Demo Reel and Senior Show 2017

Demo Reel

My demo reel is a complication of all my projects I've worked on in the past year. It includes all of my motion graphics work I did in my animation class, and it includes some of my videos that I made for my school's FIRST Robotics team. Most of my motion graphics are made to music as evident by the lyric video and the audio visualizer. The cubes at the beginning change colour to the drop of the beat, and the background reacts to the bass of the song. Some of the motion graphics were made of my robotics team, and one was made for my school's news show, ONW Now. The animation for ONW Now and one for the robotics team were animated intros to be used in videos, and the other robotics animation was to be used in a contest where we had to redesign our logo to fit under a steampunk theme. All of these projects were made in Adobe After Effects using plug-ins such as Trapcode Soundkeys and Element 3D.

Senior Show

My school holds and event for graduating seniors in the e-Communications programs called the senior show. Each year the senior show has a theme (this year it was "illuminate"), and it works similar to an open house. Each senior has their own table, and people walk around each table and see each senior's work.  It's a great way for parents, teacher, school district representatives, and companies to see the cultivated talent and hard work all these students put in. This year, there appeared to be a shortage of companies, but many parents and district representatives walked around and they seemed to be impressed with our senior class. Overall it was a very fun night, and I hope more companies are able to make it to next year's senior show to hopefully give talented students internships in their field of interest. 

Overall

This year I found my niche in making motion graphics. I really didn't feel comfortable in any area of animation until now, and during this next year hopefully I'll be able to learn new plug-ins and refine my skills and workflow. Even though I don't plan on majoring in animation during college, I do want to keep making motion graphics as a hobby and maybe become a freelance artist. I can't wait to see what this year holds in store.  

The End of the Semester: A Reflection

My Project(s)

I didn't really have one "big" project this semester. Instead, my semester consisted of several smaller projects. Most of these involved using effects and plug-ins in Adobe After Effects. My ultimate goal was to become better at using After Effects so I can create my own motion graphics and special effects in the future. Coming out of this semester, I can say that I'm much more comfortable with using After Effects. I feel like I know it better than Maya at this point.

The Process

Wanting to get a better hang of After Effects and its capabilities, I completed a bunch of various tutorials the first half of this semester. I followed some tutorials on Video-Copilot, Youtube, and Lynda, and I mainly focused on motion graphics with some kinetic typography and special effects sprinkled in. I completed a variety of small projects from making a cool spinning logo, using expressions to have color react to sound, using waveforms, recreating a minute of concert visuals (which took a while due to masking). I also made a couple of animations for my school's news program, ONW NOW. 

Color Reacting to Audio

I went to a concert in September, and I saw that not only did the visuals react to the music, but so did the lights, more specifically, the color reacted to the lights. So I went to After Effects and I made several panels of light, and I had them react to the beat of Porter Robinson's Song, Language by using a complex expression. It could still use some tweaking to be perfect, but the beginning of the song came out pretty cool.

The Expression used to have colors react to the music

Waveform

After exploring the effects within After Effects, I found out that waveforms could be reacted, similar to the ones use in Youtube music channels such as Monstercat and Proximity. I wanted to become more familiar with using a waveform and working with audio, so I created my own. To add a unique element to my waveform. I used Video-Copilot's Saber plug-in to make the circle glow when it expanded, but when the circle is whole, it looks a little too white. Other than that it came out pretty nice. 

Spin!

I just followed a couple tutorials on Youtube to make this. I thought it looked cool and it would get me familiar with more effects. There isn't much to say here.

30 Seconds of Concert Visuals

I was inspired by Porter Robinson's tour visuals. I wanted to try my hand at recreating a section of the visuals for his song "Divinity." I only got around to about a minute before I had to start working on another project, but I'm pretty happy with the result. I found the gif of this punching cat online, and I used the roto-bezier tool to mask it. I also had to time remap it, but that didn't take too long. 

ONW NOW

My "deadline" project this semester actually turned out to be creating animations for my school's news program, ONW NOW. I used the Adobe Illustrator vector file for the logo, and extruded it in Element 3D. From there I textured and animated it. 

