Final Reflection

My Year in e-Comm was really good. When I started the year, I knew very little about what we were doing and how to do it. The extent of my skill was at the level of Microsoft Paint or Movie Maker. Now I've learned so much and am much better. Now I know how to use Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Sketchup, and Final Cut Pro. I knew the bare basics of Sketchup, but knew literally nothing about any of the others.

 My teachers allowed my to learn all these programs, as well as how to work as a team and how to manage a long project. After all the stuff I learned from my teachers, I learned more on my own. I discovered some hidden and advanced tools to make some cool things. For example, on my logo in Graphic Design, I wanted to make it 3-D, so I went online and figured out how to make shadows.

In addition to the applications in this class, I've been able to take my skills into other areas. As I've had projects in other classes, knowing how to work as a team and how to manage time. Still though, my working as a team skills could be better, as on the last project, some things didn't go as well as planned.

In the end, all of what I learned will definitely help next year and in years after that. Even this summer, I have a few projects planned, and knowing all of my newly learned skills will really help. In the projects I work on this summer, I'll probably learn even more, making next school year better.

As a whole, I learned so much about how work will be like in the future, including communication and technical skills, as well as general responsibility and management. The entire year was great and I hope my next three years will be as well. This class was a really good way to show me stuff about the industries and it was just overall awesome.

Final Team Project

For the final team project in my first year of E-Comm, this went pretty good! I was on team  Cognito, latin for "learning", and we made the app "Tutor Tool". We all worked well together as a team, especially during the planning phase. We collaborated a lot while coming up with the idea and all worked to improve the plan. Our biggest problem, however, was bringing some of the plans into life. When we started making the graphics, we were doing good, but near the end of that rotation, things started getting weird and we ended up losing some files. Even with that, our role assignments made the project go fairly smooth. On the next group project, I'll take the information I learned about group time management and try to get more done. People tell me that I personally am good at managing time, but as a team, it's much harder. I kind of wish that the different parts of our project blended together better, especially between the animation and the video, as the silence during everyone's animations was kind of awkward. The green screen footage especially could have been used a bit better.

My part in the project was mostly the background stuff. In Graphic Design, my main job was making the web banner. Also, I animated the banner, but unfortunately I wasn't able to use it on the website. I also helped Armin out with the company logo, especially with the letter spacing and the gear theme. And for everybody, I found the Hex codes for all the colors we chose to be in the color scheme.




I love doing animation and making 3D models, so I ended up doing a lot of the animation. The most important model I made was the iPhone. After learning how to make the basic shape, it was pretty fun to make all the little details. I also made some other decorations, such as the books and the pencil. After everyone put their models in the set, I made the animation, making sure all the camera angles were inside the room.

For the video, I did most of the behind the scenes stuff. During filming, I did the camera work. It was fun to work the camera and wear a headset to talk to Skai and Mr. Cooper in the studio, who were working the teleprompter. I felt like a professional, so that was pretty cool. After filming, I was in charge of the editing. In Final Cut, I put all the clips together, using transitions when needed. There was also one shot with really bad lighting, so I fixed the colors, making it look like all the others. I also worked with the audio editing, reducing the echo in the voiceover. I think the video ended up really good, but I could make it even better if I had another day or two.

In conclusion, the whole project was a success, definitely not the best, but still pretty good for the first group project of the year. I'll take all that I learned from the project, both technical skills and communication, and get even better for the future.