Semester Reflection - Graphic Design

Semester in Review

•  Raccoon

• This project took us a few weeks, but not too many. For it, we created a raccoon using a tutorial (through it, we learned the basics of Illustrator), and afterwards put it in a "fall picture" (mine didn't look very good) and a postcard. A huge setback for me during this project was that we also had to put some fall leaves in our fall picture, but I had the idea that we had to make all the leaves in the tutorial when we actually just had to make a few. However, I'm pretty proud of the postcard I made; it was around Halloween time when we made ours, so I gave mine a Halloween theme. I never got any feedback for my fall raccoon, but I did receive some compliments on my postcard. :> I didn't really like these projects as much as the ones we did later on, since we weren't able to be as creative with them.

•  Vector Portrait

• Our second project was creating vectorized portraits of ourselves in Illustrator. For me, this project, once again, took me longer than everyone else in making it. We had another few weeks to work on it, but I spent a great deal of time after school trying to make it more and more detailed. In the picture I was recreating, I had been wearing plaid, so I had to create a different shirt for the portrait so it wouldn't take as long. I don't ever remember getting feedback on it. My personal opinion on the finished portrait would be that it looks good and bad at the same time (good: lots of detail; bad: I'm really ugly).

• Infographic
• Out of all the projects we've done so far, this is the one I'm most proud of. Our assignment was to create an infographic based on something we're interested in, so for mine, I chose the ISS because of my dream to someday go to space. I know I'm being repetitive, but again, I don't know how long we had to work on these; I know it was at least a month. In the beginning, we mainly had to do a bunch of research, but I decided to do my graphics first, which set me back later when I had to do a ton of research. During the process of making it, I received a bit of critique from some of the "full-time" graphic design students, in which they recommended that the bar of information to the side have a background that complimented the rest of the image, soooo that's what I did. I think my infographic turned out pretty well, but maybe just a little too crowded in some areas. I spent several hours after school working on this and, even though it was very tiring, I love the final result.

Time Well Spent

Because of the fact that I'm super awkward when talking to people (and therefore almost never talk), I think I'm pretty good in terms of managing my time.
When I completed my work, some things I would do to utilize my time would be to: go through Behance, work on homework, or make other things in Illustrator.
To strengthen my work outside of class, I draw a lot and try to pay more attention to ads on television or anywhere else to see what professional graphic designers use in their work.

Strengths

I've always been pretty keen on art and design, so it wasn't hard at all for me to create visually appealing images and asking a few people if what I've made makes sense or not.

Areas of Improvement

Even though I can't really help that I'm a slow worker, I would like to become a faster worker and, as my brother says, "Work smarter, not harder." I'm sure that with enough time, I'll start to improve on that.

Overall Thoughts

As I said before, my favorite thing about this semester has been creating my ISS infographic, which I am so proud of. However, if I could go back in time to stop myself from doing something, I would tell myself not to make all the fall leaves (since no one else told me). I thoroughly enjoyed learning about all the tools in Illustrator, and I hope that next semester I can make something even more impressive than my infographic.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Portfolio Reflection

Worm

I think this was our first or second project, and it was so long ago that I barely remember what we did. However, I do know that this was our first project involving the puppet pin tool. Using it, we learned how to make an otherwise immobile object move around without having to make any more versions of that character (if that makes sense??).

We learned it through the directions, of course, but I still had a bit of difficulty when it came to actually animating it.
My worm moves faster that it actually inches and it looks really weird, but it was one of my first animations so I'm sure it's fine.
I love the worm I made (it's the one that destroyed Bikini Bottom), but for some reason this was a really hard project for me.

Walk Cycle

When we were all working on our walk cycle animations (for me, it was my sexy astronaut), I learned that you can animate characters that you draw [in separate parts] using programs like AfterEffects and how to make a character walk.

I AM SO PROUD OF THIS!!! I love almost everything about it!! The only thing I'm not proud of is the fact that I couldn't figure out how to use the pinpoint tool, so it looks like the astronaut is just marching across the screen instead of actually walking like a normal person.

I assure you that I will be proud of this project even after I've been dead for millions of years. I know this is so stupid, but this was my favorite project from this semester.

Scenery Animation

I had never known that there were several layers of scenery used in old animated movies and cartoons to make the setting seem more realistic. We learned how to do just this: how to create a moving landscape.

