Weekly Blog 10/27

This article is about how the American economy grew even during the hurricanes, which were predicted to hurt its growth severely. The author does a good job on using graphs to show data on economic growth in the last decade. They also use quote from sources like the President and top economical experts.

What they could have done better is related it to the title a little better. The title refers to the hurricanes like they are the main focus of the article, but it is only about how the economy is still growing and not anything about how we beat predictions of a failing economy.

What I can use from this in my own stories is the good combination of statistics, graphs and other graphics, quotes, and survey results. All of these combine to make an easy to follow, well informed article.

(Article can be read here.)

Weekly Blog 9/29

This article is talking about how 2 British politicians are calling the royal family rude, ridiculous, and other insults. They also ridiculed 4 year old George for wearing expensive clothes to school. The people who verbally attacked the family are described as "fact-challenged" and "delighted in the attacks". The reporter does a good job of naming the politicians and stating what they accused the royals of. They also used a lot and a good variety of stock and file photos.

What they could have done better is to get photos from the event and describing exactly what the event was for. Rather than directly quoting the entire statement by the people in a separate paragraph or section, they took out portions of the quotes, usually one word, and for this I feel like the whole version would work better.

What I can implement in my work from this is using a good variety of pictures and getting stock/file photos

(Article can be read here.)

Weekly Blog 9/15/17

This article is about how Breitbart News, popular news organization and website, is taking on Steve Bannon, former White House political strategist, as their chief executive. What the author does well is give context for the story, providing backgrounds on both Breitbart and Bannon. It also goes into depth as how Breitbart is supporting its new hire, how they are trying to pump his reputation as well as their own.

What the author could have done better is present the news and their argument in an unbiased way. Most of the article comes off as knocking Bannon and questioning his abilities, as well as trying to discredit Breitbart and other news sites associated with them. They even goes as far as directly insulting the site, by saying that they have "shown a near-endless capacity to throw darts, it has not yet mastered the spear, let alone the missile."

What I can use from this in my own work is the way the author used a variety of images from a variety of sources like Google, Newsweek, and even Breitbart itself. This variety makes for and interesting story and a more clear one, too.

(Article can be read here.)

Weekly Blog 9/8/17

For this week I read the article 'First Responders Sue Texas Chemical Plant for "Gross Negligence" After Fire and Explosions'. It is talking about how when the chemical plant exploded after the flooding, police and firemen were getting sick and falling to the ground in the roads and everywhere. The author does a good job of relaying the results of the lawsuit, with a verbatim statement from the plaintffs.

One thing the author could have done better is include more in depth medical or scientific details. Pretty much the only description was that the responders "had fallen ill", with no words to what exactly they got and their medical condition. They do quote another publication that had info that the lawsuit was for 'serious bodily injuries'.

What I can implement in my work from this is the long, verbatim quotes from officials or others involved with the events in my written stories.

(Article can be read here.)

End of Year Reflection - Video

End Of Year

In this post I will go through the guarantees presented in eComm, something I will takeaway from each, and talk about those for a bit.

Technology

This is where I definitely learned the most, lots of technical skills and techniques for both animation and video. This would be skills like making titles in Premiere, green screens in After Effects, and camera/tripod usage and physical techniques. I learned these skills in the numerous projects we did, and the skills I learned were both part of the curriculum and self taught. These are important because they help me do better, more professional work, in eComm and in my own personal work. Some challenges I faced were in working with the cameras, some of them get stuck or don't work or break when you use them. My strengths in this area would be my editing skills and a weakness would be that I have some trouble when recording audio at correct levels and without background noise. I have improved my editing skills a lot from last year, and learned an entirely new program, Premiere Pro. Something I need to work on is making sure production equipment is not in the shots for a video, as that accidentally happened a few times. With what I learned I will film and edit videos for family members and their acquaintances.

Collaboration

In the area of collaboration, I had a lot of practice in setting up work days outside of school for filming. I learned it just through the course of doing the projects, as nearly every one required filming outside of school. This is important because if you can't figure out when to get shots, you're never going to get the shots and the video will never get done. There were some challenges, as there always are in scheduling for multiple people. Sometimes 3 of 4 people in a group would be able to film on a day but the last person couldn't so we'd have to figure out another day and keep pushing it back. A strength I have in this area is my open schedule. I don't have lots going on after school or on the weekends (during the school year, at least), so finding days to film is not too difficult for me personally. A weakness would be in forgetting to secure transportation to the filming site, so it might happen that I miss a shooting day because of that. Another part of collaboration is brainstorming and teamwork to create the final product and make ideas to begin work. I definitely need to work on my level of involvement in groups, I am usually quiet and let other people present ideas and then I refine them. I wouldn't really change anything in this area as it pretty much worked out. 