Next Semester

Starting next semester, I will be working on the basketball animations that I said I was going to work on this semester. I became really busy, and the group I was working with didn't really stay in contact, so I'm going to try and finish up these animations before the basketball season ends. If I don't get them done in them, at least I know they will be used next year. After I finish these animations, I'm going to try and create a good lyric video before the year ends. Hopefully I can get there. 

Borrowed Time: A Review

So I was browsing Reddit a couple of days ago, and I came across a new animation that was made by two Pixar animators. One would think since Pixar animators usually create family friendly animations, this one would be the same. However, this animation was definitely made for adults.

Borrowed Time tells the story of an old sheriff troubled by his past. The story starts out on a windy, dark, and cloudy day. The sheriff looks weak and defeated. He slowly walks towards a cliff.

The story does not rely on dialogue, but rather motion, facial expressions, and physics. It does an excellent job of immersing you in the story. I could feel the sheriff's emotions as he thought about his past, and the physics of the character's movement match the mood and tone of the piece. I don't think I could ever model like this, but I am very interested in learning how to animate in the way this piece was animated, in a very loose way. 

This is a story about accepting the past, and accepting mistakes. It also touches on dark themes such as death, suicide, and violence. It's a story that won't make sense to children, and that's okay. This piece is an example that animation can used to tell any story. It doesn't have to be family friendly. The creators did a really good job of making that clear. I can't really think of any way this piece could improve. It's very beautiful and I highly recommend you watch it!

Watch "Borrowed Time" Here

A Journey Into After Effects and Motion Graphics

After all the struggles I encountered in Maya and with 3D animation last year, I've decided to focus on making Motion Graphics in After Effects. I've had previous experience in After Effects in the past making flash animations, but this will be my first venture into the world of Motion Graphics. My first project involving Motion Graphics was my "Jaded" lyric video I made at the beginning of this year. You can check it in a post I made below.

The Process

To get an idea of how to start making Motion Graphics, I headed over to Lynda.com, a website where professional tutorials are made for people wanting to learn how to use software and how to create digital media, to learn more. There I went through a couple of courses that taught me the "rules" of Motion Graphics and how to make basic animations and such. https://www.lynda.com/

Next, with the After Effects skills I learned in Lynda, I went over to Video Copilot to check out some tutorials. I learned how to use the Saber plug-in, and I learned how to make 3D intros and outros.

I also learned how to use an audio waveform, and how to customize it's settings. Expressions were later introduced to me, and I used them to have a solid's color react to the bass of a song. Converting audio into keyframes helped with this too. I'm feeling more comfortable with After Effects every day.

The Project

Being interested in Motion Graphics, my animation teacher offered me the opportunity to work on some animations and graphics for our school's news show, ONW Now, and for the tri-caster that will be used to project animations at the basketball's game this upcoming season. It's my first "real project." I have a client, a deadline, and expectations to meet. I'm a bit nervous, and it's a daunting task, but I know I can do this. I'm working with a couple of other classmates on this project, so we can give feedback on each other's work, and help each other if need be. To make these animations, I'm learning how to use the Element 3D plug-in created by VideoCopilot, and I'm having so much fun learning how to use it. It's very powerful, and you can create so much with it. 

The Future

I'm hoping the experience from this project and watching tutorials will allow me to apply my skills into making my ideas come to life. I'm really interested in concert motion graphics. I was watching a set by Porter Robinson, an Electronic Musician, and I took notice of the graphics that were playing on the screen behind them. It was immersive, and really cool to see how the graphics synced up with the beat, and followed the meaning, and emotion of the song. I was inspired. His graphics involved a lot of drawing and 2D flash animation, I don't necessarily want to create that, but rather create graphics that immerse people into the music that their listening to. I'm hoping to start creating my own graphics next semester. Porter Robinson's Tour Visuals.

Jaded

The last month or so of this semester, I have been working on a lyric video for Disclosure's Jaded. Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the entire thing due to missing lots of school due to robotics, but It came out pretty okay for my first lyric video. Check out the first min below (EPILEPSY WARNING!):

A Yearly Reflection

  As the end of the school year is approaching, I would like to take time to reflect upon what I learned and how I've changed this past year. This past school year, I learned my strengths and weaknesses in Animation. I found that 3D modeling isn't the aspect of animation I want to go into. It was a tedious process and I struggled greatly in modeling my character. Rigging wasn't too bad, it was fun to do even though it took a while. I found it is motion graphics that I have the most potential in. My technical skills in timing are strong. All I need to do is learn how to create original and creative graphics to use. I learned how to manage my time and communicate more effectively.  Also: don't bite off more than you can chew. It is also important to be passionate about your work. Passion allows you to work at the best of your ability.

