Week 7B

3/2/2016

  Today we critiqued the show openers and end tag assignment. People said:

• It was a little too fast in the beginning.
• It needed more sound, and maybe better syncing.
• The sound could probably be recorded from strait the games using another device.
• Maybe the animation could be zoomed out, event though it was suggested to stay zoomed in.
• Maybe don't use all the letters, or the whole letter, just use key parts.
• Maybe use a vectorized, or modern, image of Sonic so it doesn't clash with the vector background.
• They liked the SEGA typography and the use of Sonic and the actual SEGA sound, all of which I knew from the beginning would be necessary for success.

Week 7A

2/29/2016

Today I finished the SEGA show opener.




     One thing that upset me was that I had trouble finding trusted sources for free sounds. That is why there is a lack of sound until the end. Whenever i would try to find sound effects from the Sonic games and would try to download them it would ask me to download some software I was not aware of. This is often a sign of malware so I decided not to download many sounds. Luckily the one I wanted the most was easily obtainable for free.
     The masking was done by making a simple shape, usually a circle, and transforming it to fit my needs. Sometimes it required multiple masks on one layer. A lot of the masking was done frame by frame.

Week 6A

02/22/2016

Today we made our storyboards better, here is mine. I think the comments within the storyboard are pretty self explanatory. A lot of the nonsense of the last storyboard is not present here.

Week 5B

02/17/2016

Today we learned about storyboards, heres one of mine.

I forgot to add comments and time codes to some of these. The idea for one of them is to have SEGA's mascot, Sonic the hedgehog, come through in his ball form and draw out the logo. The other was to have sonic roll into the letters forcing them to change directions, and then have him come around again to nock the letters back in place. After both of these the famous SEGA chime would play.

Week 5A

2/15/2016

Today we had our rhythm assignment critiqued. They seemed to like my type choice. They liked how the letters enter and exit the same directions. They said it seems like they are leaving and coming back. They also liked how they shank in the direction of the anchor point. They suggested to have the project loop a little more. They also suggested to compress the layers to have them repeat more.

Then we were assigned to find 3 adds and think of a show opener or end tag to animate.

1 SEGA
I chose the video game company SEGA. I was thinking of making my own show opener for a video game, much like they did in the 80's and 90's. They would do these iconic show openers in the 80's and 90's but they don't do them anymore, maybe because of the lack of quality they put out now of days.

2 CBS
I chose the television studio CBS. I was thinking of doing a show opener that involves the eye looking logo blinking and another smaller eye appearing inside the larger eye an zooming in revealing the CBS. It would be a show open for a television show.

3 Nabisco
I chose the snack food company famous for Oreo cookies. I was thinking of doing a end tag for a cookie commercial were the logo will be pulled revealing a cookie which will have a bite taken out in a single frame.

Day of Design 2

2/10/2016

    During the Day of Design we had the privilege to hear about the work of professional designers. The second speaker I witnessed was Joel Beukelman, an interactive designer at Google, with his speech called Your Bias is Bullshit. He used to work for Netflix which he got his experience.

    He began to talk about the online community at Google. They can very emotional and get very angry. These feeling arise from the fan base of competing brands. They have a bias. Design is about mindset, and it shouldn’t be based on biased. He talked about when he worked at Netflix and he had been working with Android operating system. He would defend Android saying it was user friendly and worked well with other phone sizes and he would constantly argue with a coworker about what OS is better. It is better to be humble and stop talking when designing.

    He said that is important to be aware of other’s opinions. He suggested trying to talk to the people next to you when you’re at an event in order to find people that are not like you. It is best to design for simple people.

    He then discussed Mark Markhula, who used to work for Apple but doesn’t get the proper recognition, and how he designed with empathy. Empathy is greater than apathy when designing. Then he discussed 3 rules for design. The first rule was to do good research. The second rule is to eat your own “dogfood”, or use your own inventions. The last is to know your enemies. He left the speech saying that ignorance is not bliss, but it is irresponsible. It is an absolute necessity to learn to problem solve, communicate, and listen.

Day of Design 1

2/10/2016

   
During the Day of Design we had the privilege to hear about the work of professional designers. The first speaker was Josh Goldblum, the CEO of Bluecadet in Philadelphia and New York. He first discussed how he and his company try to use a wide arrange of technology and try to remain agnostic when choosing platforms to design for. They try to integrate with touch screens and social media as much as possible. All of this seems important, especially if they intend to stay up to date with technology.

After that he showed us a lot of projects he worked on. The first thing was a website for science fair Friday, and a game called chem crafters. Then he showed off an app that gave a tour of the the Monticello museum which had 3 touch screens to customize typography. Another app which seemed incredibly useful was called Anthi, I think, and it translated english names into korean and vice versa. Probably my favorite piece of work were these museum pillars with touch screens that could be moved up and down in order to get all the content of the exhibit. It apparently cost over 100 grand. Then he showed off a wall dedicated to the pope's travels in the papal museum. Then he told us about a mobile museum experience that allows people to sync their phones to the screens in the museum and share content. Then he showed off an experience which used 2 Xbox Kinects that were used to take a picture of their bodies and place them into landscapes. Then he talked about wood cuts of Ben Franklin that were animated in AfterEffects with scripts. It was actually very interesting to see just how integrative they can be, even though it can be expensive. 

  Then he talked about the process needed for each project. He said project management and communication are the most important part of the process. He used to work for a museum which is why he loves the cultural aspects of each project. He discussed how brainstorming can be such a struggle. They usually look at the content of the project in order to come up with a design. For example he talked about how he was working on a piece for a Van Gogh exhibit and they asked themselves, what do people like about Van Gogh. He said that a lot of work comes from experiments and prototypes. To be a successful designer you must have the tenacity to solve problems and be willing to experiment.

