End-of-semester Reflection

Motion Graphics and Animation was exactly how difficult I imagined it to be. I didn't think it would be easy at all and I knew going into the class that I had absolutely no knowledge of After Effects, Maya, or anything related to stop-motion animation. But I'm proud of myself for giving it my best shot and at least attempting to use all three.

I used to think I wanted to have a career in animation (because I love animated movies), but now I know that industry is just not a good fit for me. What I like about animated movies and television shows is that anything is possible. You're only limited to what you can come up with in terms of characters and the world they live in. I am taking Program Development this semester as well and I've learned that story development is much more my style than actual production. (I also kind of learned this after taking Fiction Field 2, but that's a whole other story).

Another thing I learned about myself this semester that is completely unrelated to this class is that I really love working with and helping people. Feeling like what my job is significant in someone else's life is important to me. This semester I started teaching group fitness classes at the Fitness Center and I absolutely love it. I'm going to study over the summer to become a certified personal trainer. So I guess if I were to relate this to animation, I would rather work with voice actors than actually animate the production.

As I look towards the future, I don't regret taking this class at all. I learned a lot and now I highly respect everyone in the animation field, even more than I did before. If I apply to intern at an animation studio when I study in Los Angeles, I will most likely apply to be a part of their development team.

Update on My Projects

Ta-da!

This blog will be an update on the two projects I'm working on. The first one is a title sequence for my Program Development project, and the second will be a motion tracking one.

For my Program Development project, Turnt Trivia, I'm making a stop-motion animation where a person opens a beer bottle, the cap flips in the air, lands on a table, and then it's revealed that it says "Turnt Trivia" on it. Here's what I've done for it so far:

• bought some brews (duh)
• ripped the labels off
• painted the caps blue (the color of our logo)
• bought some wire, a mini hot glue gun, cork board, screws, L beams (finding those was quite the adventure!) and some other fun stuff for the project

Can't even tell it's Blue Moon

I'm going to animate tomorrow for a couple hours and I hope I only have to do this once! 

For my third project, I'd like to do some sort of motion tracking with face swapping. No matter how many times I do it, face swapping with another person is always hysterical to me.

HILARIOUS

I want to make a very short film (less than a minute long) where I walk up to a funny poster on a wall and open snapchat to swap faces with it. After the swap though, my face gets stuck on the poster, and the face from the poster is stuck to my body, which walks away.

I gotta say thank you to our wonderful TA Mike, who helped me conceptualize this. Next, I'm going to draw some sketches and storyboard it out.

Even Thor Plans Ahead

  Pre-visulization is crucial for movies that depend on visual effects, and as FX become more popular and advances each year, pre-visulization becomes more prevalent. Third Floor in London and LA did pre-visualization for the box office hit Thor:The Dark World.

Pre-visualized

Final

  Pre-visualization helps pace out time, set shots, and help make FX seem as realistic as possible. I feel in our course we should focus more on Pre-Visualization for each of our projects. Without this step, projects can be scattered and unfocused. 

Be like Thor and plan ahead. 

IPhones Music Video

So I came across this really cool music video.  They take a bunch of different IPhones and play videos on them to make up a greater story.  This video would have taken a ton of planning.  Every video shown on the IPhones would have to be filmed previously and also filmed in a certain way to make it so when combined with the other IPhones the pictures made sense and flowed.  And then the planning to have the right IPhones brought on screen at the right times and in the right order.  I was just very impressed by the video and thought it was a really cool concept.  I hope you enjoy!