  To learn how to model and rig I mostly referred to tutorials on Youtube and on Lynda. There were some instances where I had my animation teacher help me, and there were other times that I figured out things on my own. So for motion graphics I used past knowledge of after effects and I had to use some tutorials to figure out new ways to animate text and to figure out how to preview a project with audio. Learning communication was tough for me. I consider myself a huge introvert. I don't talk all that much, but I managed to make myself feel more comfortable talking to those I don't know very well. FIRST Robotics has allowed me to learn how to communicate with my peers and my superiors in order to get work on time and in an effective manner. I also learned from the many mistakes I've made throughout the year. At times I was lacking in responsibility and knowledge, and I paid the price. I learned to save and backup frequently. SD cards should always be checked for content before deleting what's on them, and sometimes, searching up how to do something is better than figuring it out yourself.

   All of the skills I have learned this year, even the technical skills, will allow me to grow as a person. I have learned so much about communication, time management, and leadership throughout the year that I can see the importance of these attributes in a career. I can begin to further develop my professional personality. I can see who I want to be and what I want to do. This year has started to a light a path to the future I want to see happen. I have to focus on refining the skills I enjoy doing in animation to ensure that my path for the future is bright.

  My strengths in animation include rigging, timing, and actual animation/keyframing. One of my personal weaknesses is slowly becoming into a strength, leadership. My weaknesses include modeling and a good creative outlet. What I mean by a creative outlet is an ability to think outside the box to manipulate a project to turn out a certain way. I struggle with this. Also my knowledge of photoshop is rather basic... I improved my skills in After Effects just by being patient and taking the time to learn the tools and their functions. I improved my leadership and communication skills by forcing myself to step out of my comfort zone. I am trying to push myself to be more open, and I am trying to build the confidence to be a better communicator. 

   I will use these skills to create what I want to create, and to be who I want to be. I can use my rigging skills to help out other modelers by animating their models, and I can use my knowledge in After Effects to create new projects from 2D animation to special effects to motion graphics. 

The leadership and communication skills I've learned will help me collaborate with others more efficiently and open up opportunities to expand my career in the future.

      If there is anything I would change, it would be not spending as much time trying to get myself to like modeling as I did. I wanted to like modeling, but as much as I tired I would still find it tedious and annoying. I didn't have the patience for it. Modeling the man was a learning experience. I learned so much about modeling and human topology, but I also learned that modeling wasn't for me. I should've made a sooner transition into After Effects. I enjoy using After Effects. I am upset that I didn't get more time to use it. I don't own it, and since the school year is ending I won't be able to use it until next school year unless I buy it. Otherwise, there isn't anything I would change. This year went alright.  

     Overall, it was a decent year. I was disappointed in how some of my projects turned out such as the simple man I made, but I managed to make up for that by finding my interest in After Effects. I will continue to expand this new interest and hopefully become very proficient in After Effects, but I'll also continue to learn how to rig and animate 3D models so I can show future employers that I have knowledge in more than one area in animation. I feel like I made good use of my time, and I didn't really spend that much time doing nothing. I was almost always trying to learn or trying to come up with a new idea. Over the summer I hope to improve my skills in After Effects and motion graphics. I have been given the responsibility of making motion graphics for my school's basketball games next year, and that will be an interesting experience. I can't wait for next year and for what lies ahead. 

"Nicky Romero-Lighthouse" analysis

To compliment my venture into motion graphics, I decided to do an analysis/critique of the lyric video to Nicky Romero's song, Lighthouse. The font and the visuals in the video compliment the song very very well. The timing between transitions is flawless and it is really fun to watch. The video made a strong connection to the ocean (the metaphor in the song is the lighthouse), but it lacked in making a connection with the song's message. As for what I can learn from this project, I have already learned how to be precise in timing, but I could really improve in the variety of transitions I use from phrase to phrase. In my own lyric video I find myself becoming repetitive in my transitions. I could also implement 3D elements into my own videos. I would have liked to see a deeper connection to the meaning of the song by the creator, but overall it was an excellent video.

