Wrestler Talks

Snow in Kansas!

So as the weather in Kansas was frightful and I still had to be at school, so we started working on a new project in Maya to incorporate the cruddy weather. We created a snow scene. We would start by drawing an abstract shape and then repeat the shape multiple times over and over until we had something that looked like a snowflake, unique and different. We then repeated this process over and over again until we had about 7-10 snowflakes. We then created a wall and and beveled out a window from this wall. We then applied a background and animated the snowflakes in a path down. You just repeat those motions over and over and you are done and ready to render.

Tools of the Trade

Polything 

The first project that I am gonna talk about I worked on in December. I started with the simple circle polygon. I then created a cylinder and duplicated that three times. I then moved them to different points in the circle to create a cool effect. I then selected the circle and selected a cylinder. I used the edit mesh tool called bevel to create the holes in the circle. I did this to each of the cylinders and then added a texture. I then lit the scene using three different key lights and I arranged them to show the shadows of the shape. Finally I took a picture of it and uploaded it on here.

Hammer Time

The next project I worked on was my hammer. I took a rectangle and I smoothed out the edges using the vertex tool. I then added the square at top and, while it may have taken me a long time, I added the claw part of the hammer and divided  it into two halves. I then worked on the other side and used the poly-extrude tool to make multiple faces. I made the faces different sizes and that created the effect of the top. Finally I applied two different textures to the hammer and rendered out an image.

Revolve

The next project I started after I got back from break. We started by drawing Nurb points. I then clicked the revolve tool and I got the shape. The shape looked pretty bad so I went back to the original points and moved pretty much all of them around to make the cup look good. I then added a texture and made it partially transparent to match to look of a cup. Finally I rendered out an image and saved it.

Salt Shaker

The next project we worked on in class was creating a Saltshaker using a bunch of different tools. We use Nurbs again and created a circle. Then I edited the points into another shape. I then add the outer layer by using the loft button and added a texture. I made it transparent so you could see the salt inside and then duplicated it. I shrunk the duplication so I could make the salt and textured that too. Finally I created a circle and I edited the faces to make the saltshaker appearance on the top. Then I created a square and put the bottom half of the non-edited circle in the square and used bevel, differences. I them applied a texture to that and lined it up with the shaker. Finally I lit the scene and rendered out an image.

Ice scream, you scream, we all scream for Ice Cream.

This project was something we have been working on for about a month. I first designed the shop in December and used simple polygons to design the shop. For the table I used rectangles and then for the stand I used torus and cylinders. For the bowl and scoop I used spheres and I used the bevel tool as well. Finally I used cylinders for the scoop handle and spheres for all of the ice cream. I then applied different textures to everything and I got to use bump mapping for the ice cream to give it that bumpy look. I then animated it by rotating it 359 degrees. I finally rendered out individual images and put them into after effects and made this video.

Bouncing into focus.

The final project that I finished was a bounce project. This one was a bit harder because we were animating bouncing balls. We started this project by creating the balls. Then we used some footage of us dropping actual balls for the height of the balls and the keyframe to use. We put the keyframes into Maya and then I put the balls at the different heights and went through to edit the bouncing to line up with the height and time of drop. This took a long time to edit and it was one of the harder things I have done. I did feel good about the overall video and product that was created.

Scary Movie with Brooke

The Start of Something New!

        Recently I have been introduced into the complicated and new world of Convergence Journalism. The experience has been interesting and I think it is the complete opposite of what we have been working on all year. The process took a lot longer than I would have thought, but I feel pretty proud in what I created.

The Lego Set
       First thing we did was one day we picked up the cameras and just shot someone building a Star Wars lego set. I thought this was interesting because I am used to storyboarding everything before I shoot. This made me a bit unsure of what to get, do I just filmed whatever shots felt like I could use later in editing.  I sadly  filmed everything in one clip and this made the editing process take a lot longer cause I had to select different sections of the clips to make smaller clips. Another challenge I faced while filming was making the camera steady with only my body, no tripods was allowed during this project. I also struggled with finding a way to incorporate nat noise into my film.
   