The bad thing about working in Photoshop (for me) is that I always forget to switch layers if I want to draw on one of them, and of course that happened here. I don't remember where this happened, though, since it was such a long time ago, but I can assure you it happened. I don't really like the stuff that moves across the background, but at least the clouds look nice.

So far, this has been my second favorite project, only surpassed by the sexy astronaut, since it involved a lot of drawing and actually looks pretty nice compared to my other projects.

Ice Cream

When we made our ice cream, I wasn't really looking at the directions to figure out how to get the ice cream texture on my ice cream (I just went to Google Images instead), so that was kind of a lost opportunity. However, I did learn how to use the timeline in Maya and how to rotate objects for the timeline.
I learned this by constantly asking for help with things I should have been able to figure out on my own, but I'm stupid lol. I also got some of the directions...from the directions (surprise!).

We did not pick this project, it was assigned to the class. However, we did get to put a bit of creativity into the project by coloring our ice cream however we wanted, and by making our own ice cream "shops" (they were more like rooms than shops).

Sadly, I'm one of those people who has a lot of trouble finding things that are right in front of them, so I kept having to ask people where certain tools would be found and I'm sorry to them. I also couldn't figure out how to get the shadows to show up, even though I know how to now. BUT I did do a good job with color scheme and making things look nice, I think.

Literally the only thing I would change about this would be to add shadows.

This was kind of an in between project for me; it wasn't really hard, but it wasn't really easy.

Pen

For this project, we had to create a pen that we owned in Maya, so we had to do a lot by scale. I constantly had to hold the pen up to my screen to make sure it was the right size. From this, I learned how to scale things properly and, additionally, how to create new vertices using the "Insert Edge Loop" tool.

I learned how to use the edge loop tool thanks to someone else who was having trouble in class; if he hadn't spoken up, I don't know if I would have ever learned how to do it. As for scaling properly, that just seems like common sense to me. It wouldn't make very much sense to make a pen that looks just like the actual pen, but shorter...or something like that.

I didn't really have a choice in choosing this project or the pen that I ended up modeling. I mean, I'm really happy that it was a fairly simple pen, otherwise I'm sure I would have had wayyyy more trouble making it than I already did.

I'm pretty proud of myself in the sense that if I didn't know what to do, I would either do it my own way or look it up instead of just complaining about it like I usually do. Although, I kept getting kind of angry when I couldn't even do that and asked people around me for help and they couldn't help me. Even though it wasn't their fault, I just couldn't help but get irritated when they could help someone else but not me. :<

Maya, unsurprisingly, is a lot easier for me to use now than it was when I first started using it. I've learned a lot from it [and don't cry as much about it as I used to haha].

Hopefully, if I every get Maya on my home computer, I will be inclined to make more objects like this and keep improving. Well...not really like this, but better things like dogs or something.

I am very much a perfectionist, so it really bothered me when I had already made the thing on the end of the pen (where you push it and the point comes out at the top) because it was slightly larger than the actual one, and it still really bothers me. I would definitely change it if I could.

This was probably one of the projects that I'm most proud of in this class, even if it was just making a pen. I think it looks a lot better than a lot of the other things I've made in this class! :>

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Hayao Miyazaki vs. A.I.

Main Idea
The article "The Director of "Spirited Away" Called Animation Made by AI an "insult to Life Itself" " (sorry for the title being so long) discusses the opinion of Hayao Miyazaki—a well-known Japanese animator—on A.I. drawn animations. His reaction, as you can imagine, was not positive.

Robots = Bad, Imagination = Good

In this article, Miyazaki argues that animations produced by A.I.s to be used in movies is an absolutely terrible idea and is "an insult to life itself". However, this isn't all that surprising considering how much depth he has put into his characters. I know it says something similar in the article, but I feel that way too.

Argument

Since robots lack imagination, Miyazaki, as I just said, doesn't think that it would be okay at all to use robots instead of actual people. He wasn't thinking in terms of producing movies faster, but taking time to make animations that matter. His only source was himself, but you can't really use a source for something like this.

Strengths and Weaknesses
I don't think this article really has any weaknesses, since it wasn't written by Miyazaki himself but only a person who wanted people to know how he felt. As far as I know, there aren't any typos or anything like that in the article. So...nothing really.

As for strengths, I thought it was very informative but not repetitive at all, so I thought that was pretty good.

Author's (Miyazaki's?) Conclusion
The author ended the article with a quote from Miyazaki that I'm sure many people would feel sad reading: "I feel like we are nearing to the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves." I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels worried about the future when reading that.
Significance
Almost anything that Hayao Miyazaki says sounds important, even if he's just talking about a food he likes. After reading the quotes from this article, I'm sure many people will be inclined not to create things like this out of respect for him.

