Week 11/17-11/22

Investigation: Day & Night in Blender

For my animation I want to show the progression of time and the passing of the day without cutting. To do this time-lapse I will have to create a day and night cycle to progress during the animation. Though, for what I want there were not many good tutorials out there, most of them were for blender game engine. I want to show day, sunset and nighttime with the rotation of the sun and moon but no one has a tutorial like that so mostly for this part I will have to wing it. Kinda sucks but I am up for the challenge. I know exactly how I want it to look like but I will first have to become more familiar with the world settings, as it has not been something I have messed around with before.

I want each time of day to be depicted in my animation. Not only will it help with the progression of the story-line but it will be much more interesting for the viewer to watch. Also, lighting really changes the point of view of the character and the story, so I am very excited to see how this turns out. This project is definitely a bigger task than I expected but I feel like I can achieve what I have planned.

Hesitations:

Right now I keep reviewing my story and although I had thought it was very original I am worried that it may rip off part of Wall-E and now I am very worried about going through with the project. I don't want someone to see it and be like well that was very nice but you know it kinda just feels like Wall-E. I did not think of this while writing it and now I don't know what to do. Will I have to re-write? I don't want to but I just might have to change some things.

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Monday- Scene Work

Tuesday- More Scene Work

Wednesday- Lighting

Thursday- Absent

Friday- Absent

Week 11/10-11/15

Investigation:

With this tutorial I made smog instead of fog. I thought it was important to add this feature to my scene to not only make it more realistic but add to that dirty ambiance I want. One of my biggest problems right now is realism. The scene isn't how I want it to look like yet and this really adds to the effect. I am almost finished with my scene, then I can finally start animating.

This is the effect I wanted for my scene. Clearly I'm not able to pull it off as well as these photos, especially considering that my scene is not that big. But, overall is adds to my ambiance. I can't wait to see how this scene looks when I am finished. I feel once I am done I will be proud to show it and be able to create a pretty cool animation.

Next Week:
Next week I plan to catch up with the days I missed last week. I am going to try to finish my scene and start animating. I want to add more trash such as boxes, rusted cars and objects, and various trash like water bottles and milk jugs. But, because this is a scrap yard I don't want too much trash, I want more rusted and metal objects. I also need to work with the world texture and find out day and night cycles. That will most likely be what I investigate next week.

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Monday- Absent

Tuesday- Absent

Wednesday- Absent

Thursday- Absent

Friday- Working on the Scene

MP 1 Presentation: Reflection

Seeing what my classmates did in class was very inspiring for me. When I see them doing great work it makes me want to strive for better. After seeing some of the presentations I felt like I was lagging behind and now I want to step my project up. Without this push I don't know if my project would be going as well as it is right now. I am glad I got to see my peer's projects and can't wait to see more from them.



Carey:
One that stood out to me was Carey's project. I had never really seen someone try 2D animation so it was very interesting to me. With his presentation I learned about how you can use layering and onion skinning to make a 2D animation in a shorter amount of time, rather than drawing each step. I knew this was possible but this really gave me an insight into 2D animation from an angle I hadn't seen before. The night after him presenting this project I actually decided to try out some 2D animation myself. I really found it fun and think I could use it in the future. I was inspired to do something I hadn't really tried too much before.

Andrew:

Another interesting project was Andrew's. I really like his type of work. His travel videos I find to be very professional and high quality. I especially like his use of color grading. The footage always flows together very nicely and are nice and crisp. You could tell me it was done by a professional and I wouldn't even question. He is very skilled in both video capture and editing. His music choice even corroborates well with the footage. I think he is very talented and should take some lessons from his book.

Giovanni:
I was very impressed with Giovanni's work. For his music video he had a very concrete idea and went with it through trial and error. You can tell how passionate he is about his work and I find his music very well made, which is very uncommon amongst rappers at our school. I am inspired by his work ethic and drive to create a better product. I remember him talking about how he scrapped his original idea because he felt it wasn't up to the standards he wishes to put on his music videos. I related that to my struggle I had at the beginning of the year where I could not figure out what I wanted to do for my project and had an idea, but scrapped it.

(No media because I couldn't find his YouTube or SoundCloud)

Tristan:

What I found very impressive about Tristan's work was how much time and organized effort he puts into his work. I personally struggle with this. I love to do my work and work on my project but I never get to put in the time and I have never been very organized. Tristan though, knows what he wants and where he is going and has the drive to achieve that. I really respect that. He puts a seriousness and drive into his work that I wish I had

Toby:

The first thing that impressed me from Tobby's presentation was the organization of it all. It was clear and it was obvious what he was trying to do. His drive is evident. Meanwhile, like I've said before, organization is not my strong suit. Another thing that I was inspired by was his product. He clearly wanted to model these characters with a certain texture modifier and he did what he had stated. He had a good product to show us by the end of marking period one. Clearly, I need to strive for better.

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Monday- Reviewed Tristan's film

Tuesday- Growth Questions

Wednesday- Scene editing

Thursday- Scene editing

Friday- Blogpost

Week 10-11/29-1/19

Investigation:

This week I have decided to look at character rigging. I have two characters that are un-rigged so it is important that I learn and follow this tutorial. The reason I chose this one is because it was not only shorter, but it also went more in-depth than the other videos I was looking at. I have only started rigging, but it is going rather quickly as the models are already made prepared to be rigged. This is also a good skill to have down for the future.

