3D Progress

Throughout this semester I have been working a lot on 3D animation. My main focus has been a couple of robots which I have had fun building and rigging.

My first part of the project was a small slender robot which was supposed to be a maintanance bot. The thin figure was meant to bring out the other features of it so that people would be able to tell what exactly its purpose is. I also decided to go with a claw hand and a nail gun for the other hand. I am really happy with the design and I think the other one that I'm working on will work well with it.

The next part that I am working on is a security robot, which has a much bigger body. It's not completely finished, and I am working on the treads for the wheels at the moment. I wanted to make the security part plain to see, so I added lights to a dome in its head. one hand is a loop that can be used to restrain something, and the other is a launcher which can shoot out shock capsules to knock someone down. I haven't even started with the rigging, and I'm only part way through coloring.


So far, I have taken about a month and a half to make these two things, but that's only because I take very long and frequent breaks. Even though I do take a lot of breaks, I've had a lot of fun making these robots. Once this entire thing is done I want to add one or two security robots to the animation with the maintenance bot so that it makes it more like this is being presented like how Apple presents their new projects.

Short Film

I learned a lot about putting scenes together and I'm really happy with the outcome. I do need to do more work on transition because most of mine were jump cuts, but they still slightly fit with the video.
I enjoyed working with the group that I had because they all did their part and made sure that everything was how it needed to be. I would definitely want to work with this group again if I had a chance.

Trailer Project

The Scope

In this project we worked to make a video game or movie trailer, my group decided to do a video game trailer. before we could film we had to find a good trailer to go off of, and the best choice for us was the Dead Rising trailer. After we picked the trailer we moved on to storyboarding and figuring out how exactly the trailer is going to go. During recording there were some problems with the video not being in focus but I did my best to work with that while editing

What Did I Learn?

While working I learned a couple of things about the cameras we used and the editing software. I found out about the camera that we used, which is EOS Rebel 60D, that the focus can be adjusted to a very fine point, and if you are even a little bit off four it can mess up the entire thing. The software I used was Adobe Premier Pro, and I learned that when editing scenes that aren't white balanced you are able to go back into Premier and fix that to make it the correct color.

What I Would Do Differently or the Same

If I had to do a project like this again I would most definitely use a EOS Rebel 60D, it is an amazing camera that has so many setting on it that you can make a scene look exactly how you want it too. Another thing I would do the same is working with the team I had, we all worked together well and all of us did the part we needed to do. For something I could do different, I would get a better dolly, the one we used while recording had small parts that limited the ways it could move and made it shake, which is very noticeable in the video.

The Next Project

In our next project I will definitely use what I learned this time. I do want to work more on my editing skill and making everything fit together perfectly.

Music Video

The Assignment

This semester we started out by working on a music video that turned out to be a really fun project. When we first started we had to choose a group and then choose a song, the song my group decided to go with was High Hopes by Panic! at the Disco. We had to create a beat sheet and then a story board for how our video was going to go. The concept of our video was inspired by the original music video of the song, except we had our own twist, which was making the focus on a student instead of a business man. The hardest part of all of this was the recording, I was the main focus of the video so on different days when we recorded I had to wear the same thing and keep my hair the same. At the end of the project we had to make sure we had enough clips and that we could make everything fit together with the song.

The Team

My team consisted of me, and four others. we all had to work together to get the project done, and with how everything came together, I would definitely want to work with these four again. The biggest part was making sure we had a schedule so that everyone who needed to be there could be, and we had to get a teacher to be able to go up onto the roof, but in the end everything worked out.

The Tech

The camera that we used was a Canon ESO Rebel T5 which wasn't the easiest to work with, but it got the job done. One problem we had with the beginning shots was that they weren't white balanced, which caused everything to look blue, luckily, since we were using Premier Pro, we were able to fix that problem and make it completely unnoticeable.

The Takeaway

If I could do anything different with this project I would have taken more shot, because of our lack of shots we weren't able to use the entire song, but the problem we had was that there wasn't much we could record to make it fit perfectly. If I were to do something the same in the next project I will definitely keep the lighting, I think the outdoor lighting added a flair to the video that made it look good and have enough light where you could see the actors face.

The Conclusion

This project was really fun through the whole process and I think if we have to do something like this againI would have just as much fun. I think that projects like this are really good for students since it allows them to have fun while still learning good shots and lighting.

The Semester Final

What I did well

During this semester I was told plenty of times that my editing was a little above average and that even when we weren't supposed to do pans, when I did, I did it well. I was also good with getting b-roll and making sure that the camera was in a pretty good position. The whole semester went pretty well for me in video but could have gone much better if I knew more about voice overs and framing.