     My partner also talked about a bunch of random things while I was trying to get the shots in so I had to cut all of those random thoughts out of my video which took a lot of my shots away. For the editing of the project I mostly spent my time cutting the clips like I mentioned earlier. Then I picked my favorite clips and looked through all my audio to find the sounds I wanted use in my video. Then I wrote a script of what I wanted the audio to be and recorded the voiceovers for my shots. Finally I re-edited my film to match the sound up with the shots I wanted them with. This whole project was really hard for me and it took me longer to edit then I wanted it to.

Blood Drive day

      The next project I got to film was the annual ONW blood drive which was cool because it was the first project I got to do using students, not just E-comm kids. This also provided a challenge because they answered the questions very close-ended which made the editing process hard because I didn't have much audio that I could use in my film. I then cut out all the audio and clips I couldn't use and put what I wanted into the timeline. Then I cut out all the clips that didn't fit with my theme and wrote the script I wanted to use for this project. 

   

I got to use some new technology when I filmed my voice overs because I had a portable microphone at my house and I used it to film my voice overs directly into Final Cut Pro. Overall  that taught me a lot about how to use different kinds of tech. I also learned about story telling and how to get a persons story in. This was a challenge because I figured out that I didn't have enough footage during the editing process and I had to use another groups footage to help my video along. I also ran into trouble when I was told that the person I had filmed wasn't actually eligible to donate. In hindsight I should have filmed two stories just to ensure that I got a person who was eligible to donate. Well you know what they say, Hindsight is always 20/20. Anyway I think this video turned out pretty well and I just wish I had gotten more shots to make it longer and follow a better story. 

   

 A struggle that I ran into consistently was my Informal interviews. I feel like that is a skill that I need to improve on. I had a lot of problems getting the people to talk and I also had a problem getting people to answer openly and not just with yes or no answers. I know that I can be an introvert and that I need to work on that skill of mine. Anyway all in all I feel pretty happy with how my projects went and I know the skills I need to improve on for next time.

     

Character Story Animation

(I Know there is an awkward black screen at the end. I could not figure out how to get rid of it sorry..)

The scope of this project was to create a story using After Effects with multiple scenes and camera changes. First I started with storyboarding the project and deciding that I wanted to make a Captain America story. Then  I drew out my character and scanned in the images. The hardest part came when I started to edit my drawings in Photoshop by changing the lines and adding color. I also added my background in the background at the same time. That took the longest because I am not a very good artist and I had a lot of editing to do to make my drawings better for the assignment. The final step was to make the images scenes in After Effects and make all the scenes into one clip. I learned a lot about time management from this project and about my drawing and how to edit the drawing on photoshop. I would pick an easier topic to draw and spend more time on the After Effects part to make it better quality.  I would still do the same kind of shots just maybe get to work on them more. I will use my lessons about time management on my next project and in all future projects.

Music Video Blog

Music Video

The scope of this music video project was to create a story that told a story and worked with a song of our choice. We chose our song and then  created our theme of bullies and superheroes to go with the song.  The next step was to create a beat sheet which lined up beats of our song with shots of us. Then we went out and shot our stuff which took longer, but we got lots of shots in and got a lot of extra shots. Finally I started the editing stage which took about a week to decide which shots would go best where and what music to use and how to mix it. The music probably took me longest to make the music and beats line up with the shots.

I learned a lot during this video making a longer video with more people in our group. Technically I learned a lot about how to use some different parts of Final Cut Pro and also how to get some cool shots near the camera. Professionally I learned that larger groups mean more likely to get off task and a lot better chance of getting more bloopers and taking longer to film.

If I could do this again differently I would have kept my team on task more and try to make our time spent working more productive and not as much goofing off. I would do that because we had some problems staying on task and focusing on only our projects and not other projects we could have done. I really liked the theme of switching between universes and I would do that again because I loved how it kind of flowed with the music and also added a cool theme to the whole video.

I would use my experiences with large groups and with the sound problems I had in the future on other projects. I think in general I would pick a different song next time just to have less problems with the music.