Scenery Animation

Creating an Environment
For this project, we got to create a scenery of our choice, and make it pan across the screen. I decided to go with a beach at night, creating a lonely and colorful scene for the viewer. Sadly, we had to use Photoshop to make it, which was pretty hard, but at least it turned out pretty well. It may be pretty dark, but below ⬇ is all my layers put together.

How It Works

To create a moving environment like the ones frequently used in old cartoons, you need to create several layers without merging them ever (well, unless you just want to show a picture of it??). You just need to make the layers closest to the viewer shorter, farthest (except sky) longer, and the sky doesn't move at all. Characters don't apply to these rules!

Using After Effects

Putting this into After Effects...was actually pretty simple; it didn't take that long at all. All you really have to do with an animation like this is to pinpoint it at whichever side you're starting at, then pinpoint it at the farthest point on the other side. Sorry if that doesn't make sense lol.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Walk Cycle

Drawing It Out
In early September, we started with our walk cycle project. Our first task for it was to draw out body parts for a particular character and then outline them in Sharpie (I made a sexy astronaut :>). Afterwards, we had to scan in the sheet of paper to single out the body parts and give them color if we wanted to.

It's Alive!
When we had our character(s) and background ready, we then uploaded the files into After Effects where we had the character move across the screen. Although we were supposed to use the puppet tool to make the movements more realistic, I couldn't figure it out, so I just made my astronaut march instead (special guest star: extraterrestrial).

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Starter Animations

Sorry in Advance
I will be uploading a few projects within the next day or so that I meant to put on here a month or two ago, but I've just been really busy and haven't gotten around to it. This is one of them!

Bouncing Ball
Our first project was to create a bouncing ball, even though we had already done that as freshmen. It was fairly simple, but we used a different technique that we did last year. This time, we used After Effects instead of doing it manually in Photoshop.


Inchworm
Using basically the same scenery we used in the bouncing ball animation, we had to create an inchworm, and, using After Effects again, have it inch its way along the screen. We could make the worm look like anything we want, so I made mine look like Wormy from Spongebob :>.
(Sorry this is pretty bad)

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Photoshop Tutorial

What Did I Learn...?
All in all, I'm pretty sure I learned more from these tutorials than I think. There are still many concepts, options, etc. that I don't have any clue how to use. HOWEVER, here is a list of some that I do know how to use because of the tutorials :> :

• Healing brush
• Patch tool
• Layer masks
• Inverting selections
• Hue/Saturation
• Cropping canvases
• Probably more

Most Important Tools (For Me)

Three key tools out of all those up there ↑ would definitely be layer masks, the patch tool, and the healing brush. To me, these are the most important tools because not only are they pretty easy to use, but they can help your picture look all dolled up and fancy, like cleaning up the kid's face in the black and white picture. The patch feature can help replace a certain area with another so it will blend in more with the background (if that makes sense), the healing brush can make your face look less greasy, etc., and the layer masks can just make your picture look super neat like in the picture below ↓ with the tree coming out of the guy's neck. It's really not as hard as it sounds!

Favoritism
There definitely are so many Photoshop tools that I really value, but my favorite has to be the layer mask. It was tough to learn, especially with a project as big as the one with the girl in black, but as soon as I got used to using it, it was a really interesting tool. When I use it in future projects, it will certainly be helpful if I need to get a picture of someone or something and a fancy background to go with it. I can't really explain it all that well to be honest.

Strengths/Weaknesses
I honestly think that I have more weaknesses than strengths when it comes to this, but I can't tell you what they all are. I'm a slow worker, especially with programs like Photoshop. However, I think this is sort of a good thing because it shows that I pay a lot of attention to and care about what I'm doing. Another one of my strengths is that if I didn't understand how to do something that was done in the video (more specifically, the videos about the girl in black haha), I looked it up online instead of complaining about it. I also kind of had trouble figuring out the Hue/Saturation layer after being finished with the girl in black, but after messing around a little bit, I figured it out. Other than that, nothing specific (i.e. certain tools, etc.) really comes to mind.

Pick Something Different!
I'm assuming that with the question, "What would you do different? Why?" you are asking about the final challenge to just do whatever with the pictures given to us. Well, sort of. I kind of wish I cropped the picture a little bit on the left so that the man would be more in the center. There isn't much else I would change about it.

Stay the Same!
The roots! I would definitely keep the roots. Before actually making them come out of the man's neck, I thought it would really neat, but not so much afterward. I was in a rush to finish it, and I wish I made the neck and the tree blend in better with each other. Although, now that I think about it, it looks pretty cool and I don't think anybody else did it.

Et Cetera
As much as I didn't like doing this project, I sincerely think it helped me learn the Photoshop skills I've wanted for years.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

End of Year Project

BabyVac by Team 1
Nearing the end of the school year, finals are bound to come up. For e-Comm, our final was to present a made up product with a pre-assembled team. Our product was the BabyVac (the Baby Mop was already taken), which is basically a portable vacuum attached to a onesie. When the baby crawls around, it cleans your floors (amazing am I right????). Totally original.

Team Work
Overall, our group effort was alright; it wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. Distractions would come about every so often, but for the most part, we worked hard to make our presentation funny and well-designed.

Next Time...
I think that if I were to be put in a group like this again, I hope that I would try to get people more on track rather than just sitting there and watching a couple people in my group slack off. I don't want to have to work as much to get other people's parts done tbh!!

Improvements
Becca and I spent a lot of time working on the commercial, so I think I know a lot more about Final Cut than I did before (merging clips, etc.). I now also sort of know how to make a sphere in SketchUp, but since it didn't end up in the final animation, that doesn't really matter.

Commercial


Animation


"Official" BabyVac Website

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Chase Scene

Production
Making this really didn't take all that long, somewhere around an hour I think. Anyways, making this was pretty easy, but I have one thing I would like to complain about. The oNE THIng I wanted to do as leader was make the gunshot a fart noise but NOOOOOOO. That didn't happen. :'>

How Did It Turn Out?
The video's pretty ok actually (other than the fact there wasn't a fart noise in it). We all agreed that the main music that should be played should be kazoo music, because it's really funny of course. Other than that, you can watch the video and see for yourself.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

6 Shot System

Video
Instead of just taking pictures of what a shot was supposed to look like, we had to make a 30 second video (with a story-line) that includes all 6 camera shots, which include:

• Extreme Closeup
• Closeup
• Medium Shot
• Wideshot
• Extreme Wideshot
• Over-the-Shoulder

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