Earlier last week, I started using Maya for 3-D models, and I'm really liking it so far. Previously, I made a few models in Sketchup, but I feel like Maya will allow me to do much more, especially when we get into the animating characters. My first project was just an intro, testing out all of the polygon tools to make some shapes.
After that, though, I started making a castle. I made the walls and towers with extensive use of the Boolean tools, and also "cut out" a door, but then I added a few things to make the castle look better. First, as the central area was pretty plain, I made a little building in the center, making another door and some windows into it. Then I added some color to the towers. This was hard in some places, as I had already duplicated my towers, meaning I couldn't edit the top individually. However, with a bit more time, I was able to recolor the spires with the Face view. Later on, I learned how to add textures, making the walls look like stone and the flags look like cloth. Although a few things didn't turn out perfectly, this was a good starter for Maya, and I'm looking forward to making better things later.
On the News, there are two types of stories: Hard News and Feature stories. Feature stories focus on a specific person, event, or group, and are usually only a couple minutes. For my first feature, I interviewed two Marching Band students about all the commitments that go into marching. I wanted to do Marching Band myself, but my schedule didn't allow it, so I went to see what all they did.
This was my first project where I had to shoot B-Roll, and it went okay... The conditions while I was shooting weren't very good; it had just rained, the band was just practicing marching, not playing, and I had to use my own camera, as the school cameras were all checked out. Even though, I got all the shots I needed, and in a good quality. Looking back, the shot variance wasn't all that good, but I couldn't get too close to the band.
The interviews went well, though; much better than the last project. In my opinion, the questions, audio, and video quality were all improved (which is strange, as I wasn't using a video camera or an external mic). However, the lighting on Miles was not great, and the placement wasn't good, either. The guys I interviewed also gave some great answers, showing the idea I was trying to prove. After I imported the clips into Premiere, I used the skills I had learned on the last interview, plus a few new ones, to make a story I'm pretty proud of. J and L edits were one such skill, which I tried to use as much as I could, but I didn't really have enough footage to do more. Some of the bits, such as the "At Ease" at the end might be a bit cheesy, but I thought it sounded cool. When I put the B-Roll in, I did realize that a few of my shots were shaky or out of focus, but I ended up having enough for the whole video. Overall, though, this is one of my better projects, and I'm already seeing improvement from earlier in the year.
I have 1000 times more respect for every pro animator after this project. 2000 frames and 20 hours of work, and it's only a minute long. But I have learned so much from this, and it's my favorite project I've done in my 1 and a quarter years in e-Comm. This project taught me the process of making a story, from the ever-important storyboard, to the final rendering. In the actual production, I learned so many skills: from styling and the Pen tool in Photoshop, to Track Mattes in After Effects, I've gotten a lot better at both programs.
To make this project, I first had to plan out what I was going to do. I've actually had the initial concept for a while, but making the whole story work and writing a plot took a long time. It was also during the planning phase that I had my first problems, as coming up with all the elements of a story was hard to do for my idea.
But after that, I got to work, trying as hard as I could to create and animate exactly what was going on in my head and on the storyboard. This
took so long, and I spent all my class time and more just trying to get it done.
What I've gotten done on it so far isn't completely what I really saw in my head, but I'm going to continue working on it, hopefully entering it into e-Magine later this year.
When making a video in Premiere Pro, knowing how to make titles can really help in conveying information, especially for news headlines or similar situations. A title, to clarify, is when you have text appear on the screen in some way. It's pretty useful in a lot of situations, like clarifying who someone is in an interview or scrolling text like on a news channel. There are many more situations that would call for titles, so it's an important skill for a video editor to have.
Step 1: Open the title creator with either "Command + t" or by right clicking and choosing "New Item" in the Project tab, where your clips are.
Step 2: In the Title Creator, you can use the tools and the sidebar to make the text look any way you want, but be sure to keep the text within the Title-Safe zone, which is the smaller of the 2 rectangles that will appear in the window.
Step 3: Once you have chosen the style and placement of the text, just exit out of the Title Creator; it will save automatically.
Step 4: Insert the title into your timeline, on the layer above your normal footage. From here, you can add effects and transitions to the title, and change how long it stays on screen.
With titles, you should be able to add a whole new layer (literally and figuratively) to your videos, displaying information in a new way.
Earlier last week, I started using Maya for 3-D models, and I'm really liking it so far. Previously, I made a few models in Sketchup, but I feel like Maya will allow me to do much more, especially when we get into the animating characters. My first project was just an intro, testing out all of the polygon tools to make some shapes.
