Video Semester 2 Final Exam

Music Video

This is my music video from this semester.  Our project was to recreate a music video.  We recreated the music video, Hit Or Miss by Jacob Sartorious.  It took us about 3 weeks to make.  Some of the challenges that we faced was getting the locations right for the video to look realistic.  Along the way I learned how to do the beat sheet for the video.  Some of the feedback that was given was that our video quality wasn't very strong and that our mouth didn't match up with the lyrics.  We changed the timing with our lip syncing.  My opinion was that our video was not good and the song choice was poor.  We stayed productive by overlooking our beat sheets and story boards. We shot our shots outside of class.  My strength is I am very good at communicating with my group.

 


High School Trailer

This is my high school trailer from second semester.  Our project was to recreate a trailer that relates to high school.  We recreated the trailer, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Some of of the challenges I faced was editing when I didn't have all the shots. Along the way I learned how to collaborate with my group better to get a better outcome.  Some of the feedback given was that I didn't have the music playing in the background.  I did not have time to change that in my video.  My biggest weakness on this project was, time management.  I turned in this video 2 months late. We stayed productive by trying to always make our story boards look better.

 

Short Film

This is my short film that my group and I created during the second semester.  Our project was to make a short film as a group. This is probably my best work in e-comm video.  We did face challenges when trying to work with the lighting when we need shots outside.  Our biggest weakness had to be the beginning when we did not have dialogue for the first 3 minutes.  We stayed productive by improving our story board and scouting locations to shoot.  We shot this film outside of school.




Summary

What I liked most about this semester was that we got the freedom to do more filming and we had a great teacher to lead us.  I wouldn't change anything about this semester. My takeaway was that  if you really put in time and effort to a class that might not be your favorite you can still end with great final products.  I don't have a goal to set for next year because I am not pursuing with e-comm next year.  In the end I felt like I had a great semester with great people.

Animation End Of The Year Reflection

Technology

This year in animation I have learned many new things.  I have learned new things about Adobe After  effects and Maya.  I learned new things by listening to the teacher in class when he gives us tutorials on what to do on projects. It is important to learn these new things because that is how you become a better at animation.  I have faced many challenges along the way that include, troubles making a walk  cycle in After effects and 3D modeling.  My greatest strengths are rendering projects and coming up with ideas of what to create in Maya.  My greatest weaknesses are paying attention in class and animating for big projects.  I have improved by watching tutorial videos on how to 3D model and I have tried to ask classmates for their thoughts on my projects.  I still need to work on my skills in After effects after this year.  If I could go back and change something I would have put a little more time and effort into my first semester final.

Collaboration

This year in Exploring animation I have had to collaborate a lot to get help in my projects.  I learned to collaborate by talking to the people around me.  It is important to collaborate because you need to work together to create a better final product.  I have faced challenges during the first semester final, I was stuck and I didn't know what to do, so I turned to my partners for help.  I still need to work on not relying on my partners too much and overcome obstacles by myself.  In the end my collaboration skills have increased this year.

Communication

Communicating is a big deal in becoming better in animation.  At times I would communicate too much and that would get in the way of my quality of projects.  I need to improve on communicating with the teacher when I need help on projects.  In the end I feel like my communication skills lacked a lot this year and I have plenty of room for improvement.

Project Management

This past year I have done a lot of projects.  Project management is a big key to keeping a good grade in this class.  I leaned to manage my projects by keeping track of the due dates.  I faced challenges during the final project when I worked with a group and I had to get my part of the project done before a deadline.  I have improved this year by only having a few assignments turned in late.  I still need to work on making sure that I stay on task and my quality of work only goes up.  I would change my final from first semester because the quality of work was poor because I didn't do anything for that project until the day before the due date.

Leadership

This year I have not been able to use my leadership skills a whole lot.  I have tried to help people when they need help, but I am not the best in this field.  It is important to be a leader because every group needs a leader to excel.  One time that I did get to use my leadership skills was the final for second semester, I helped my group create the robot and come up with ideas for our story. In the end I did gain some helpful skills for using my leadership and I can definitely use those skills in the real world.

Professional Project Review Post

Recently, I watched the animated short, "The Egyptian Pyramids" by: Corentin Charron.  In this animated short there is a character traveling the desert with his camel.  He comes across a fossil and it turns out to be a remote that can transform the pyramids.  He transforms the pyramids and goes inside the pyramid, but gets trapped. The camel then saves him by eating the remote which transforms the pyramid to let him out.  I could apply the character animation in my own work, the character animation was great and showed a lot of detail in the regular motions of a human.  In this animated short the creator used "squash and stretch" when the character flew out of the pyramid.  I have already applied this to my work.  The creator did well at telling a story without using any dialogue. The creator could improve on making the animated short a bit longer than just 3 minutes.  In the end, this was a great animated short and I can learn a lot from it.

Article Review Post

Animation Article

In this article "10 Killer Tips For Better Character Animation" the author, Sebastian Wojda, talks about ways to make your character animation look better.  He talks about making the body shots look more realistic and getting many different angles when showing the character. The author also says that if your character is not doing anything then you should add ambient movements.  The author's purpose of writing this is to help people learn how to animate better when it comes to showing their character on screen.  The weakness of the author's article is that he talks about how to do it and shows the final product, but he does not have any screenshots of how to do it on the software he is animating with.  In the end I think that this is a great article to read if you want to increase the quality of work in your character animation.



http://www.cgchannel.com/2015/09/10-killer-tips-for-better-character-animation/

Animation Personal Project Post

This work is from a personal project where I worked with lighting in Maya.   In this project I had to create 6 different scenarios and create the lighting for it.  I started with thinking about what the scenarios would look like, then went into Maya and chose the type of light that I wanted to use then I had to place it in the correct place.  During the process I learned how to use the spotlight, directional light, and ambient light in each way.  During the project I would Have done my candle light differently because I think the light was too spread out.  I would have done my own scenario, Mars the same because I thought it was very unique.  Overall, I can use the skills from this project later by knowing how to use lighting better.

High School Movie Trailer

In these past few weeks in e-com we have been working on recreating a trailer from a movie.  The movie we chose was Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  We had a lot of pre production work to do, starting from making the storyboards for every shot.  Next, we had to write the script from the trailer.  After that we had to choose the locations that we wanted to shoot and then choose the costumes that we wanted to use for each character.

Finally, it was time to shoot the trailer.  We spent a full day shooting the trailer outside of school and then 2 days shooting the trailer at school. While we were shooting the video we had to make sure that each shot was similar to the shot on the real trailer.

Once we were done filming we had to take the footage from the SD card and import it onto Adobe Premiere.  Unfortunately, I was unable to edit the video and this was a poor example of project management.

If I was to do anything different about this project, I would have tried to manage my time a little better than the way I did this project.  I did like the way our group chose our cast list and we storyboarded very well as a group.

Music Video Review

I recently watched the music video, "Sweatshirt" by Jacob Sartorius.  The location of this video was in a classroom and the story told was the singer was giving his sweatshirt to a girl.  I learned that in a music video you are going to need more actors than one and also you are going to have to have many angles.  In this video I think the weakness is that the story needs to be told better.  In the end it was a very professional video but needs help in developing the story.