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Showing posts from October, 2017

A-B and Slow in Slow out - Stop Motion

I think Tuesdays have been set aside for stop-motion and after experiencing it for the first time, i think i'll be needed the full day if not more when the work becomes more intense. The principle they asked us do was A-B and it wasn't very challenging to do. I would say for next I'm working on stop motion I would need a much longer ruler. I found that it was very difficult to draw a feint accurate line for the block to follow. I ended up using a long plastic light protector which had straight lines, and it worked sufficiently. I do think the A-B wasn't perfect and had a few bumps that need to be ironed out. absm from muntasir chowdhurry on Vimeo .  I was the first one in and slowly most of the class we in doing their work. It was slightly distracting as a Axel and Ceiran wanted to have a chat, me and Axel ended up adding arms and hair for the block i was using, we named him frank. I was feeling confident at this point and wanted to take on the challenge o

Green screening

I think I enjoy Annabeth's classes the most because I feel like I learn something new every time we have a session with her. Today's class was about green screening and compositing. I loved the demonstration video that Annabeth showed us, it was clips for a green screen competition featuring Jean Claude van dam from a few years back. The man is terrible actor but I just find him so funny.  When Annabeth showed us how to use after effects to composite the green screen out, maybe it's because I was sort of familiar to using after effects, I found the whole process so surprisingly easy. The only thing that looked slightly difficult is having to rotoscope certain areas of the green screen if there was any colour change, because an explosion in one of the clips and it slightly effected the background. She also mentioned that it was an easy way to get a job because no one wants to do it and they need a lot of people to do it, it definitely not something I would want to do

Link Challenge and Hats

I have a new found hatred for the name Gibbs but i am aware how usefully his reflective cycle is. It seems like this class is about to expand our minds and explore creative and analytical methods. Because i am on a bit of a learning kick and the minute, I'm looking forward to actively reading and researching these theories that johnny throws at us. This weeks way of thinking was on Edward De Bono's 'six thinking hats', i thought it was a quite simple yet imaginative way of visualizing different personality types and how they are all useful to have in a team. For me i would say that i am most like the blue hat, focusing on conclusions and decision making. It was apparent to me that you should change which hat you are wearing as they all have ways of thinking that the other hats don't offer. I think i should try to wear the yellow hat more often as its i find it easier to be critical or analytical.

Slow in Slow out - Maya

Similar to last week the classes we were halved and one half did Maya and other others did stop-motion. When Joe was explaining the process of stop-motion, i got the feeling that precision is needed in this type of animation. I feel like this suits my type of personality and i could do stop-motion really well, but i know i'll spend forever doing one animation because im a bit of a perfectionist. After both halves of the class were done with learning what task they were meant to do for the week, Johnny and Joe asked us to come up and present our work. I have a lot of admiration for those who went up and i could tell how nervous or anxious they were, naturally they were defensive and almost too self critical but i think i would be exactly the same in their shoes.  Joe also pointed out to the class that Maya by default adds an ease so that it was wasn't a linear A-B. I was definitely glad that i didn't go up because i guess i had done a slow in slow out loop wi

Animation Context

The first actual lecture of university was what i expected, a briefing of our first module. Most of the lecture consisted of Johnny beating the Gibbs' reflective cycle into our heads. I can see why the university wants us to utilize this type of reflection and I will definitely refer to it when I am first writing up my blogs, but in time i know that i will have each area of the cycle memorized, which can only help in my writing skills and well as my own self analysis. This module is on going throughout the year and we are tasked with writing a magazine article about an aspect of animation we are passionate about. Initially my intimidate thought was to look at the animation technique of One Punch Man as it i know it is a particularly difficult style of animation and i captures movement and speed so vividly. I do believe i should do some wide ranging research and look at other animation techniques that intrigue me.

Animation 101

This was our first proper animation class, looking at the twelve principles of animation. We obviously started off with the complete basic movement called A-B. After Johnny was done introducing the module the class was separated into two, one half doing the stop-motion and the other working on Maya. I decided to stay in the Maya half of the class as i thought it would be best to get familiar to the beast they have told us is Maya. The interface had a lot going on but didn't look too intimidating. The work set looked like i could completed it as soon as the lecture was over. Because James had just gone over the work and by using a cheat sheet i made, sadly i got damaged because i spilt tea in by bag.  I produced the work quite efficiently, and almost no problems. The only part i had issues was with the play-blast, but this was because i was deliberately messing around with the settings to familiarize myself with the rendering process. I do hope that the next task set is a li

Film noir

the lecture for film noir was cancelled and our group spent the day just chatting, me and axel mostly. We did say that when we came to the next lecture and if we had to make a film we should have an idea on what we would be doing it on. So when i came home i did some quick research on film noir and it was mostly of what annabeth had told us in the previous lecture. From what i extracted from the lecture was that the lighting was what really defined if it was film noir or not. Film noir has it stereotypes such as crime dramas and ani heros but the key element was the key lighting. By having typically one light for the scene e.g. a lamppost it would in turn call for it to shot at from strong angles. The most recent example i can think of is Sin City but the new Logan movie has noir version out.  Our group met up again the next day, and we discussed what we could perform. We wanted to use the tropes that are normally associated with film noir such as a crime detective, but we wa

Creative play with digital media students

The day began in the maker space, along with the digital media students. The digital media tutor called Mark explained to us that we were going to be placed randomly selected groups and make a tower only using paper and no other materials. My team was nice however they were quite quiet, me and Decland tried to lead the conversation and get everyone talking and sharing, they opened up a but but even by the end of the day some members of the group weren't really talking. The first task was building the tallest tower using only paper and no other materials and at the top of the tower an egg for fifteen seconds. I felt like only half of our group were trying to work quickly and because we were working at a slightly slower pace to other groups it hindered the potential of the final product. As a team we decided that it was best to have the egg protected so it wouldn't die.  With our team being number one we were made to present first, and then we were told it would be measured f

Intro to creative play

It was our first lesson with Annabeth and like most of the week, the class was mostly comprised of a brief on this specific module. Annabeth explained the criteria and what work she expected from us, then revealing that the topic of this brief was 'The City'. This would then become a group project in 7 weeks which we would have to present the class and staff. Its a slightly daunting scenario to think about but all the class and staff seem friendly enough that i wont freeze up. The concept of the city holds many avenues which i could explore, such as building a model city by hand or in maya. I'm quite excited about this brief as it being intro to creative play, i would hope we have the most freedom in the class to explore the more abstract and creative aspects of our brains. Im also looking toward to bouncing off ideas with other people in the class and see what kind of wacky ideas they have come up with. I think before the next class i should go in to town and do some sket