Communication

A takeaway I learned from this guarantee is the importance of having outside methods of communication with group members on projects. It gets very hard to collaborate and set up stuff when the only time you can talk is one hour a day 4 times a week (in class). Comparing the different group projects I worked on, the ones where group members exchanged phone numbers or other methods of communication seemed to go better with scheduling and delegating tasks. There's not really any strengths or weaknesses in this part, as it doesn't encompass much besides what I've already talked about, and anything else that could be included is in the Collaboration section.

Project Management 

What I learned from this is how to effectively use the whole project process: brainstorming, working with group members to do preproduction like storyboarding, scheduling the camera work, filming the shots with proper sound lighting and scenery, transferring files from one location like an SD card to all the group members, talking about edits and how to compile it into a finished product, and presenting it as a finished project. I learned this by repetition in all of the products we did this year, because I had to use it every time. My strengths here are in the post production portion, and my weaknesses are in pre-production and planning. I wouldn't change anything as it worked pretty well all this year. 

Leadership

In relation to leadership, I learned how to take a small position of leadership when everyone is slowing down and work isn't happening. Specifically, for the short film project we were missing a group member during pre-production and the rest of use were a little confused as to how to work with such a small group so I took a bit of charge and presented some ideas and we worked on from there. I don't really have a greatest strength in leadership because I'm not strong in it at all. Similarly, that would be my weakness, that I'm not good at leading at all and it definitely is something I need to work on in the future. If I could change something, I would change how I lead, because I feel like it isn't effective or good for anyone.

Conclusion

To conclude, this year was one where I learned a lot of new stuff, both technically and interpersonally. I made a lot of neat work that I'm proud of, had lots of fun in the program, and I am excited for next year when I can focus more on video and learn more advanced stuff.

Professional Article Review

In his article 'There'sA Giant Problem That The Animation Industry Will Have To Deal With', Mike Reyes talks about how filmmakers are pushing for higher resolution, higher frame rate films, and how that can be a problem. The article states that "state of the art" for animation currently is 2k resolution at 24 frames per second. What some people want is double that: 4k at 48fps. The reason that would be a problem is that it would require many more stronger computers than most studios have. According to Bruno Mahe, technical head at an Illumination Entertainment studio, this higher resolution would require 2.5 times the rendering strength they have. The author argues that making a large and expensive upgrade would be worth it, due to the massive amounts of money animated films are grossing in recent times. I agree with this, because if you can do something to make more money and you'll make back the money you spent upgrading, why not do it. The evidence presented is that an upgrade would be estimated at about $190 million and a film, Despicable Me 2 for example, grossed $295 million. In conclusion, many animation studios will have to upgrade their technology fairly soon to keep up with the rising demand.

Professional Project Review - "Life"

For this post I watched the CGI animated short film "Life" by PixelHunters. The short follows an unnamed man in a futuristic mech suit on a desolate planet. Throughout the whole short, a voice, assumed to be the person shown in blue, narrates about life and his past. It shows flashbacks to him in battles with other people in mech suits, and eventually shows him at a gate which opens to yet another red-mech suited person. There is a moment of suspense, but then there is a plot twist where a sign is shown that says "Congrats, you're retired!", and the main character is shown smiling and the short ends. The principles of design for my area of focus would be 3D modeling, animation techniques like ease-in ease-out, and general story and plot portions. One element from this I would apply to my own work is its use of slow motion and zoom to create dramatic effect on one small thing. One thing I have already learned that was in this film is designing and modeling backdrops. Based on best practice, this creator did a good job of creating a story that brought interest. One thing they could have done better is that some of the scenes were blurry or low resolution, probably a problem in rendering.

End Of Year Reflection

This semester I learned a lot from my eComm classes. For technology, I learned how to model things in 3D with Maya and other programs. For collaboration, I worked with a few different groups on group projects, which also taught me things in communication. For project management I will take away how to organize files, for assignments and in programs like After Effects. I can use the file management at home and in later years of class. For leadership I've had to direct other people while doing group work, not very often but I've done it. My greatest strength would be my ability to follow directions correctly and my weakness would be that I sometimes forget to turn stuff in so it ends up being late. I have improved in regards to my technical skills with After Effects in making special effects and masking stuff like green screens out. With what I have learned I can make my own videos for my own purposes and do special effects for people. I wouldn't really change anything because I didn't really see any problems this year. To summarize this year of eComm went well and I learned a lot of new skills, both technical and interpersonal.

