So, we just finished up the first passion project, as you may know I did the certification for After Effects, which I succeeded in and was a cool experience. Now, Ms. Gottfried has given us the opportunity to create a second passion project, which I am really excited about because I didn't get a chance to do my own project during the certification. I have also had a video idea for an insanely long time, and I think that is going to be the focus of my passion project, is short film. It's going to follow me as I try to make a documentary about new Tech, and it's a little passion piece that I will try to make for the seniors. It's more a mockumentary of me making a documentary, and it will follow me as I try to answer questions like "Why is it a good school?" which will ultimately be unanswered. The hardest struggle I'm going to have during this film project is the time crunch, because I want to have the opportunity to show this to the entire senior class, which I'll only get one or two opportunities to do in June. That gives me a little less than a month to finish this up, which I've only ever finished a couple other projects that quickly, and they were a little half-assed. This one I want to be lengthy and feature as much diversity in the senior class as I can. I take it back, the hardest part about this will be incorporating all of the seniors, especially with certain bits and jokes that are specific to people. But, I'm going to do it, and it's going to be fun to actually have a deadline for once. Wish me luck!
My Goal Setting Form: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jx93eGKKOArvbrXHT9vsGuGidm8hXlvbay6Vv5Ku4OE/edit
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I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is I got my certification! It was a really cool experience and I have something to put in a resume and use later down the line in my working career, which I really like. The certification process was a little slow, but I got through most of the lessons eventually and actually learned a couple things about After effects that I didn't know before, which I wasn't expecting. I thought that because I use the software so much, that all of the basics I would know. But I learned some audio/visual effects and a lot more depth on tracking. I've learned how to use After Effects in a more practical way than I previously had, having learn myself.
Now for the bad news. I procrastinated a lot throughout this project. I was more invested in Sudoku a lot of the class periods more than I was in doing all of the lessons I had in front of me. Even though I got through most of the lessons, there were about 3 that I didn't have time to finish because I was spending my time on other things, like the day's Wordle. Despite completing the certification and having the badge, I wish I honed my focus in on the work more, and tried doing the lessons more often and to completion. I was also procrastinating a lot during the journal writing, and as you can see from my blog here, I have not been updating weekly as the original plan for the project was supposed to be. I had a hard time finding the energy to do the journals, and although I communicated with Ms. Gottfried directly, I didn't communicate it through these posts, which I wish I had done. Throughout all of the procrastination, through the sudokus and the Wordles, I managed to pass the final exam and receive my certification in After Effects, which I am still proud of. here are some of the things I worked on during the lessons in Brain Buffet, both of which pertain to motion tracking.
This is me checking in for Week 2 I think, I recorded it on March 14th. Sorry for being late about it.
This project is me trying to certify myself in Adobe After Effects, which is a software I've been using for a while but haven't had the chance to certify myself for it. I came into this project pretty happy about the route I am taking, and sure that certifying myself will help me down the road. I am excited to do this, but I am afraid that I already know everything this course is hoping to teach me, so I'm hoping to learn something for this course, not just to get certified but to add some more skills on my utility belt. Some of the obstacles that I expect to face when I'm working on this project is probably organization if I'm going to be honest. Organization skills are not my strong suit, especially when it comes to things on my computer, so I think it's going to be a challenge to know where everything is and having that ability to organize my computer really well. The other trouble I have with work like this are deadlines. Despite me having good grades, I turn a lot of stuff in late, so it's also going to be hard for me to finish these sections when my SCRUM board is telling me to. I would say I'm a procrastinator, which is why I think it's a good idea to be using these SCRUM boards, and I might start using them for projects outside of Digital Design too, like film projects or other school assignments. Hopefully my takeaway form this certification process is to have a better and more full understanding of After Effects, to get all of ti done on time and learn better skills when it comes to being punctual, and last that certification that will help in the future.
This project's purpose was just to get into the groove of doing special effects, and to get us more comfortable with Premiere Pro and After Effects, Premiere especially, which helped me learn how to use use it more fluidly and construct better workspaces. I made most of my own sound effects for this, and got a glimpse at what shooting practical effects looks like. I probably shouldn't have used coins as my object, because they were really reflective and it was hard to rotoscope and key them out. But, I think it turned out pretty good.