Link: http://www.animationarena.com/working-for-pixar.html

"Working for Pixar"

In this article, animator Alex Orrelle talks about his career at Pixar and the steps he took to get there. Born in London and raised in Israel, Orrelle studied at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. He uses his past experience to make the claim that to get into Pixar you "have to be good.. You have to love animation." Orrelle does a good job at explaining life inside Pixar, but he lacks in explains how exactly he got there. He mostly credited timing to being hired, but doesn't go in depth with his explanation. He concludes with the key to being hired: following and building on the aspect that one is good at in animation. One cannot master every aspect of animation. He stresses this several times. The article was really great way to take a peak inside life at Pixar. It gives guidance to those who are lost in their animation career.  For me, this really encourages me to follow the aspect of animation that I enjoy. This seems to be motion graphics at the moment. This article is a great source of guidance and a bit of inspiration. It is worth a read: http://www.animationarena.com/working-for-pixar.html

Kinetic Typography: A Basic Tutorial.

Kinetic Typography

Disclaimer: You should already have a basic knowledge of After Effects and its interface before using this tutorial.

Hey guys. Today I am going to go over the basics of kinetic typography in the form of a lyric video. The song I am using is Jaded by Disclosure. Let's get right into the learning!

The Background

The background I am using here is very very very basic. Once you have all the words animated you can go back and customize it to make it your own. To make the background above, I just used a green solid and added a ramp to create a shadow around the edge of the screen. My priority right now is to animate the words.

The Audio

Once you have your audio, import it, drag it into your composition, select it, and press "l" twice to reveal the waveform. The waveform is very useful when making a lyric video because it allows you to see the beat and when words are spoken. It makes timing the words easy.

The Text

As for the text, it is up to you to choose your style. Usually I use Century Gothic or Helvetica. Choose your stroke, text size, and spacing. Make sure to make each word a separate layer. We want to animate every word individually. For this animation we are going to animate the position of the text and just have the words move on to the screen. Place the words in the position they will end up in at the end of the animation. 

The position at the end of the animation

The Animation

Once you have placed your text, highlight the first word that is being animated and press "p." This will bring up the position animator. Find the place in the song where the word is said, drag the time indicator to that place on the timeline, and press the stopwatch by the graph that is on the left of the word "position."A diamond should appear where the time indicator is. This is a keyframe. Make sure to easy ease in these keyframes. It will help the animation look much smoother. Then, drag the time indicator back the smallest bit, and move the word to its starting position. Another keyframe will be created. Make sure to easy in this one as well. You could end up with something like this:  

Keyframes

Starting point outside the frame and the endpoint inside the frame.

Make sure to RAM preview it by pressing this button on the upper right to make sure it lines up with the word: 

Once it lines up, repeat the same step for your other words. The trick here is to have a group of words appear on the screen at a time with the same animation, and then transition to another animation that introduces the words such as opacity, scale, etc. The possibilities with kinetic typography are endless. This is just one basic way to do it.

Pixels

Pixels

Pixels is a short animated film about the video game characters and elements essentially, "invading" the real world. The film doesn't have a set story, but rather sets up very well crafted senarios of invasion. There is an instance of the space invaders turning taxi cabs into pixels, and Pac-Man riding along the metro eating stations, as he would eat the white dots in the video game. The 3D aspect of this film is something I would really like to learn how to do. The pixel effect is a breath of fresh air, I've never seen anything like it. One thing I am assuming the creators did in the creation of this film is create masks to place the special effects, and I recently learned how to do that a couple of months ago. The effects and cinematography was very well done. However, I would like to see a fully-developed story made out of this concept that isn't Adam Sandler's sad excuse for an adaption. I look forward to onemoreproduction's future creations. 

Jean, Patrick. "PIXELS / The Short Film." Vimeo. Onemoreprod, 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.

https://vimeo.com/10829255

A Simple Man

   This is the result of the project I started back in first semester. My objective was simply to model a man, and animate a walk cycle. Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to finish modeling his ear and hair. He came out okay nonetheless. I didn't have much time to animate the walk cycle after modeling, so I went with a simple walk cycle.