The Plausible Impossible - Mickey Mouse Short

When Mickey jumps on the stack of cards they come to life and follow him like soldiers. In the cartoon world inanimate objects can move like a living thing. Thus you could make things living by hitting them hard enough. impossible because to be animate a thing must have a brain, which cards do not,





If Mickey simply pushes on the mirror while standing next to it, he will go through it to another dimension. The laws of physics that define solid objects as solid do not apply to the cartoon world if the characters try to resist it. Impossible because people cannot walk through glass and if you try you will be stopped.




When Mickey eats a walnut he suddenly grows to massive size and then shrinks way down. In real life people don't suddenly change size but these rules don't apply to cartoon characters. Impossible because people can't grow large amounts instantly and walnuts don't cause large growth or shrinkage.




In the alternate dimension the chairs and other furniture have faces, voices, and can move like they have human arms and legs. The definition of inanimate objects does not apply to the cartoon world, so they act like humans. Impossible because a chair cannot pet a dog or yell at a mouse.




When the King card reaches for the Joker, he is able to pull the bike off the card's surface. In real life paper things like this do not create physical objects of the images they show. The king also later pulls a metal sword from his card. Impossible because paper cannot hold 3D things inside it.

Recreated Trailer - Napoleon Dynamite

Assignment

For this assignment we had to recreate a movie trailer, shot-for-shot and edit-for-edit. One rule for choosing a movie was that it had to be set in a school, with the intent that most filming would be done within class hours.

Pre-Production

The first step in this project was selecting a movie and we chose Napoleon Dynamite. Next we had to get all the shots from the trailer and put them into a storyboard. Then we decided who would play which characters in the trailer.

Filming

We filmed the shots over about a week and a half of school, and I filmed a bit out of school. While we filmed I also made the transition things with the lockers and did the intro. Almost all the shots used a tripod expect for the ones I filmed because I didn't have one at the time. A difference between the trailer and our video is that in the bike scene is a skateboard in ours. One problem we had in the filming of the video is it is somewhat difficult to make a trailer like this with a group of 2 people. 

Editing

The video was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro. One problem I had while editing was that one clip kept losing audio and changing to static randomly, though it fixed itself by the time it was rendered. One of the more complicated editing things I had to do was make the lockers appear in random order for the transitions and make the words fly onto the screen (which also had some problems with bouncing).

Music Video - Candyman

For this project we had to make a music video for a song we picked. My group chose the song Candyman by Zedd and Aloe Blacc. The video can be watched here:



First, we had to make a beat sheet and find all the copyright info of the song. Then we made the storyboard, gathered supplies and decided on a location to shoot. We filmed the clips over a few says in the same place. The editing was done in Premiere. In making this video I learned how to make audio fade out and video fade to black, as well as add markers in the timeline. If I could change anything I would make the video clips have audio because it was hard to lip-read to figure out which clips went with which lyrics. I would keep the ending the same because I like how the video/audio fade ended up.

Portfolio Reflection

Walk Cycle

 In this project we had to draw a character, scan them into the computer, and color and animate them. We learned how to make a walk cycle in 2D, and how to edit things in photoshop. I picked this project because I liked the way it turned out and how the walk cycle looks  good and doesn't slide. My strengths here are in animating, my weakness is my drawing wasn't very good. I haven't really improved my drawing skills because I rarely need to draw. If I could change something I would make the arms move up and down or wiggle.

Story Animation

For this project we had to create a "story" using all the animation techniques we had learned so far. We had to use multi-plane, squash/stretch, puppet pins,walk cycle, and have at least 3 scenes. I picked this project because it is my favorite 2D piece I made. My strength was in animating the character but, again, my weakness was in drawing, though I had to draw this one with a mouse. If I could change anything, I would make the string of the fishing pole look more fluid.

Ice Cream Animation

This was the first project where we actually animated something in Maya. We had to make an ice cream cone, bowl, and scoop on a lazy susan that spun on a table. In this project I learned how to make bump maps, how to group things in the outliner, and how to use keyframes to animate in Maya. My strength on this project was in modeling the objects and applying textures, and a weakness would be I couldn't get the bump maps to spin with the ice cream. If I could change something, it would be the bump maps.

