How to Make an Asteroid in Maya

Why Do I Need to Know How to Make an Asteroid?
Just in case you ever want to recreate the legendary "Godzilla Goes to McDonald's" (or if you just want to make a space scene). You do you. This tutorial is for anyone who's interested in learning about Maya, or just confused about a few functions of it.

Just Follow These Steps
1.) Open Maya
2.) Create a cube

3.) Make it smoooooooth (Mesh>Smooth)













4.) Smoosh it in wherever (Surfaces>Sculpt Geometry Tool)

5.) Make it smoooooooth again

6.) Add a Lambert to it (hold down right button on mouse>Add Favorite Material>Lambert>maybe name it "asteroid")




















7.) Click the checker-lookin' button next to "color", choose file, then choose the stretched out asteroid picture up there at the top ↑.

8.) Lastly, add a bump map in the "asteroid" lambert attribute area where it says "bump map". Use the checker box next to it, and use the same stretched out asteroid picture up there. You can edit how deep the bumps go if you want. :>
























More Help

• Maya tutorial : How to create a rock in under 4 minutes in Maya
• Sculpt Geometry Tool overview

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

End of Year Reflection - Animation

What I've Learned
During this year in animation, I've learned a lot of valuable information, and actually got to like it more and more by the end of the year. However, I think the most important thing I've learned is to manage my time well. There's a lot to do in this class, and a lot of times, you don't have much time to do it. I'm a naturally slow worker, but I eventually learned that I could cut back on a few things to make sure I have enough time to do whatever I need to do. In other news...I also learned how to use Maya and After Effects pretty well thanks to all the direction sheets, even if those programs seemed to hate me at the beginning of the school year. Speaking of the end of the school year, I'm very happy about the way my group project worked out, even if no one told me that the storyboard was being changed (we could have worked on communication more haha). But, everyone did their jobs, so that was good. Thank god I wasn't the leader in that group, but then again, I wasn't the leader in any other group project. I would have done horribly in that aspect.

You're Doing Well/Work Harder
I really think that managing my time has become my best skill in this class, but I think I still might need to work on putting extra effort into my projects. Sometimes I just do the bare minimum because I'm stressed out about time when I actually do have time to make it look better.

Outside of School
I wish I could get Maya at home so I can work on personal projects, but it's just too expensive (the amount it's asking for is more than I've ever had at one time, and I actually save my money). However, now that After Effects no longer hates me, I think I might experiment with that a little more at home and maybe make some of my own animations.

But What Will I Do With All the Things I Learned?
Again, I think I'll work at home on some personal projects, but maybe I'll use some of my animation skills when it comes to graphic design, since that is the e-Comm class I have chosen to go into as a junior.

Change the Past
I REALLY WISH I COULD HAVE GOTTEN AN A LAST SEMESTER!!! That stressed me out so much. I really wish I worked harder. That's really the only thing I wish I could change.

The End...
This has been a pretty great class to be in, considering I've learned so much and that Mr. Netterville is pretty funny. I enjoy animation, and maybe I'll take some animation courses in college, but that's a long time from now. I hope I can learn more about it in the years to come!


- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

Godzilla Goes to McDonald's

The Scope

This, I'm pretty sure, is our final project. For this, we were put into randomly generated groups to come up with a short story to create using VFX and some of the concepts we learned throughout our year in animation.

Production
My team started off filming the scene where Godzilla (Ashlee) is taking the food from the worker (Josh). The rest was just making models in Maya, which was what I was doing for a lot of the time. After all the models were made, I created the title card using Illustrator. After a LONG time, everything was done, and Gabe and James put it all together in After Effects.

If Things Had Been Different

I know it's not something that I did, but I wish Rowan had decided to make the spaceships in Maya, since it would have been a lot easier to combine everything into one Maya file. That's my only real criticism, but he did do a really, really good job when it came to making them.
Oh, I guess another one would be that we didn't follow the storyboard at all (and I didn't know about it)??? So...maybe we should've followed the storyboard?? There were also so many editing errors made in the story (that I didn't know about) that I don't care to mention them all.

Same Things

I mean, I thought it was pretty funny, and so did everyone else, so I guess I'd keep the humor aspects in it. I also think that the greenscreen effects were dealt with pretty well, even if we couldn't exactly get our hands on believable costumes.

Making Future Projects Better

TALKING TO EACH OTHER MORE IN THE GROUP WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY HELPFUL!! You know, just so everyone knows what's happening!! We should have done that more often. :>

The End

All and all, this project was pretty fun to make (and watch), even if it was made pretty poorly. I don't regret it!

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

"Wonder Garden"

Please Watch Before Reading!


Overview
'Wonder Garden' is about a young girl who is transported to a magical world by a teddy bear.