   For coming up with the design of the model, I contacted my fellow animator, Erick Vidal, for a design. 

 

This is the design he came up with. Unfortunately, the nose and neck don't line up perfectly. I had to take this into account while modeling and improvise. I thank Erick for his time and drawing skills (they are much better than mine). I highly recommend working with him. As small animators, we are trying to create the best content possible, and working with a fellow upcoming animator is the best way to do that. 

I covered the modeling and weight painting phase in a previous blog post. Scroll down to read more!

Throughout this project I learned to save frequently due to the small chance of a project corruption, and to be patient. Taking time to learn how every step is done is key to improving as an animator.

If there was anything I could've done differently was to model the arms horizontally instead of vertically. This caused me many issues while rigging. Something I would've liked is more time, however that isn't always possible.

I did improve my skills as a modeler. However, I decided this isn't the route I want to take with animation. I really enjoy rigging, and it is definitely something I want to explore.

Overall, I wasn't satisfied with the end result. When playing the animation, the foot would glitch out at around 120 frames, and I had to work my way around it. The model looks awkward in some places such as the elbows and the gluteus Maximus, and he has solid ears! I will take the skills I learned and apply them in my future projects. 

This semester, I will explore the realm of motion graphics and special effects.

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Semester Recap

                                     

Progress

It turns out that I bit off more than I could chew. In my project blog I made in the beginning of September I said that I was going to model a character, rig it (both facial and body), and texture it in Mudbox. Unfortunately due to my lack of experience and a numerous amount of problems (3 file corruptions, bugs, etc.) I was able only to model and partially rig my character's body. I had to learn how to use several tools that I didn't know how to use before such as the multi-cut tool, "insert edge loop," collapsing, beveling, and using Inverse Kinematics to rig. There was also a lot of concepts I was unaware of, like topology and the importance of quads. It was quite a bit of information to learn and apply quickly. I'd say I'm about 65% done with this project, but I'm glad I was able to learn from my mistakes and have the opportunity to work at my own pace to make this project the best it can be. I will talk more about this in the reflection.

Process

I had my fellow animator , Erick Vidal,  make me a reference image due to my lack of drawing skills. Here is the character my model is based off of.

The image came out slightly disproportional. Unfortunately, I did not notice until the deeper stages of modeling, so I had to adapt. My file had already corrupted 3 times, and I wasn't wanting to start over. I started out making the torso, arms, and legs, and I used a cylinder to make all of these components. I attached them together by merging vertices and using a number of the tools listed in "Progress" to ensure that the quads were created and kept, for they make more smoother and less troublesome animation and texturing. As the body was coming together, I had an error with texturing, and in trying to fix it, the file corrupted. I didn't make a back up, and I lost about a week's worth of progress. I made it up in about 4 days. Then, when I arrived at more or less the same spot, both the original file AND the backup corrupted. Another four days were lost. Two days into making up the second corruption, the file and its backup corrupted again. Lucky, this was the last time this would happen. It took me about 3 and a half weeks to finish the body. It's late October. 

I made the mistake of modeling the arms vertically instead of horizontally, which would come to haunt me later when rigging.  After taking a day or two to polish the body, I went on to making the head. Making the head was probably my favorite part about making this model. I learned so much and it was incredibly rewarding to see progress. I countered small bugs and problems, but I managed to solve them on my own for the most part. 

The ears were a bit challenging, but I managed to complete them in about 4 days. They came out alright. It's late November, and I am just now starting to rig. This is where the bugs really start to come in. After I set up my joints, I began to parent controls to the IK handles, but for some reason Maya did not want to acknowledge this. The controls essentially did nothing. I asked my Animation teacher, Mr. Netterville, and he could not figure it out. I continued my work and found that Maya had decided to re-orient joints to the most bizzare positions. I asked a senior named Zack, who is experienced in rigging, and he could not figure out the problem. It was more frustrating than the file corruption to be completely honest. 

The control is not moving the IK handles...