Castle

The castle was our first modeling project in MAYA. It taught us how to use booleans to make ore complex shapes, how to add images as textures, and the extrude tool. We learned it through a pdf with instructions that we followed. I picked this project because I like how it looks, with the shapes and colors. My strengths on this project were using the tools we were learning, and there wasn't really a weakness here because it was a pretty simple project. If I could change anything I would make the grass bigger to eliminate some of the blank space.

Hammer

In this project we had to make a hammer and a nail on a wood floor. It taught us how to edit vertices to make shapes less sharp and geometric and used the extrude tool in more advanced ways. I picked this project because I like how the nail and hammer head are shiny and the shadows look good. One problem I had and couldn't fix with this project was that the preview in Maya, the render preview, and the actual rendered image (the one you see here) never matched up. In the Maya program, I could get it to look perfect, but in the renderer, it was always way brighter than in Maya. After that, the rendered image would end up looking a lot darker than both the Maya preview and the renderer preview. I never had this problem with any other project and could never figure out how to solve it. My strengths here were in modeling and a weakness would be the lighting, since I could never get it looking right. If I could change something (I tried to change it, but couldn't), would be the darkness problem.

R6: Siege Trailer Review

This is the EU trailer for the game Rainbow Six: Siege. The video uses quotes from Henry V, specifically act 3 scene 1. The animation is fluid and realistic, with effects and body movements. The story is of CTU Operators and is told while a reading of the play is played. One element from this I would apply to my work is the good use of slow motion in action sequences. One element that I have already learned is lighting. There is a lot of special lighting in this video and it uses key lights an =d fill lights. One thing that is done well is the text is large and easy to read. One thing that could be improved is some shots are a bit dark, although that could be intentional. To conclude, this professional work is pretty good.

Adding Edges and Faces to Shapes With the Multi-Cut Tool

This post will teach you how to add edges to your shapes in Maya, so you can edit them better or reshape them. This skill is important for detailed modeling,and is fairly simple so anyone could learn it.

First, start with a simple shape. (Whichever one you want to edit, I chose a rectangular prism.
Select the shape in object mode (green outline on the shape's edges), and click on the "Multi-Cut Tool"
in the polygons tab. The shape will no have a blue outline and if you move your mouse over an edge or vertex, they will be highlighted in red. Click the edge or vertex you want to add an edge from (Tip: you can hold the mouse button on an edge to precisely place the new point and see the percentage of where it is on the line, with 50% being in the middle), and click again where you want the end of the new line to be. If you click again on the shape, a 2nd line and 3rd endpoint will appear, and you can continue creating these or connect them to the original to cut a face out of the shape. These new faces and edges can be moved, rotated, extruded, and provide more opportunities for detailed editing.

Article Review

The article "Motion Capture Animation", by Annie Gray, is about motion capture technology and the actors used for it. The question is whether or not performing for a motion capture can be considered acting. The author argues that, yes, motion capture performances are acting and supports it with some quotes. The general conclusion is that since no movement is added in post-production, just "hair and makeup", it is acting. One weakness of the article is that it doesn't really show anything new and doesn't use much evidence. What evidence there is is pretty convincing. It would apply to me because if I made an animated film with motion capture I would have to pay actors based on what they did and if it is acting then they would probably get paid more. The article also includes a paragraph about a certain animation studio (Giant Studios) and their advanced motion capture technology.

You can read the article here.

Salvation Army Feature Story

Originally, my video was going to be about the bell ringing campaign the Salvation Army does every holiday season. But, when I interviewed Mr. Rangel, I thought of a better way to tell the story that had presented itself to me. Starting with the lead, I felt the story was better than my original plan. The lead is the staccato descriptions of the sounds. I was unable to get a second interview because the Plaza is a very busy place and I couldn't set up a tripod or record clear audio. The feedback I got was that some shots were dark, which I notice but couldn't change during filming, the interview could be zoomed in more and a little louder. This project showed me again that I need better time management and to plan ahead.

