Semester 1 Portfolio-Final Project

Semester 1 Portfolio 

Jeremy Ingalls

During the first semester of the 2015 school 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 my strengths was time management. I tried to waste as little time as possible and make as many improvements as I could in one work day. So that is basically everything i did in first semester in a nutshell.

Basic Human Shape Tutorial

This is a tutorial that will teach you how to create a basic human shape. After making the body shape you can then begin to go into greater detail.





1. Place a cube and use the scale tool in order to make it into a more rectangle shape.

 2. Change the faces or subdivisions until you have 3 on the side. Then extrude the 2 faces, not the middle face, until they are leg length.

 3.Then extrude the arms out of the faces where the shoulders would be until they are an arms length.

 4. Extrude the neck out of the top.

 5. From the top of the neck, extrude a face, then extrude the faces on the side of the first extruded face until there is a cube on the neck, which will become the head.

 6. Using the move tool, which is the icon with a cube and arrows, select the two vertexes by the neck move them up in order to form shoulders.

7. then select the entire body and turn on smoothing by pressing the 3 key on the keyboard. Now you have the basic human body shape.

Professional Review

I will be reviewing how Avengers should've ended, it is part of the web-series: how it should have ended. This channel animates scenes from popular movies and makes fun of plot holes, oversights, and it points out major flaws. The series has existed since 2005 and has received a ton of success.
("How The Avengers Should Have Ended." YouTube. YouTube, 31 May 2012. Web. 28 Aug. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZkqC4Lz8dU>.)

The animation techniques and style seen in the video are very basic. The are on a 2d plane and there are a lot of assets that are reused in different scenes. Although it is basic, it doesn't look bad. The walk cycles and facial movements are very clean and smooth. The colors and textures are not blurry, they are bright look great. Also the character design is great, as soon as the characters are seen the are  immediately reconizeable and look the they do in there movies.

The story of the animation is the end fight scene from avengers but animated on a 2d plane. Then it shows all the characters from the movie talking at a cafe about the movie, breaking the 4th wall in the  process. The story was told from a third person perspective, showing everything thats going on. 

One element I would like to apply to my own work is the character design. The character design in the video is very true to the character's original form. Anyone who sees the characters will know who they are. Even the way they talk sounds like the characters they are based on.

One thing from the video that I had already knew was walk cycles. This video has walk cycles that are similar but more complex than the ones I have done in the past.

One thing the animator did well having a "busy" scene. There are many things going on in the foreground and the background. The scenes are vibrant and livly. One way the animator could improve would be that he could make some characters or things more complex. Often there are characters that are very simple and basic.

So overall it is a very good animation video that stays true to the source material. The animations and effects are smooth and clean. The sound design, from the voice acting to the music is very good. The only improvements would be very small nitpicks and overall aren't noticeable. 

9/10

+Great animation and effects               -Basic background characters

+Great sound design                            -Reused assets

+True to source material

Animation Final Project

Animation Final

This is the final I made with Zac and Alan. We had an idea to make a mock fighting video game where we fight each of our 2d animations from 1st semester. We whittled it down to me fighting Zac's 2d animation that Zac modeled into a 3d animation in Maya. So we filmed me in front of the green screen fighting and in after effects Zac inserted his robot to make it look like I was fighting the robot. My jobs were to act, do the effects, sound effects, original music, game over fonts, and make the character select screen you see at the beginning. I made the character select screen in photoshop by making a time line animation. I made it look like a select screen from a fighting game like Mortal Kombat. I made character icons for all of us and our 2d animations even though Me and Zacs robot where the only ones actually fighting. I made original music for the whole thing in garage band. Alan did the green screen effects, vs screen, and after files. Zac did the animating. We brought all of our parts together and formed the animation. The video you see above is the final project.

Responsive Web Design Intro

A. Responsive Web Design- an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones) (wikipedia)


B. Responsive Web design is important because it makes a more user friendly interface to your website. If the site looks bad on mobile the user won't want to bother with it but the resposive design invites the user to use the site. a place in a computer program where the sequence of instructions is interrupted, especially by another program or by the operator.


C. Media Queries- a CSS3 module allowing content rendering to adapt to conditions such as screen resolution (e.g. smartphone screen vs. computer screen). It became a W3C recommended standard in June 2012. and is a cornerstone technology of Responsive web design.(wikipedia)


D. Breakpoints- a place in a computer program where the sequence of instructions is interrupted, especially by another program or by the operator.



One of the best responsive websites is the Boston Globe: http://www.bostonglobe.com

The smallest version has only one story to the top, the menu is a button on the top, there are no ads, and the font gets a little bigger







For the 2nd smallest version of the site it loses the menu at the top, it moves one of the top stories down, and the font gets bigger




The biggest version has a menu bar at the top, the images are bigger, its has three stories at the top, and the font gets a little smaller.

PC vs Mobile Phones vs Tablet

Over the last 3 years mobile phones have cought up with and over took PC's in the amount of time usage on the internet. Google statistics show that in 2010 7% of the views were mobile and in 2014 it went up to 74%.  In 2010  70% were PC and in 2014 17% were PCs. Over the next 10 years it will probably be mostly mobile uses. 

Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate)[1] is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site (wikipedia).

The bounce rate is the highest for mobile at 45%. its the the lowest for PC at 33%. Pages per view are the highest for PC at 11. Its the lowest for mobile at 5. This shows people when using a PC want to sit and view things for longer periods of time, and mobile users want to get quick bursts of information.

Those stats are mirroring the stats of page views and bounce rate of the ONW website. They have all increased in the same ways over the last 3 years. It all shows that mobile is rising and rising to power, more and more people are getting them and less and less people have PCs.  

Sources:

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/74727-Visitors-Devices-Affect-Ecommerce-Conversions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_rate

Blog overhaul

Over this past week I have made several big changes to this blog.

1. I have added a image to the header of the blog to replace the title text. The image shows off some of my best projects.

2. I added A section to the sidebar where users can click a link to my profile page or the home page.

3. I changed the color scheme of the blog to blue instead of having a blank white background.

4. I added a picture of of myself to the main page.

5. I limited the number of posts that are displayed on the main page to 10.

6. And Lastly i added a section where you can share the posts on twitter, Facebook, etc.

My Can

This is my can i made in maya. I made the can texture in photoshop. I made it look like a real can logo. I used the CV curve tool to make half the out line of the can. I then used the revolve tool to fill in the design and make it a full 3d model.

chef jeremy can

Snowflakes in hoth

This is the snowflake video i made in maya. I made 6 separate snowflakes and put them in the same scene. I used keyframes to move all 6 snowflakes at the same time and make it look like snow falling.  I got the background Picture from the internet and I put the picture behind the window I made in maya to give the allusion of snow falling.

MAYA STUFF

 This is the hammer I made in maya. I learned how to go into vertices mode. That mode,made making the tip of the hammer easier.

 This is the salt shaker I made in maya. I learned how to use circle tool to form the salt shaker. I made the salt shaker see through like glass so the salt can be seen. I used a sand texture and turned it white to look like salt.

These are the containers I made maya. I learned how to use NURBS to model the two containers. I could just outline half of the container and NURBS would fill in the rest.

These are the bouncing balls I made in maya. We went to the the flex theater to drop the balls and time how long it takes before they hit the ground. Then I went in Maya and learned how to set up keyframes and time the drops like they are in real life.

 This is the lazy sally I made in maya. I reused the ice-cream from a previous project. I set up key frames to get the sally to move slowly. 

This the Polything I made in maya. In this project I learned how to use and move lights. I learned how to use fill, directional, area, and many more.