This project was a lot on everybody, and that's mainly because we were trying to do a lot. The goal of this project was to make an augmented reality art piece that would appear in front of sculptures during the Lighted Art Festival that Napa holds every year. We used Adobe Aero to accomplish that, making animations in After Effects and then transferring them over to Aero to put them in real space. Before I tell some of the many problems that went wrong with this project, I do want to say that I really enjoyed working on this project. It opened my eyes to new programs, new things I could make, and it was fun while we were doing it, for the most part. I had a lot of new experience with programs I had never used before, namely Blender. And it was cool to literally see our art come to life. But there were a lot of struggles that we had to overcome, and most we didn't. The first of the struggles was actually getting people to look at our art. The app we use, Adobe Aero, was very specific in what it could do, and the way we were trying to use it was not the way it was programmed. Because we showed the art pieces with QR codes, it was super complex to set up and if somebody didn't have the app beforehand, it was difficult to pull up the art without instructions. On top of that, there wasn't any WiFi hotspots nearby, so if someone didn't have a service provider they wouldn't be able to pull it up. But most importantly at all, the biggest problem was viewing the art at night. The dandelions actually didn't provide enough glow for the art pieces to be placed in 3D space, and we couldn't view them with that little light coming into the camera. All of these problems came way to late in the creative process, and we trapped ourselves with what we were making so we couldn't adapt to those problems. Not all of the problems came from the whole project, some of them for me came from my own personal project that I was working on, which was a lot more work than I was expecting it to be. Marco and I decided it would be super cool if we made the actual art 3D, instead of just putting art in a 3D space. Not only was that a lot more work to make the art, but I was using a software I never touched before, which was Blender. It was definitely a learning experience, but I should have had at least a little bit of experience before I started this project. Both Marco and I started out with these cool 3D renders, but we both had to drop those renders because of how complicated they were, and the fact that Adobe Aero could only bring in renders with rudimentary shapes. So, I decided to go for a city instead, making a skyline in 3D and planning on lighting it and having moving cars. Making the buildings was surprisingly simple, and all of it fit into Aero perfectly. But the main problems I and was adding detail to my art. As I said before, Aero couldn't handle complex shapes, so when I tried adding windows and lights to only one of the buildings in the skyline, Aero just wouldn't work with the project I had. So, I and to keep the buildings very rudimentary, but I was able to differentiate them with color and height and details like that. I was able to put the cars into the animation, which was the main aspect, them driving up and down the road in the middle of the city. But, the render came out surprisingly well for me never having used the software before. It could've looked a lot cooler, however, if we were working with a better and more sustainable software, and if I had a lot more devotion to this project. Overall, despite the many, many roadblocks we had to face in this project, I'm incredibly happy with I turned out, and even though it won't be with the Dandelions, I'm glad we got to do this project and it taught me a lot about the creative process and prototyping a project. Oh, and to try and keep your expectations realistic. FINALLY!!!! After months of hard work, and mostly procrastination, it's finally done! The Phantom Nugget has finally been complete, and it only took 6 months. I actually uploaded this in early December, but I haven't gotten to the blog post until now for some reason. But I was so happy to finally get this off my chest, because the longer I worked on it the worse it made me feel, knowing I could've done it so long ago. But it's done now, and I'm super proud of it. Enjoy. I think this is going to be a fun project, and we're kicking it off with making rough sketches of what we might wanna make some of the dandelion scenes look like. I think incorporating the dandelions into the art is really important, which is why I like City Nights and Fireworks the most. Th ocean and forest scenes are ones that we can make look natural, with the forest growing and the fish in the ocean swimming. The space one is probably my favorite though, just being able to use the After Effects tools that we learned earlier in the semester. It definitely needs a lot more prototyping, but getting that general idea across was really fun to do.here are the 5 sketches I made for the beginning of the Electric Dandelions project.
This is a tool we learned called Write-On, and it's a tool that makes images appear based on the path you give it. It's a cool tool that we used in the demo to make vines grow, but I thought it would be fun to make it look like I was wiping of a foggy window. This was a super simple animation that took way too long, and that was mostly due to find the right sound effect, but I did learn some more Easy Ease and how to find the right sound effect.
This was a pretty cool animation project that focuses a lot on different types of tools and the versatility of After Effects, through motion and titles and, in my case, displacement maps. We learned the use of Adobe Bridge and the importance of timing, and I brushed up some of my skills on making the glitch effect that I learned awhile back. I thought it would be fun to give pretty video some more unsettling vibes, so that's what the glitch in there is for.
This animation was a little more complicated than the last one, and we focused a little more on solids and more unique aspects of After Effects instead of stuff like keyframes. We made planets spin, and uploaded things like TIFF animations and sound effects. I had a lot of fun making this project, and I put a little bit of twist on it with some After Effects experience I already have.
This project we animated a basketball to bounce and move around, and it was actually really useful for me to help learn After Effects a little more. I knew the basics of both animation and After Effects, and this project helped me get a little more in depth with both. Squashing and stretching, as well as motion blur are what make the ball bounce, and I wanted it to look cartoonish, because it's animation. I added the portals as a nice little touch, and even those had some issues with masking and matte layers.
Ummm, it's been couple of months, and I'm really happy that school is back in session, but I still have zero to show for it, and it's kinda killing me. I've been on and off with working on it, spending a couple of days in a row trying to finish it, then dropping the project. But, good news, I'm almost done! just have one more lightsaber shot to do and then once the sound mixing is done I can reap what I've sowed. This project is super intense and lightsabers are a lot more work than I thought it was gonna be. I'm glad I worked on it though, and it's definitely helped me scale my expectations. Wish me luck.
So we finally got to film, which I was super hyped about and excited to finally get the ball rolling in finishing this project up. While it's not necessarily my fault, I still wish I had kept my due dates and timeline in check, because now at the end of the school year I might not have a finished project to show the class. editing was painstaking as well, and while I originally planned to set aside two whole weeks to work on post alone, I had not gauged just how much work this would actually be. Whatever it is, I am glad I got to finally film and this is the edit (without the lightsaber effects) for Star Wars: The Phantom Nugget. |