Zygon the Space Worm

   
     For our second project in animation, we learned something new. We had to make an inchworm in Photoshop and the animate it in After Effects. My worm is named Zygon and he is a space explorer. I've also been working on giving all of my characters wildly extravagant back stories but I didn't get to give Zygon one.

Process

     We started in Photoshop. We had to make our worms and the environment they were in. I chose for him to be in space on an unknown planet. It took me a bit to get the final details on the worm like the SS Zygon and his goggles. Once we were in After Effects we were able to follow a video Mr. Olson made. We had to make the worms move and inch across the screen. It was kind of hard to work with at first because when you moved a part of the worm the whole thing would warp. Eventually, after adding couple other things into the mix. We got the worm to make the inching motion. After we got that down, we could just copy and paste it over. Then, we got him to move across the screen. Unfortunately, Zygon didn't make it all the way across the screen. But, I think he's doing a great job.

Did I Learn? Sure Did 

     This was one of the first times I have used After Effects extensively. I learned a lot about how to make the worm moving look realistic. The tools we had to use were confusing at first, but I think I understand them now. 

Would I Change It? No, Sir!

I really like the way Zygon turned out. It makes me really happy watching him inch along and knowing he is on his little explorer way. But, if I had to change something, I might have made the planet look a little more planet-like and made his goggles look a bit more like goggles. I also wanted to make his fins looks a little more like spaceship's. 

Next Time?

Next time I want to give my character an  extensive back story. I also want to like the colors  I put on it. (Since I'm typing this in the future, I can tell you now that no, I did not like the colors I ended up having to use.) I'm excited to use the skills I learned here on my next project!

Ball In The Fall

 Overview

     For our first project in animations, we had to recreate one of our first ever projects- a bouncing ball. This time, we didn't use Photoshop the whole time. Once we had made the ball, we moved into Aftereffects. I made my ball in the fall. You can tell it's in the fall because there are leaves. I honestly think the bouncing makes it look like something out of a Tumblebook. Since this was our first time in Aftereffects, I had a hard time getting used to it. It took me a good amount of time to catch on to where everything was and how to use it, but I eventually (for the most part) figured out how it all worked.

Did she learn? Read here to find out!

    While working on this project, I used Power Hour effectively for one of the first times. Aftereffects took me a good amount of time to get the hang of, and that put me behind a couple of times. I had trouble getting the bouncing effect just right, and that really set me back. My big takeaway from this project was definitely mastering the basics of Aftereffects. In all honesty, that program is difficult for me. I also learned the effectiveness of good note taking and how to ( in the future ) apply that to animation. 

What would she change? What would she do the same? Who knows!

     If I did this project again and had more time, I would add in clouds that could move in the background or make the leaves swirl in the wind. When I was in Photoshop, I couldn't find a way that I liked to have clouds. That meant once I got into Aftereffects, I couldn't animate anything. I do like the way my ball turned out so I would keep that the same. 

What does this mean for her future projects?????

     Once we start our next project, I think (and hope) that working in Aftereffects will go a lot more smoothly than it did this time. Now that I've used it before, I'll understand it better the next time around. Notetaking will also be a biggie.  I need to take more detailed and helpful notes this time around if I want to be successful in this class. Our next project is going to be an inch worm and I am excited to see how that goes down. 

Fire Safety

  The Project™

     Our first video assignment of the year was to make a safety procedure video. I worked with Andrew Stout and Jenna Daugherty. We made a video about what to do if the fire alarms start going off. We really didn't understand what you actually had to do during a fire so that made it harder for us to storyboard. We had a bunch of directions we wanted to go with the video (like making it in the style of a 50's instructional video) but we went with a simple, straight forward, instructional video. When we got to the second day of shooting, we had forgotten our clothes from the day before. We ended up re-shooting everything. Thank goodness we had, there was no sound from the first day. On the third day, we had a different camera and that kind of messed everything up, just a little bit.  I edited the video at home, so I had a day to help my team members with whatever they needed.

  What I need to fix

   I learned while watching the final cut of my video, that I had a good few things I had to change. There was a pretty obvious continuity error, but we were too scared to correct it. We weren't sure if you could actually open doors during school hours, so, we didn't. I need to fix some of the audio levels so you can hear it in some parts and fix the coloring so it's even. When I was editing, I learned how to crop a video and that was nice to know.

  When I redo it 

   If I could go back and do this video, I might have tried to find a way to get shots of us actually going through the doors. When editing I would fix the audio levels and the coloring. I will get a chance to do that today because we have to re-edit. When filming next time, I will try to focus on making sure all speaking is loud and clear so the audio doesn't need to be tweaked as much. I was glad we were all on the same page the whole time, though. (For the most part.)

For next time

     I had a lot of fun and I felt like I learned a lot about the people I work with and how I work with them. I am proud of the video I made and am ready to make it better.