1st Semester Portfolio

This semester, I learned a ton about animation, both 2-D in After Effects and 3-D in Maya. I also made a lot of projects using those skills, improving greatly over last year. Here are a few of my favorites:

Walk Cycle:

One of the earlier works I did this year, this simple walk cycle was my first time making a humanoid character, so I had to use aspects such as joints and easing to make it look realistic. Additionally, I didn't use Photoshop to draw my character (the Pug Butler), but instead drew it on paper and scanned it in. I liked this project because it was my introduction to character animation, which is a field I'm interested in. As my first time, it wasn't perfect, though, as some of the motions I made to make the walk look realistic, such as the head bobbing and arms swaying, looked kind of unnatural in the end. In the future, I'll need to keep fine-tuning the movements to learn how to make it look smooth.

The Delivery: 

My first true story animation, The Delivery is currently the largest scale project I've made, taking many hours and lots of work to finish. It incorporated all I had learned in previous projects, including the walking from the project above, but I also learned much more, on my own and from others. Throughout my work, I ran into several situations where I needed to incorporate tools I didn't know (such as the Track Mattes I've posted about previously), so I just had to look up how to make it work, giving me more skills for future projects while making this one better. While this is definitely my best 2-D animation yet, improving all I had done in previous projects like the walk cycle, but still, I could've changed some things a bit to make it even better. After seeing peoples' reactions to it, I realized that I'm the only one that understood the story 100%, so adding small things, like music and sound effects, would likely add a lot to the atmosphere.

Hammer:

After I got used to working in the 3-D environment of Maya, the first complex model I made was this hammer. I learned many tools within Maya making this that I've used a lot since then. This was the first model I made where I had to move specific faces and vertices, which is a vital skill to have when designing anything that isn't as simple as a sphere or cube. I also used Bevels to make the rounded hammer head and the handle look more realistic. This was also the first time I used lighting on a real model, and I used a spotlight to really emphasize the hammer in the image. In this picture, I noticed that the shadows, as well as the edges of the spotlight are a bit rigid, but as I continued to work in Maya, my knowledge of "what does what" in the lighting has gotten better now.

Ice Cream:

This was the first true 3 dimensional animation I made, and for the first one, it turned out pretty smooth. To make it look like a true scene instead of just floating in a void, I made a set, with walls, a floor, and a table in a room. Besides some basics in the Castle project, this was the first time I used textures extensively, in the ice cream itself to give it bumps, but also in my own places, like the tile floor or the painting on the wall. I had to do a lot of experimenting with all the tools to get everything right, but it ended up working out fine. I also learned how to use the Outliner, which came in handy for grouping just the right shapes to rotate for the animation, making sure to include the 3-D texture boxes so the patterns on the ice cream didn't move. Really, I'm not sure what I would change in this project; I could zoom into the main rotating area, but then, the set I worked so hard on wouldn't be seen, so I'm fine with it as it is.

Pen:

My most recent model at this time, this highlighter-pen was the first model I've made based off a real-world object. Being a cylindrical object, some parts of the pen were pretty difficult to make, while others were pretty easy. I spent a lot of time making sure the curves of the pen body were just like the real pen. I also made sure the cap was good, with the clip and especially where the solid plastic transitions to transparent. However, this transition, because it was partially transparent, wasn't straight on with the solid part, so it intersected, showing that it was't completely realistic. I'm pretty sure there's a way to take out the intersection, but I couldn't find it while I was modeling. Overall, though, did turn out pretty well, at least recognizable as my pen.

Review: Dia de los Muertos

Near the end of October, my mom showed me this video that she found about Dia de los Muertos, and it turned out being a really well designed animated short, especially for being made by three college students. The video, named after the Mexican holiday, is a very interesting story about a girl overcoming grief and celebrating her mother on the Day of the Dead. The way that the story is told is really cool because it shows that a good story doesn't require a lot of exposition or talking to set up a plot that not only can be easily followed, but also invoke emotions, ranging from sadness to fear to happiness, all in three minutes.

In addition to the story elements, the animation work in this short helps amplify all the previously mentioned successes of the video. For one, the design of the characters is great. The range of expressions that the skeletons made throughout the story was impressive, and the girl, from her movements and behavior, to her expressive stylized facial features, made the characters look memorable, resembling movies by giant studios like Disney and Pixar. In the future of my own animations, I hope I'll be able to integrate all the cool things that were done with the characters here to make something great, too.

If there was one thing I thought was a bit weak in the video was the pacing; I understand the reasons the story went so fast, but I had to watch the video multiple times to fully see everything that was going on. In the context of this story, it was fine, but for most videos, it was a bit fast.

Overall, this was a really great short that really showed what just a few animators can do with a good idea and the tools and knowledge to craft it.

Video: https://youtu.be/-v4-1wFEzM0

The Future of Virtual Realty

Virtual Reality has become more popular than ever in the past few years, with new additions like the HTC Vive and Playstation VR, but its rise could have even bigger effects in the future. An interview between Time Magazine and the co founder of Alienware, Frank Azor,  showed what may be coming soon for the industry.

One point that's particularly relevant to the animation industry is that, in a field that's growing to be as big as any other technology industry, lots of different companies will have a chance at building a complete experience. While companies like Oculus and HTC are making the hardware, others, like Intel or Nvidia, are improving the graphics, and tons of animators and designers will be able to create work for the platform. As Azor said, 'VR is the same type of thing; no one company can solve all of the problems.'

Companies like Alienware are giving an optimistic view of the future for virtual reality, and I think it could definately become what they see. The industry has already advanced immensely since the technology was first designed, and the uses it could have could help even more.


Original Article:
http://time.com/4324598/alienware-interview-virtual-reality/

How to Create a Track Matte in After Effects

Sometimes in an animation, it's important to move a shape to do something like turn a head, but if you just move the eyes and mouth, it'll just end up going off the head, like this.
To fix this, you need to use Track Mattes to limit the edges of the face.









Step 1: Click on the "Toggle Switches/Modes" button. This will show the Mode and TrkMat options for all layers you have in your scene. This will be important later as that is how to get the Track Matte set up.





Step 2: Create a new Solid layer under the layer you want to move (the eyes in my animation).







Step 3: Double-Click on the Solid. This will pull up an editor, where you can move around the anchor and transform the layer in other ways. For this, you will need to use the shape tool to make a rectangle on the layer. The size of the rectangle will depend on what it is you want to put a Track Matte on.







Step 4: Close out of the window for editing the layer. After that, in the TrkMat bar you opened earlier, select Alpha on the Solid layer. The layer it says after "Alpha" should be the one you want to mask.




Step 5: From here, use the Transform sliders or just drag the Solid (shown by an empty box) to move the Track Matte box onto the area you want to mask.

If all of this goes right, you should have a working Track Matte, useful for lots of different situations to make a 2 dimentional story look more realistic and give it depth.