Author's Opinion
For about the billionth time, the author doesn't really argue about anything at all; she just talks about Miyazaki's reaction. However, she does drop some hints that she doesn't like the idea of the invention with vocabulary like "creepy" for the A.I.'s animation. However, Miyazaki's arguments about how a person's imagination should create instead of a machine definitely supported his claim of the drawings being disgusting.

Makes Sense
The "evidence" Miyazaki gives for why AI animation is horrible would relate more to someone who has more of a romantic mindset than a logistic one. Miyazaki, in this case, has the former.

For People Who Are Worried About This Kind Of Thing
I don't think it's very likely that robots are going to start taking over a ton of jobs in the future for this reason, so don't worry about that. 

Confusing?
There was a sentence in the article that read, "Referring to his experiences with a disabled friend...'Now, thinking of him, I can't watch this stuff and think it's interesting.'" I have read that sentence multiple times but I still don't really understand what is trying to be said. This seems to me like something everyone else but me would understand, but as usual, I'm probably thinking way too hard about it.

Afterthought
I honestly don't know why everyone has been making such a big deal about this lately, I mean it's not all that surprising (to me anyway).
Also, sorry, it seems to me like I've just been saying the same things over and over again.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Cheng, Selina. "The Director of "Spirited Away" Called Animation Made by AI an "insult to        Life Itself" " Quartz. N.p., 10 Dec. 2016. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

"Red"

Please Watch Before Reading!

Story Elements

Basically, this was a retelling of the classic story "Little Red Riding Hood", but in this case, a twist was added so that the wolf is actually a boy with a crush on Red Riding Hood. The whole story has a sweet tone to it, even when Red Riding Hood is being attacked, because even when she's in danger, the wolf boy is still there to protect her.

For My Own Work...
For my future projects, I would try to use character appeal similar to this one; I love drawing in styles like this. Also, it seemed pretty concise, which for me is difficult to do; I just get to detail oriented. I could definitely learn from this video in that sense.

I Know
It's kind of a given that if I wanted to make an animation I would have to give my characters...well, some character! Pretty much everybody knows how to do that. Other than that, as freshmen we learned about some of the basics of animation, like squash and stretch, and I could see some of these principles being used throughout this animation (squash and stretch, anticipation, appeal, etc.). We haven't gone into animating by hand in class, so I can't really say anything about that.

Nice!
The art style used in this is so cute! If I was the one who made this, I would be so proud of myself. Also, I really like that the creator left sketch marks on some of his frames, even though I don't usually like that. It just makes it seem cuter.

Improvements

Something that really bothered me while watching this was that there were sound effects for movements you would barely hear in real life. However, in moments like when the monster's horn was stuck in the tree, there was no noise at all; it just felt very unbalanced. Also, just for the record, I don't think that anything would still be alive (or at least uninjured) if they were thrown into a tree that brutally.

As a Conclusion

I'm a little nervous that this wouldn't be considered as a "professional animation" considering all of the film shorts I've seen, but considering this was made by just one person, I think it's pretty good.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Red. Dir. Hyunjoo Song. YouTube. N.p., 29 June 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

How to Use the Puppet Tool

What is the Puppet Tool?

The "puppet tool" used in the program AfterEffects helps to make whatever you're animating come alive. This tool allows you to create a mesh on your character so that you can more fluidly animate it. I was too embarrassed to ask for help with it when my class was still frequently using AfterEffects, so it took me a long time before I actually learned what it was. This tutorial is for anyone who's interested in learning about AfterEffects and might be having trouble figuring out what to do.

What to Do

1. To start off, you need to select the Puppet Pin tool, which is in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
2. After it's been selected, put as few pins on each separate layer of you character as you can, but don't put too few.
3. That last step was the easiest. Now, it's time for the hardest part. At the bottom of the screen is the animation timeline. On the left side is your layers, which includes your character. Under one of your character layers, choose Effects > Puppet > Mesh # > Deform > Puppet Pin #. Create a point in your timeline, then drag the time indicator to another point in the timeline and move a pinpoint on the screen. If you press play, you'll be able to see it move!

Just In Case You Need Some Pictures

Step 1: Put the pinpoints Bonus(?) Step: Add a Null Object to the
on the object. object you're animating if you want it to
move across the screen.