What I need to work on

Like what I said before, I need to work more with voice overs. Whenever we first did interviews I wasn't good with getting my voice overs and putting them in the right place for questions. My next problem was with framing. When doing interviews I wasn't in the best spot with the camera and usually had to much head room and the interviewee wasn't looking the correct position, but everything could have been fixed if I had just gone back through

Action plan to improve

I have some things planned out on how on can improve. step one, when I am setting up an interview I need to make sure I am close enough to the person so there isn't too much room, next I need to make sure they aren't in the middle of the camera and are not looking directly at the camera, after that I need to make sure that they are looking at me and facing towards the more open side of the video. My next thing is that when I finish recording I need to make voice overs to talk about the questions I am asking while stating what the interviewee is going to say.

Feature Story Blog

Background Information/Process

Over the past couple of weeks we had to work on a feature story project where we had to interview someone. The whole process was pretty fun, since River was a great person to work with. we worked hard together to come up with good question and to make sure that the setting was good and the pictures and videos made sense. I learned a lot about how voiceovers work and how you need to put them into a video, I also figured out more audio and video editing skills. Going back to talking about River, she was a great person to work with and if she wasn't able to record on a certain day she always made up for lost time on days we could record.

My View on the Video

If I could go back I would definitely re-record our scenes in the art room. The biggest problem with it is that I was sitting on the left side of the camera so she ended up looking at the smaller side of the area rather than the larger. On there other hand, if I were to do a project like this again, I would keep doing the panning b-roll like I have in this video. I really like when it starts out on a small portion then you see it pan over to show much more.

General Thoughts

This video was definitely not easy, and one thing that I can draw from it is time management. Being able to manage your time properly will help you get your work done on time and will make sure that you have enough time to edit after you record. In general, I think this project was an amazing learning experience and has help me realize what it is like to be a high school reporter.

4th Quarter Review

We have been working on a project to create a product that doesn't have to be realistic, but we have to make the logo and the item to present it as if we were on shark tank. This project took us about a total of eight weeks since we had to get all the animations down and make sure our recording was correct, this process to much longer than it needed to but it was fun either way. Many of the challenges were time constraints, this was because we could only make our ad 30 seconds long and we had so much we wanted to put in there, but sadly it wasn't going to work. A big thing that I learned through out this project was that things won't always work like they are supposed to and that you will need to find away around that to meet your deadline, and that was a very tricky thing. One big portion of feedback that we received was about our website, we need to add some more things to it, but other then that we didn't hear much else. Since we got that we added a lot more to the FAQs and we made some jokes with the website to make it more relatable and funny. I think that everyone in my group did an amazing job on the project and since we all worked so hard I am really happy with the outcome. 

For most of class I had the opportunity to work on the animated ad and the animated web banner, mainly because I love to animate and I'm decent at it. When I finished my work I usually went over to my other teammates and helped them if they were struggling and we found ways to make everything better in the project. While I was outside of class I looked for certain ads on T.V. or I looked in magazines or whatever I could find to see how professional companies made their ads so that they could spread the word about their products. I have many strengths when it comes to computers themselves, but the parts of what you do on the computers is a bit different, I am only really good with animation and I'm not even able to do that very well. A really big part of my strength is my ability to focus in a really loud environment, which allowed me to work well in the classroom even when my classmates were being very loud. One of my biggest weaknesses is graphic design, I am not very good with logos and many other parts. The other weakness that I have is that I am not really able to still for long after working and so I check what else I can add to a picture and I end up adding to much detail. I could definitely improve with video as well so that I could make better scenes and put everything together properly. A big thing that want to be able to do is edit videos with a green screen better so that I can make the background show whatever I want it to show.

The thing that I loved most about this quarter was being able to work with an amazing group of people that are extremely talented in pretty much all aspects of E-Comm. If I could change anything about our project, that would be to make the website more visually appealing and to allow more time for our ad. One big take away that I got from this project is that sometimes cooperative activities are infuriating but when you work with a group that does their fair share of the work then a project can actually be really fun. One major goal that I have for next year is that I want to improve my graphic design skills, and I want to be able to make a small logo or other works that look really good with design and colors. I loved doing this project for the experience of working with animation, graphic design, and video all at once, it was able to give me the time that I needed to work with all three. My final thoughts are that this project was so much fun to do and I hope that every student coming into e9 will have as much fun as I did on this.