Week 4C

 

2/10/16

1 Linear Emotion: Anger
  A lot of the movement made by this line resemble actions and objects associated with anger. Actions include punching, kicking, pacing, yelling, and quick movements. Objects include lightning bolts and fire balls. The movement even starts out small and slow and quickly builds to be large and dramatic, much like anger itself.

2 Dreamscape
  The words and textures make sense in context of the dream it is based off but I'm a little embarrassed to mention details of the dream. Although, the vagueness of these words do scramble the story making it more surreal like a dream. I now notice how difficult some of the words are difficult to make out but this notion of being difficult to understand adds to the dream like atmosphere.

3 Rhythm
  This wasn't my first idea for the rhythm project but it does use some of the movements made from my first idea. I decided to use both changes in position as well as changes in size to add rhythm. I feel like it might be a little better if it were a little faster.

Week 4B

9/10/16

  Today we did an animation about rhythm. Rhythm, in motion graphics, is an action that regularly reoccurs and pace is the rate of rhythm. We were to make a looping animation that uses the letters of the word rhythm and transforms them from with rhythm.
  At first I was going to have the six letters come from different directions; r from the left, h going strait down, y going strait up, t going diagonally down, h going diagonally up, and m from the right. Then when the word was formed fully it would then exit in the first direction, then reform, and exit in the next respective direction until it reached all six, then it would loop. I found that this was too long and not fast enough. I also felt that the six different exits moved away from the rhythm because the multiple directions made it less repetitive and therefore have less rhythm. It felt like the looping wasn't that noticeable as well.
  After that I thought what can I do to better this. I actually saved the first idea as a different project instead of destroying it. I decided to keep the letter entering animation and removed the exiting animation. I also added a size change rather than keeping all the action position based. The letters get smaller and then return to their normal size before exiting in the direction they came. It is a faster, shorter, animation that I think keeps people entertained with better rhythm.

Week 4A

2/8/2016

Today we had a critique of the dreamscape project. Some issues were that some of my backgrounds were more of objects than textures. It also could have had a more diverse cast of typefaces and weights and maybe even different colors. Some positive feed back were that the backgrounds that were more clearly textures, specifically the background for lovely, were very effective. The switching back and forth between running and shocking was very effective. They also thought the fact that the background in running never points in the same direction when it is on screen. They thought this kept the repetition entertaining.

Week 3B

2/3/2016

   Today we were assigned to do a dreamscape in after effects. These are supposed to be composed of only textured backgrounds and single words. There are not supposed to make an obvious story and are to make little to know scents much like dreams themselves. Well I chose to do a dreamscape based on one of the strangest dreams I have ever had. The only parts that can really be explained to make somewhat scents are the reasons I think this dream came out so bizarre. I had this dream during my first year of high school and I had a terrible cold at the time. The night I had this dream was also the first time I ever had night time cold medicine so maybe that effected the way I dream. I apologize if it is a bit graphic, their really isn't a way for me to control my dreams.
   My dream starts out with me at a high school dance. I'm there by myself while everyone else seems to have a partner. I think to myself this is weird because I not usually go to events like dances. Then the power goes out and everyone gets bored. Then the principle of the school tells me I have to run to the 4 corners of the school with these giant extension cords and plug them into giant outlets so the backup generator would work and the party could continue. Each of these giant outlets were held by 4 giants. They looked like the 4 giants from The Lengend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which makes a little bit of scents to me seeing as I was playing that game around the same time. The first 3 were really easy because the giants just lowered the outlet to my level allowing me to easily insert the cords. Then when I got to the area were the 4th giant was said to be but there was no giant; instead there was the girl I had a crush on at the time. She said something on the lines of there is no 4th giant I have the final outlet but you will have to find it on me. In the dreaming mind of a high school boy this is obviously an invitation for intercourse. So I decide to undress her and insert the extension cord inside her and inserted myself into another area of her body, I'll let your imagination decide what part went where. Then as she reached climax the power returned and everyone was able to have a good time that night.
   I've always thought that dream was so bizarre that I still remember it today while other dreams I usually forget in a couple of hours or days. That is why I chose this dream and have chosen vague words so the true story is still a mystery to the viewer.

https://youtu.be/OGrXhmEYQp8

Week 3A

2/1/2016

Today we started out with a critique of our emotion animations. I was critiqued by Alina and Max who guessed my animation was about confusion. They were both wrong because it was actually about anger. They said that it fits the motion because they said it looked like people about to start a fight which is sort of what I was going for. They also liked how parts looked like someone pacing back and forth which is exactly what I was going for with those moments. They also thought the use of thin and thick lines were a good idea which I agreed with before the critique because making the lines thicker near the end was actually an accident but when I noticed it I thought it looked better that way.

Week 2

1/27/2016

Today we were to chose and emotion and make a 15 second flash video of what that emotion may look like using only the brush tool. We were to keep the emotion a secret so that others could guess the emotion.

https://youtu.be/N02Mrm2YNoo

Week 1B

1/20/16

Today we created a new blog for this class. We were going to be assigned homework but the weather calls for massive snow storms over the weekend.

Week 1A

1/20/16

This is the beginning of Art 246 a visual motion class. Today we started the class by making a tumatrope, toy made of 2 pieces of paper with string attached to each side. On one side their is part of a picture and on the other side is the remainder of the picture. When the string spins the toy the complete image is visible. Mine was a picture of the ? blocks from the Super Mario games.

 Then we made a ten frame Zoetrope. When it is placed on the device and it spins the 10 frame loop of a moving object can be seen. Mine was of a bouncing ball that would squish as it bounces.