Step 2: Create a keyframe in Step 3: Move the pinpoint
one spot. into a different position &
create a new keyframe.
After you've made several keyframes, animate it!

Sorry it's bad, but I hope you get the point.
Helpful Websites (Maybe)

• Animating with Puppet tools
• After Effects: How to use the Puppet tool | lynda.com tutorial (this is kind of long, but I think it's kind of helpful)

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Ice Cream Animation

Generally,
Our job for this project was to create an ice cream "shop" where an ice cream cone, bowl, and a scoop would be rotating on a Lazy Susan.

The Process
Our first priority was to create the stars of the animation, the cone, bowl, and scoop. Afterwards, we had to use Blinns and Lamberts to color everything BUT the ice cream, but I didn't get the message until later, so I didn't change anything haha...Anyways, we then had to put a backlight, a fill light, and a key light into the frame, including shadows. Unfortunately, many shadows wouldn't show up, and I couldn't figure out how to get them to. Lastly, we had to render out 120 frames of the Lazy Susan spinning and make it into a GIF/video.

What I Learned
In technical terms, I learned how to group and rotate objects in Maya, along with rendering several frames out all at once.
Professionally, I learned that I STILL need to get over my personal pride and ask people for help if I can't figure out what to do. I'm getting better at it, but I still need to work on it.

Should Be Different
Instead of just leaving it the way it was, I should have made more divisions in the Lazy Susan so that it didn't have edges. I also should have used the cloud thing (???) on my ice cream instead of just picking up images off of Google. Along with that, I should have worked harder to find out what was going on with my shadows.

It's Fine the Way It Is
I'm actually pretty proud of show smooth the animation is, except for a barely noticeable stop when it loops, but other than that I think it's pretty good.

Past Experiences ➡ Future Betterment
I know I should have taken more notes on certain procedures in Maya, but some like pressing "R" for the timeline to show up is something that I will definitely remember. I think it will be especially helpful since we pretty much know the basics of animation and won't just be making stills anymore.

Just Letting You Know...
Even though I already have the GIF on here, I would really appreciate it if you could watch the video too, please (it has music ♪)!



- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Story Animation

Our Job
For this project, we had to create a short animated story [that I didn't finish]. We had to incorporate what we learned in both Photoshop and After Effects into it.

Making It
The first objective we had for this project was to make a storyboard, then edit it along the way according to our needs.
Making characters and sceneries was our next priority, whether we created them by a program or by sketch (both for me). Certain parts of its body had to be separate from the other parts in order for it to move smoothly in After Effects. For our background, we once again had to make multiple layers for a better feel of movement.
After finishing those, we had to add everything into After Effects, finally making our story.

Improvements
Along the way, I finally learned how to use the puppet tool (to move the ant's legs), which I couldn't figure out before and was too stuck up to ask about.
In my work environment, I learned that if I want to get things done, I have to ignore my friends' conversations as much as possible, unless of course it had to do with making my animation better.

Doing Things Differently
If I had the chance to do this again, I would probably do it somewhere where I could easily focus on what I was working on, someplace quiet. I also would have tried to divide my time up equally so I could focus on one aspect of the project at a time.

I Wouldn't Change...
My story. Ants are really cute and I kind of think the story I made for this was cute too...

Learn From the Past
For the next project that I work on, I will try to talk to my friends less and make more time for myself after school if I'm having trouble managing my project.

Lastly...
I'm sorry that I didn't finish this. It may sound like an excuse, but I really am a very slow worker and I didn't have the resources or very much time after and outside of school to really work on it. I will try my best to finish it outside of class! ◔̯◔

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

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

Working With Dreamweaver

 Dreamweaver
Near the end of second semester, my class and I worked with a somewhat complicated application (all the button things were too hard to find) called Dreamweaver. This software made it so that you could create your own website!! Isn't that neat!! \ (•◡•) /

Making My Website
The whole point of this was to make an "about me" page, so I copied and pasted my elevator pitch, a swaggin' picture of my good looking face, and my mini bio. To make it look not-boring, I played around with the background colors to make it have a fun atmosphere even though there isn't that much to talk about. To make the text fit in with the colors, I made changed the font to make it look softer and made my descriptions pink. Afterwards, I added a project page where I could put my favorite projects from each section of e-Comm and made the colors the same as the home page.


ごめん！
I'm not going to apologize for acting like a huge weab when I did that, but I'm sorry for not finishing this before school ended!! I meant to do it over break but I kept forgetting to. I swear.


- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