Design Principles
We haven't done actual frame-by-frame drawings in animation, so I wouldn't really be able to critique on that part. However, it looks very well drawn, nicely planned out, and not to mention reminds me of Ghibli.
In-Depth Look
Told from a 3rd person perspective, it tells the story of a girl who sees a teddy bear in a storefront who gives her a beautiful outfit. She and the bear start flying around with other teddy bears to a dark part of the city where a window is, and a huge mechanical teddy bear takes off its head and starts smashing it, freeing everyone. It goes back to the girl, now in her regular clothes, looking at the storefront.
Applications to e-Comm
I love the color palettes they use in this short film, like with the storefront outfit and the magic thing that the bear does in this screenshot. →
Someday I might use some of those color palettes in a graphic design project or something.

Learned Elements
In this same scene (that the screenshot is from), all of the spheres (whatever they are) are moving upward at different speeds, which we learned how to do in Maya a few months ago with our snowflake project. We also learned how to control how far away the surroundings are with a project we did last semester, where we had to create a scenery and make them seem farther and closer away (this happens in the short film).
Well Done!
I don't think there's really anything I dislike about this; the animation looks clean, it's cute, everything is timed nicely, and, again, it reminds me of Ghibli movies (especially when there's a gust of wind).
Improvements
I'd like to see an extended version of this, with an actual story behind the bears and everything that's happening (and why it's happening). Other than that, I don't think any improvements could be made.
Conclusion
All in all, there was almost nothing bad about this film, other than the fact that it left me wanting more.


- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ


Wonder Garden. Dir. Yojiro Arai. Prod. Yoichi Kawakumi. YouTube. Spiral Cute Inc., 18 Oct. 2013. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

Making 'Kubo and the Two Strings'

Main Idea

Generally, this article briefly describes several aspects of the creation of the movie 'Kubo and the Two Strings', such as making the puppets their clothing.

Author's Feelings

You can already tell how Giardina, the author, feels about the process just by reading the first paragraph. It's very obvious that she believes the process to be—and it is—extremely difficult, especially when she compares moving a single finger to preparations for a lunar launch. She doesn't seem to have any negative feelings towards it—she seems absolutely fascinated.

But Does She Actually Support This...?

YES. She does support this. Heavily. Giardina doesn't necessarily cite any particular documents/videos/etc., but she does describe many of the efforts it took to create the movie, such as carefully designing clothes for 9-inch tall figurines, printing thousands of different faces for multiple characters, and doing a seemingly endless amount of research to get the feel of the movie just right.

Strengths/Weaknesses

According to the Visual Effects Society, Carolyn Giardina has been writing articles for topics like this for over 15 years, which explains why I think she does such a good job of thoroughly explaining what all went in to this film. However, the ending of the article didn't really seem like much of a conclusion; it just kind of stopped. I wish she would have ended it in a better fashion.

Giardina's Conclusion (If It Was One)

As said in the last paragraph, she didn't really give a conclusion. The article just ended with her talking about the individual pieces of material that made the clothing for the Sisters. So...it wasn't that great (imo).

Significance of the Main Points
Most of what the writer talked about seemed like they're pretty significant, excluding little side stories, even though they were informative. Her main claim was that the set of this movie was much more "advanced" than previous stop-motion films, and easily supported that with multiple references to the small portions that made up the whole of the movie.

But Does Her Argument Support the Main Points...?
Please read the surrounding paragraphs.

Convincing Evidence

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yesssssss! She uses more than enough evidence! She convinced me in the second paragraph!! I don't think I have to say any more!!!!! ❤

Connecting It to E-Comm

Being in (and doing this for) animation, this makes me realize that even if it takes a really, really long time to work on something, and it's super frustrating, I need to keep working on it for the final product. The people at Laika worked on 'Kubo' for about two years, and it ended up being one of my favorite movies. It can basically be summed up by the VFX (visual effects) supervisor of the movie, Steve Emerson, when he said, "Making this movie wore me out. I can't wait to do another."

Here's What I Didn't Understand...

There were a few words I didn't know the meaning of in the article (i.e. "verbose"), but I was able sort of figure out what was being said using context clues and knowledge of what happens within the movie.
That wasn't such a big deal for me, but I wish she would say a little more about this "Shannon Tindle" that she mentioned, who apparently came up with the concept of 'Kubo'.

To Finish Things Off,

I could not agree more with this lady!! Not only do the creators of this film say it was extremely difficult to make, but 'Kubo' just looks so well made that it's almost impossible to disagree.

- Brenna (っ• ◡•)っ

"Carolyn Giardina." Visual Effects Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2017.

Giardina, Carolyn. "How 'Kubo and the Two Strings' Merged Stop-Motion Animation and 3D Printing (Plus a 400-Pound Puppet)." The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., 15 Dec. 2016. Web. 09 Jan. 2017.

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