After searching for various solutions, I decided to use a "Human IK" rig that Maya provided to rig my character. Here is where modeling my character's arms vertically came back to haunt me. Human IK requires arms to be modeled vertically to minimize issues and guarantee a clean rig. I skinned the rig to the model, and everything came out fine, except the arms. When the arms rotate there were a lot of issues painting the weights to make it look natural. There was always be some sort of inhuman attribute to his movement. It took me about 10 hours to paint weights, I spent around 3 or on the shoulder area itself using trial and error to make it as natural as possible. I had to use the smooth component of the paint weights tool to make it look somewhat natural.

I can say that now I have painted the weights to the best of my ability, and second semester I'm going to come in hitting the ground running, set up the controls and animate this guy. 

Reflection

Looking back, I feel like I took a very long time modeling my character. However, this was my first real character model, and I wanted him to be very very detailed. I think I did a decent job modeling him considering it was my first model, and to be completely honest, I don't enjoy modeling. I find it my weakest point in animation, tedious, and somewhat dreadful. I wanted to learn how to rig and texture. Even though it was very frustrating, rigging was very fun for me. It was peaceful and relaxing.  

   The cool thing about my animation class is that it lets you explore and work at your own pace so you can learn the way you want to learn.  I was so glad to be able to work at my own pace. Even though I don't enjoy modeling, I feel like I've learned so much about modeling, from tutorials and from my mistakes. I'm so much better at it than I was before. I am on a FIRST Robotics team, and as a side project I am modeling and animating our team's logo. The logo took me about 15 minutes to model. Without this project, I feel like would've struggled modeling it because I ended up using a lot of the tools I was first unfamiliar going into this project. I have taken a lot away from this project that I will have to end up applying to future projects whether I like it or not. I can say that I've worked my hardest this semester. Coming into this class I felt like I was going to struggle. I did, but I improved greatly, and I'm happy. I need to be fearless and look into new areas and projects, no matter how intimidating they may seem. If I run into a problem, I just have to be patient and find a solution. I have definitely grown as an animator this semester.

Looking Ahead

Next semester, I am planning on finishing this project, as well as working on various side projects for my FIRST Robotics team. If time permits, I really want to look into special effects and some 2D animation. I really haven't found my niche yet, so I need to keep exploring. I am willing to look into as many areas of animation as I need to find yet. As of now, the area of animation I enjoy the most is rigging, however, the most rewarding is modeling. It feels AMAZING to finish a model. Looking farther ahead, I want to create something memorable, something unique, something that defines me, before I graduate. That is the ultimate goal.

It's been a semester full of ups and downs, but overall it was a fun ride. I learned so much this semester alone compared to the time I spent in Maya my sophomore year. I am really looking forward to expanding my horizons in the world of animation this coming semester. I can't wait for what's to come (Even its more file corruptions... I can just do it over again for more practice).

Rigging: Basics of Painting Weights

Hey guys, in this blog I'm going to talk about the basics of painting weights on a rig. In the left  image I have my model with  a rig skinned to it. If you have a rig but haven't skinned it to your model yet, you can skin it by going to the drop down menu on the upper left and selecting the "Rigging" option. From here go to the top menu, and select Skin->Bind Skin. 

This is how your model should appear when skinned. The joints should be in a rainbow like patter and the edges of the model rather dark. The weight tool allows you to control what joints control what part of your model. You paint these weights, and they can either restrict movement or allow a join to control a part of the model. Lets get into using the "Paint Skins Weights" tool.

The tool can be found under "Skin-> (Weight Maps)-> Paint Skin Weights."












The Tool will appear on your side toolbar as a square with a purple paintbrush. Double-click the tool.

Here we have the Paint Weight interface. There are several options located in this interface that we will go over later. Joints that can be painted will be located under influences, but if we notice, there are no joints found. Why? We need to select our model first, and then go to the paint weights tool.



Now that we have our model selected, we can see the list of joints inside our model, and the area they affect. In this case, I have the joint where the right clavicle should be selected. We can shades of color in near this area. This is the area this particular joint controls when moved. The shades of color resemble how much of this area is being controlled on the scale of black being 0% control, and white, being 100% control.

The blue resembles little control, and the red is near 100% control. For this "tutorial" we are going to go ahead and turn color ramp on. It's more vivid, and allows you to have more control over your model.

This is the join hierarchy. We can select joints and see what areas they affect here.

