First Semester Reflection

Since my last post, I've finished the castle I was working on and I also tried some 2-D stuff, which I really haven't done in over a year, as my short story animation was posted last October. It was kind of a nice change of pace (though I prefer and am much better at 3-D) from all the work I spent on the Castle. Speaking of which...

Gothic Castle

A test render of the second scene

Like I said previously, I finished an early render of the castle exterior, and I think it looks pretty good. I probably say this in like every post I write, but this is the biggest, most complicated project I've done, and probably will stay that way, at least until next year maybe. This was the first time I've used multiple Maya files in a project, which ended up being helpful because it let me just work on certain pieces separately, then arrange them all together. There was one problem, though, when I accidentally made the stone texture be lambert1. Don't do this. It took like hours to redo the UV mapping in a new texture. I got it back eventually, though, and it looks okay. Another thing, which I didn't even realize until much later, is that the moon moves. And the way that my lights are set up, I don't even need a moon; my lights are coming from behind the camera, so the moon makes no sense. I'm currently working on a second version, though, with some upgrades, including grass, higher-quality textures, and no moon. Additionally, I'm also making a second scene using some models I didn't use in the exterior. Hopefully it turns out good; the lights, especially the shadows off the chains, look really cool so far.

Rotoscoping Project- Tornado Kick

My second project of the quarter was a bit more out of my comfort zone. I've never been that good at drawing people, so rotoscoping 38 frames seemed a bit intimidating. Thankfully, it ended up being a bit easier than expected, if not really time consuming. Filming was probably my favorite part of the whole thing. I've always wanted to incorporate my Tae Kwon Do into an animation, and this was my chance (though I really want to do Mo-Cap some day☺). Getting the whole thing set up in Photoshop was next, and a bit of a pain. There was a bunch of stuff to do, like making it 15 FPS instead of 30, and setting up the Animation Timeline. When I started drawing, I tried to use a tablet, but I couldn't get used to the really high sensitivity, so I ended up just using keyboard/mouse. Two weeks later, when the actual rotoscoping was done, I colored it, then added a background. On the background, the flags were surprisingly difficult; On the US flag, I think there are only like 41 stars, and the South Korean one was just hard in general. It looks pretty cool, though, and in the video, I put in all the different versions to show the whole progression of my work.

As my first semester having Animation two hours a day, this was pretty good. I got a lot done and learned more, too. And even though I probably won't be doing another 2-D animation anytime soon, it was a pretty good experience. I'm still working on the castle, too, and a finished version will likely be finished by the end of spring.