogue One takes place during the era of the original trilogy that we all know and love. When that was first revealed many fans wondered how many familiar characters from previous movies we would see in the movie. It would feel weird to not have familiar characters considering where this movie took place.Disney and Lucasfilm said nothing to hint at the return of legacy characters, as they kept saying that it was a stand alone movie with its own characters. However as trailers started to be released fans spotted some familiar characters like Mon Monthma, Bail Organa, and even Darth Vader. This made fans believe that those characters were the only legacy characters in the movie, but it was not everyone, two more important characters from the original trilogy also made there return.

One of those characters is Grand Moff Tarkin. When you consider his role in episode 4, it would have been odd to not see him in this movie. He is the third in command for the Empire behind only Darth Vader and the Emperor. So his inclusion in this movie was almost necessary and as it turns out he is in the movie. They got Peter Cushing, who played him in 1977, to return to play the role. Which is odd because he passed away over 20 years ago. Using similar technology to the one used in Tron legacy and Captain America civil War, the animators at ILM were able to digitally bring a dead actor back to life. For the most part, the effect worked really well. It was about 95% close to being perfect. The only time in my opinion that the effect is obvious is when they go close in on his eyes. His eyes look lifeless and you can see the animations, but besides that it was really impressive. People argue that he didn't need to be in the movie at all, but I completely disagree. It completely makes sense for him to be there and I'm glad they took that chance. Above everything, its fan service, which is not a bad thing. As a huge star wars fan, I got chills when he said "you may fire when ready" just like he did in Episode 4. While the technology is no quite there, it was pretty close and in my opinion, the chance they took paid off.

Another legacy character that was brought back for this movie was Princess Leia. Similar to Tarkin, her inclusion made complete sense. Considering the movie was about stealing the death star plans and in episode four she has the plans, it would have been weird for her not to be there in some way. Her role is far smaller than Tarkin's however, as she is only in one scene. She appears when the Rebels have successfully stolen the plays and a rebel captain brings her the plans. He hands her the plans and asks "what did they send us" and the same Leia from Episode 4 turns and says "hope". She appears using the same technology as Tarkin. They used an effect to make her look like Carie Fisher in 1977 and again it is really close. Again the effect is only noticeable when you look at the eyes. The way the used her character it really adds connective tissue to the saga as a whole. Even though the effect is not quite there yet, its really cool that they went for it. The effects used for Tarkin and Leia overall were really impressive and you believe that those are those charters. You can see that we are only years away from seeing this effect be perfected and seeing movies with all dead actors.

Bagman Forever Project

Bagman Forever was a group project I made with Zac Schuh and Alan Seidl. It is a comical twist to the classic superhero story. It is about a hero named "Bagman" who is delusional and believes he is a superhero. He sees the pizza man and believes that he is a criminal because the pizza logo looks like a monster. Alan did the first scene and zac did the second scene. I did things to assist both of them and made items and textures they required for their scenes. Then at the completion of both scene I edited the whole project together. I made the title card, the credits, transitions, and i inserted music and sound effects. While this sounds non-consiquential, its actual very important to tie the whole project together, without that you would only have several non connected scenes with no context. Thats basically everything, we plan to submit it to the 2017 Emagine awards.

Link to project: https://youtu.be/sSeHYUNBnoo

Animation Final Blog

Animation Year In Review                       

In this year of ecomm, I learned many new things. I got more comfortable with many of the programs we’ve used over the years. I learned about the more in-depth parts of Maya and After Effects. I used many tutorials on many of my projects, and I was able to use those skills on other projects.  For example, I learned how to manipulate vertexes more easily. With that skill, many new possibilities for my projects opened up. Those skills were important because it allowed me to work out parts of my projects more easily.

My biggest improvement is that I don’t have to look up or ask as many questions.  I started to remember parts of Maya and after effects that I previously had to look up or ask someone.  This year I was able to start up new projects easier, because of my amount of experience with the programs.

This year in animation my weaknesses and strengths became clearer.  One of my greatest weaknesses is coming up with ideas or concepts for projects. I find it is very difficult to come up with an idea that I think will work. I will start an idea and find out later that it is too ambitious or complicated. I found that I work best when we have a project in which were told specifically what to do. That way I don’t have to waste time coming up with an effective idea. One of my biggest strengths is keeping details true to source material. Whether it’s my baseball field or my light saber, I feel that one of my strengths is keeping the details of those objects consistent to the actual items. I go to great lengths to translate the details of the actual items to my projects.

The many skills that I acquired over this year allowed me to many to do more things with my projects. They allowed me to do things that I believed to be too difficult in the past. For example I can easily work with many different shapes and tools.  Where as in the past I was limited to the basic shapes and tools. I will also be able to use those skills in the future as well as expand on those skills. Things or tasks that are difficult for me now will become easier in the future, just like how I’m good at things now that I used to be stumped with. During this year I worked on modeling many different items for a collaboration project with Zac Schuh. A modeled a human, a desk, and other simple props. The human took the most time, however they all took a good amount of time and effort to complete. During the semester i learned many different things while trying to model different things. During the making of the human, I learned how to model human body parts.I got better at making and fitting custom textures for both the human and my other projects. I also learned how to rig human parts in maya, and when the rigs did not work properly, I fixed them by learning to paint weights. I also learned the important lesson of not trying to make things too realistic, but instead make it your own style, because when you strive for realism it is more easy to notice things that are out of place or incorrect. After rigging snd painting weights, I learned how to move the human parts in semi-realistic ways. So struggles I had was making the textures fit in different items. I found it hard to find the right texture size so that it was right size and it was rotated the right way. I also struggled with painting weights. I would have all the joints working accept one, but that one would throw a wrench into the works, and when I would fix that one joint another joint would get messed up and it was a long process to fix all of them. 
         One of the main things I would change about this year was my human project. Looking back on it, it was way too ambitious and complicated for it too be realistically a thing I could do. I sunk so much time into that project and I wish that I could go back and tell myself that I needed to stop. It was ultimately I waste of my time.

So that is basically my junior year in nutshell. I learned a lot of new things. I also refined some old things I knew previously.  So basically, besides a few missteps, it was a pretty good year.

Time Passing Project (Star Wars through the generations)

This a project I made to show moving time in an animation. The assignment we had was to make an animation that somehow showed time moving. So I decided to show a family watching Star Wars as they grow older. It starts with A person watch the movie by himself, then it cuts to him watching it years later with his wife, then it cuts forward again to show the couple watching it with their kid. By doing this, it shows that time is passing, while the characters are showing Star Wars to the new generations. It is a little rough around the edges, as I'm not proficient in the area of 2d animation, but the quality is good enough to show what I'm trying to show. So that is how a showed time passing in an animation.