I am not going to go too in depth with this tutorial, so I will only explain the "paint operations," "value," and the first 3 "profiles."  When you start to paint your paintbrush will have a value set. When you paint, you are technically painting a value over the model. 0.0000 is no influence, and 1.000 is 100% influence. You can select ranges between these values and give some control to the joint. It really depends on what you need. Replace, under paint operation, replaces a value already set on the model with the value on you paint brush. I select a joint, and lets say an area on my model had .5 value, and I want that joint to have no control over that area so I set my value to zero and paint over that .5 area. The color will change to black, and the join no longer has control over that area. "Add" adds value to an area, pretty straight forward. "Scale" subtracts value from an area, and smooth more or less evenly distributes the values, making the paint smoother. You want to try and paint the area around the joint, and get rid of areas that are far from it.


Ok, so now here I have my model, with the clavicle joint selected (in light blue). My brush is a red circle with a triangle like shape in the center. My brush has a value set to zero. Watch what happens when I paint over the shoulder with green.

The area turns black. This shows that the joint no longer controls the side of the shoulder. Notice how my brush got larger. You can hold "B" and drag your mouse to change the size of your brush on the fly.











Here I finish painting over the upper part of the shoulder, but wait. It seems as if I have removed the area around the joint. I want to give it full control, so I am going to add a value of 1.000 and paint over the clavicle. Before I go to the side menu and change the value, there is a way to quickly switch from a lower value to a higher value. Hold "Cntrl" and paint. This changes the value to the "inverted" value, and allows you to paint with it as long as you have "control"selected. For example. My value is 0.000. The inverted value would be 1.000. What Maya does is it takes the inverted value to be the value you have set minus 1. It is a time saving shortcut that is noteworthy.


As you see here I have finished painting the weights around the clavicle. The joint selected will now control the faces in white when moved. This tool is incredibly important for animation, because it allows for cleaner movement and therefore cleaner animation.

An Animator's Fear

                             "Fear plagues every creative person to some degree..."

    I recently encountered an interesting article on Lynda.com, a database used for technical tutorials, written by Dermot O' Conner that talked about animators and their fear to be creative. This fear makes you scared to finish a project or even start one. Conner underwent this fear. He calls it a "demon," or an "insecurity complex." It leaves animators mentally phased. Work is hardly ever finished or shown. This leads to the animator never experiencing their own potential. Conner explains that when he was working as an assistant for a head animator, he would start to draw, but after the first line he would rip up the paper and start over because feared of failure. After two years he developed an insane mental block. One that took time and a little inspiration to over come.  The article states, "you must be self aware about how you approach you work, and do so in a healthy manner." I cannot stress enough how true this is. I often find myself in the same situation. The mind is an extremely powerful tool and has a large influence in events that happen in our daily lives. Being a rather young and inexperienced animator I have not found my niche in animation. I really have no idea what I'm good at in this field. As a result, I sometimes start work scared of failure, or even frustrated at the fact that I don't know what I'm good at. I get stressed and upset because of my inability to master certain concepts, such as modeling. I find myself sometimes dreading work or unmotivated to continue my projects because of fear of future failure. With this recent project, I have encountered a numerous amount of problems that have led me to fall behind, including the corruption of my project not once, but twice... This fear has really taken away my ability to animate to my full potential, and this article has helped me realize this.

     Conner talks about the method that helped him overcome this fear. Disney animator Shamus Culhane encountered the same fear when he was working on Snow White. Culhane's "cure" was to work fast, without worrying about the details. He got the idea on paper, and technically polished it later. His method involved changing his way of thinking. Instead of, "I am unhappy with my work it is terrible I'm going to start over," he goes to, "Alright, I have this idea, I'm going to see how I can make it come to life and improve my skills in this process. Failure is not an option." Problems are going to arise every once in awhile. It is inevitable. The way one thinks through these problems is how one learns and strengthens their skills. During these last two weeks of being plagued with technical errors, I have learned more about Maya and my technically skills improved. Conner says to "just do it." No matter how inexperienced you are, try it, and see what you can learn. This is exactly what I need do to in order to improve. I need to stop worrying about failure or my inexperience. I need to try and learn. I need to learn from mistakes and error. I need to over come this fear of being creative. I need to believe in myself. I need to BE myself.  Design what I want to design. It is that simple. Free your mind from the creative demons that lie in the depths of your subconscious. That is how one is successful. O'Conner's article helped me realize this. If you haven't already, give it a read.
http://www.lynda.com/articles/an-animator-conquers-his-fear

A New Project

Disclosure Face

As I begin to delve in farther into the world of animation, I have decided I want to explore 3D facial rigging and animation. For this project I came up with the idea of animating a simple walk cycle, and at the end having the character speak something. It isn't much of a story, but I really want to sharpen my skills in this area. I am not much of a modeler either, and I don't like it, but by modeling a human I can learn a thing or two about it.