"The Big One" Review

In the article "The Big One", Kathryn Schulz writes about the potential earthquakes from the Cascadia subduction zone, a region that covers 700 miles of the Pacific Northwest coast. The article also discusses the danger that region is in, and how the danger is discovered in the first place. Finally, it shows how unprepared the region is for a strong earthquake, and how much time and money it would take to make the necessary safety additions. The author argues that people in the region need to understand the danger of the subduction zone, and that they should quake-proof as much as possible and as soon as possible. The quake that will happen soon (relative to all of history) was predicted based on data that uses historical seismic records from the ocean floor to show the average time between large quakes in the Cascadia. This average was compared to the last earthquake that happened, and it was found that it has been more than the average years from the last quake, meaning a quake could happen soon. The author concludes that the region is heavily unprepared and if the quake hits before the safety measures are completed, then many residents and tourists will lose their lives.

This article puts forward some very significant points about the perceived danger that could become very real in the near future. The arguments support the main point well, with evidence from a variety of sources. The evidence is convincing because it come from trustworthy sources and uses logical science. The article applies to me as a videographer because a large earthquake and he aftermath would be a good thing to film and make a news story about. To conclude, it is a well written article with an interesting and engaging topic.

Intro to MAYA - Castle

For our first project in Maya, we had to make a castle. It had to have 4 towers, walls, and a door cut out of one wall. I started with the towers. To make the towers, you first make a cylinder for the bottom tube thing, then another for the top part. After that you duplicate the bottom one, drag it up so that it is inside the top part, and use Boolean > Difference. This makes the "bowl" effect, seen here:  To make the parts that stick up, you select every other face, use the extrude tool, and drag them up. Then duplicate the tower 3 times and arrange the 4 into a square.

Next were the walls. These were pretty simple, they're just a rectangular prism sized to fit with the towers. To make the battlements, you have to add divisions to the width (mine had 19) and repeat the process from the tower, selecting the faces, extruding and dragging up. After that, the wall was duplicated and moved to connect the towers.

The door is made by making a cylinder and orientating it long-ways, and connecting it to a cube of the same width with Boolean > Union. The new shape is placed in the wall, both are selected, and the shape is cut out of the wall with Boolean > Difference. The cylinder is what gives the door the arc, but if it is not lined up right with the cube, the door would look weird. An addition I made was the tower in the middle, which is the other tower duplicated, extended in height and shrunk in width. The topper is a cone placed in the tower's depression.

Overall, I think the project went well, I didn't really have any problems except a bit of confusion with the Difference. If the objects aren't selected in the right order, it might cut out the wrong thing. The colors are added by making new materials, changing the colors of those materials and assigning them to the shapes. The ground is a large, flat plane.

Inside the Olathe Animal Shelter

The Assignment

Originally, this project was going to be a feature story about a partner, or someone that partner knew, but it was decided that everyone would do their own project since it would've been very difficult to find something to make a story about from another person. The base of the assignment stayed the same, feature story, not hard news, 60 to 90 seconds, scripted voice-over, interview, and B-Roll. First, we had to pick something to do our story on, so I chose the animal shelter. I then had to write the questions for the interview and get it set up so I could go down to the shelter and film. The editing and voice over took some time, but I'll talk about that in a bit. First, the final product:

The Video

The first part of making the video was to gather the clips and organize them. Next, I had to put together the script for the video. This means choosing what sound bytes to use, ordering them into a feature story format, writing what the voice-over will be, and choosing what video clips should be used, and in what order. The voice over was recorded (in hindsight, poorly), and the sound bytes pulled from the recordings, so I was ready to edit. All that had to be done after that was to place the parts in the same order as the script, adjust the audio levels so it was all equal, and add the lower third label. If I could redo it, I would change the voice over. I just feel that the quality of it, as I stated earlier, compared to the rest of the video is lacking. I would not, however, change the shots, shot variety, or order of the shots. These are probably the best-done part of the video. One thing I learned through this project is to always have a "Plan B". The original plan was that I would go down to the SPCA Shelter and film, but they were unavailable. So, I went to the Olathe Animal Shelter (who I would like to thank for letting me film), where I feel like I got a better story, though it was more difficult. To conclude, I think I learned a lot from this, it was definitely the most fun I've had on schoolwork this year so far, and that I hope the video was interesting.

Story Animation

For this project we had to make an animation that combined all the 2D techniques we had learned so far (multiplane, walk cycle, arcs, timing, easing), and put them together into one animation that had a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

We first made all the scenes and characters in Photoshop and imported those files into After Effects. I had some problems getting the PS files imported to where I could actually animate them, but I figured it out.

Through this project I learned how to combine multiple compositions in AE into one video, and how to add sound or music. If I redid the project, I would make the backgrounds look better, with the water actually looking like water. I would keep my time management the same, I was on task and had everything done when I needed it to be.