Last Week:

Last time I was looking on texturing in cycles. Using nodes is making things more difficult, but not impossible, it is just more work. The only other things I want to add to the scene are a couple objects laying around to more give the effect it is a junk yard. Otherwise the scene is going to look very fake and cheesy. I don't want the background looking bad distract from the story I am trying to tell. 

Problems:

Like I said in the previous paragraph I am struggling with making the background realistic. I am building it the way I am because I don't want the file to become too complex or big that the computers can't run it. I guess having to do this is inevitable though. Another problem I am having is with the rigging. I don't want the stretch feature and I want the inverse kinematics. It is looking tacky right now. But, after some more tutorials I think it will turn out nicely.

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Monday- Presentations

Tuesday- Blogpost

Wednesday- Rigging

Thursday- Presentations

Friday- Presentations

Week 21-26/19

Investigation:

Texturing will be very important for this project. I do not want it to look poorly made with how much work I am planning to put into it. This video explains both texturing and bump mapping in blender cycles and I will be applying this knowledge next week. Because I have to use cycles most basic things will be a bit harder and take more time. I wish I could have used blender render, but I would have to re-texture the models I had gotten off of blend swap.



This is what I want my scene to look like. I am struggling to figure out how to do this. I don't want to make a whole bunch of separate objects so what I am trying is to make hill like structures then add a texture and then do a little bit of separate objects. I am worried about tackiness and struggle to render because it is in cycles. Hopefully everything will work out in the end. If it doesn't I'll just have to keep down sizing and taking things out of the scene.

Next Week:
If I don't finish texturing I will still work on that, but If I haven't I plan to work on rigging the two models. They are modeled in such a way it will be quite easy to add a rig to them. I have never attempted a project this big so I am excited to see the final project. I just know I will start having to work outside of school if I want to get this done this marking period so I can start on something new. I do not plan to work on this all year.
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Monday- watched presentations
Tuesday- watched presentations
Wednesday- watched presentations
Thursday- worked on modeling terrain
Friday- blogpost/texturing

Banksy: Text & Image

Who is he?

Well the interesting thing is that no one really knows. He is anonymous street artist, but possibly the most famous. But why is that? Most people know him for starting a sort of revolution with his art with the text obey over an image of Andre the Giant. It was a phenomenon and took the world by storm. He is also very famous for many other works but this is definitely what has caused the most commotion. In Banksy's film I even learned about how much of an impact his art can cause. He was in a city and had people hunt for his art, but it would only be up for a minimal amount of time. People went crazy and a ton of people participated in the event. It is crazy what he has done.



Text & Image:
Text and image is an art style that is quite different than others. This style can evoke feeling I believe more clearly. It is easier for the artist to get their point across to the viewer because they don't exactly have to guess. Text and image is used in all sort of media. It has been used in street art, magazines and even propaganda. There is a sort of desperateness to this style, because of the text. It is saying something it wants the viewer to know.



What I have Learned:
For the most part I have learned that this type of art is good to use if you want a solid point across. The viewer may understand what you want them to more easily than if you weren't to add text. I do like this art style but personally I don't know if I will ever use it myself considering I do film and animation, but who knows maybe in the future this research will come in handy. 

End of MP1

Exploration of Ideas:

For my first project I am delving more into animation even though I have also studied film. As much as I love film, right now creating animations interests me a bit more. More specifically I want to make animated short films. To be inspired for this project I had watched many animated short films and analyzed what made them good and what I wanted to take away from them. The two that I enjoyed the most and inspired me the most was "Piper" a Pixar short and "Spring" a Blender Open film. What I enjoyed most about them was the life they brought to the characters and how real they felt. This is something I hope I can achieve.

                                                        Planning:

This was my biggest struggle so far I had trouble creating my idea. I went days even possibly weeks without a definite idea for my animated short film. At first I wanted to use real film and layer animation above it, but because I was not educated enough about animation yet and my story was based in spring the idea fell through. So, I scrolled through every page in Blendswap as to find a character to use and maybe have that inspire me. To my luck this did work. I found these two characters and after this the ideas came flowing through.

Production:
I have not finished this project nor am I near to finishing. So far I have my whole story planned out with camera angles/movements and animation, even most of the editing aspects and I have started creating the scene that this story takes place in. I still need to rig the robots, finish the scene, and obviously animate and execute my plan.

The Story:

The story I have created is about two robots in a scrapyard/landfill. Here one robot awakens from a thunderstorm one night and is now autonomous. Not really truly understanding who he is or what to do he starts collecting random trash from around the dump. One day he stumbles across another robot. This peaks his interest, so he then tries to communicate with it. But, there is one problem... that robot does not work anymore. Still wanting the company he stays with the robot hoping it will awaken just as he did. Then a disaster and a miracle happens. A dump truck pours trash all over them, but in doing so the robot also finds batteries to power the other robot and he can finally awaken.

The last part of the story is a bit iffy because if it is just batteries then the robot will only last for so long, so I don't know if I will change that or not, because it would be a bit more realistic, but it is also a very sad thought and I don't know if I want my robot to go through that.

Difficulties:
Some problems I see in the future are creating lightning and day and night cycles. These are two things I've never done before and will really have to study how to do them. Also, when it comes to lightning I don't know if I should just use after effects or create a simulation in blender. Another problem I foresee is haw long it will take and if the computers can handle it. I already plan to render it out in sections, but what if they can't even render at all. I have to use cycles because both robots were created in cycles and I don't want to lose their textures and because of that I am worried with crashing and not being able to complete or render the final project.