         

Nathan Drake from Uncharted

     The inspiration from the facial rigging really came from two sources. Video games, and a EDM group called Disclosure. I really like rigging in general and I am really interested in learning the process of facial rigging. I want to make my animations speak. Disclosure has this face set up on the projector behind them lip syncing the words to the songs. I saw a video of a live concert and that also inspired me to start exploring this area of animation.

                                                                   

Basic walk cycle

I am also really wanting to learn how to animate a basic walk cycle. This is something I've never done before, and I feel like it is an essential skill to have as an animator.

Mudbox

    I also want to learn how to texture in Mudbox. Mudbox is used to make super precise textures. I am not much of an artist, but I really want to learn how to give life and colour to models.


   The idea/story for this project will be simple. I'll have a person walk over and pick up an object(maybe a ball or a stick). Then, he will look to the camera and say something. I just want to practice my rigging and my texturing skills. Since this is my first try at making a walk cycle I'm sure I'll encounter problems, but I will try my absolute best.

One Man Band

The animated short film, One Man Band,  created by Pixar tells the story of two musicians trying to win over the donation of a small child. The story was really well told. The plausible impossible played a huge role in this film, and it was fun to see how it all played out. There was no dialogue. The story was told in the entirely of music, actions, and facial expressions.

Examples of the plausible impossible in this film were the musicians, equipped with their arsenal of instruments, and the young child, with musical skills of Mozart. Toward the end of the film the child loses his gold coin that he/she was going to donate, takes a violin, and wins a bag FULL of gold coins. Realistically, that won't happen right away, but it was very funny to see it happen immediately because it led to lively expressions of jealousy from the musicians and it really moved the story forward. The sudden change in expression in all of the characters, especially in the child, were key in telling the story. The expressions allowed me as a view to really understand what the characters were feeling. I really like how Pixar exaggerated character elements and situations in this film. It gave the film a sense of humor and life. One element in the story that I want to apply in my future works was the use of facial expression. I love the way they were used and I really want to become a master in the area of facial rigging. One element in this project that I have already learned how to do is texturing and rigging the body as a whole. I enjoy doing both of these. Despite no dialogue, the creator told the story well using facial expressions. While 3 characters was enough to tell the story, I would've liked to see some bystanders in the story. I am curious to see how pixar would change the story then. Overall, I really enjoyed this Pixar short and it will be considered one of my favorites. I still remember watching this short after 10 years and I still really enjoy it. If you haven't already, give it a watch.
https://vimeo.com/15914491

Final: Special FX

Special Effects Final        

         For this project my group created a scene where josh was abducted by a UFO and taken to an alien planet. We filmed against a green screen so we could replace Josh's background in After Effects. Although the lighting could have been a little bit brighter, filming went well. Sierra was upstairs working on the UFO you see in this video. She used Maya to make it:

After filming, we took the footage and created a mask around Josh so he would blend in with the surroundings. There were a few problems encountered due to overexposure on Josh's face. All we did was trim the video and lower clip white to fix the problem. From there we just placed Josh in each scene. Sierra added a lights and a beam to the UFO to make it look like he was being transported into it. All was had to do from there was fade josh out as the light shone on him. During the shot where the spaceship was flying, all I did was have the background move while the saucer was in one place spinning, It was really simple to make and it turned out really cool.  Matt took screen shots of planets in Space Engine to provide us a variety of  backgrounds to choose from. We ended up going with this one:

The other backgrounds we used:

After that we touched it up by  adding sound effects and then we added a key light on Josh. This was an easy and fun project to make.  We could've done a little bit more with effects such as having Josh beamed down, but overall I am very satisfied with this project.