BIRDS

It's been a while since I last mentioned the "O Coldplay" Bird project on this blog, but I decided to get back at it recently because I am entering this project into eMagine in the 2D Animation category. I also renamed the project to just "Birds" because I thought it wasn't necessary to include the song title and artist with the actual project title. Hopefully, this will become a finalist in eMagine in April!

After taking a long hiatus on Birds, I went back and looked through the project to see what scenes needed to be cleaned up and finished. Most of the scenes include the birds flying in formation at different camera angles, adjusting movements for the starry sky and sunrise, getting birds into a pole line, and moving clouds. There are also some scenes that I want to highlight about what I did, and how they helped me learn more about After Effects.

In this scene, the birds are "hovering above", where the birds can be seen flying at a worm's eye viewpoint. To get all of the birds flying together at once, I learned that it is possible to adjust the positioning keyframes for each layer at once so the birds can fly together without getting lost with their pack.

This scene here, where the lyrics play the part "It's how you think of love", I had the challenge of getting all of my birds from their normal flight formation to fit inside a heart when the word love comes in, and returning back to their normal flight pattern. I accomplished this task by setting the keyframes to the original flight path. After that, I made each bird fly to their spot when the heart showed up the moment the song got to love so the birds can fly to the music.

This scene here goes up from the normal bird scene, the night sky, and a sunrise. Originally, I had each background scene separate and attempted to compile it all together in After Effects with the camera. I had a lot of trouble aligning all of my layers and getting them to move smoothly. I fixed this by making a long "sky strip" in Photoshop that included all of my necessary layers. The sky strip was made to fit three In here, I added in a sunrise gradient and edited the stars to have a soft glow at the bottom. The sky strip really helped me save lots of time and made me realize that if I want to transition between two or more scenes, I should use this method.

In this scene, the birds fly to a wire pole, and then fly away to the lyrics of "Sometimes they arrive, sometimes they are gone". I personally think this was the most interest scene to work with since it involved lots of patience and critical thinking. The first thing I did was precisely time the birds' drawings and keyframes to the music. I also allowed some breathing room for the birds entering in and leaving so all of the birds don't come and go all at once. To make each bird different when coming in and leaving, I adjusted the entrance and exiting keyframes with the for each bird tweaking each bird's graph path and adjusting the timing to when each bird flies to and out of the pole.

In this scene, where the birds fly away back home, I had to look back to the side view and worm's eye view of the bird formations to understand how the birds should be aligned. As I aligned the birds, I had some trouble getting the birds cooperating with the camera zooming out in order to have the birds appear like they're flying away. To fix this, I decided to render out the birds flying into one video. After that, I imported that video into After Effects and moved the camera's Point of Interest and the bird's positioning to get the look that I wanted.

I had lots of fun making this animation and really enjoy the final product. The whole version of Birds is available to watch here!

POLY-JERBOA

Jerboa Perspective View

Polygon and Normal Jerboa Side View

For my second semester project, I decided to make a project combining animals with the low-polygon art style. I have seen various low-poly animals on several websites and decided to make my own animated take on it. Most of the animals I saw being used were common animals like dogs, cats, and birds, but I wanted to use an animal not well known to the public. Then I thought about using a jerboa, a rodent sometimes known as the kangaroo rat for its long tail and legs. This rodent also hops like a kangaroo, making the jerboa very cute and odd from the other rodents.

After my jerboa pitch came in, I drew my jerboa designs in my sketchbook by looking at various images and videos to reference from. Once that was done, I made a low-polygon version of the jerboa by dissecting the jerboa's basic joints and body parts to make outlines of only straight lines so the jerboa could have a geometric appearance.

STORYBOARD

Storyboard Concept

Above here is a potential storyboard that I thought of with my jerboa. In here, the jerboa lives in the desert and is running for his life being chased by an owl. I eventually scrapped this idea since I wanted to focus on the jerboa and its polygon form, not how it lives in its environment. This storyboard was inspired by this video form BBC Earth. I will also be using this video as a reference for animating my jerboa.

COLOR PALETTE  

Jerboa Test Sketch

Color Palette

To the right is my color palette I designed on Paletton. I chose two complimentary colors and picked different shades of purple and yellow from my palette. I chose a dark purple to represent the night sky and a light cream-yellow color to represent the jerboa fur. These different shades allow one color to not stand out too strong against the other, and maintain a good balance.

With these colors, I made a test sketch from one of my original sketches to see how these colors would work together. I think the colors are a perfect match!

KEYFRAMING

Jerboa Keyframes

After gathering my colors, I formed keyframes from the bionic kangaroo picture down below from Serious Wonder. I chose a kangaroo to reference from with leg movements because their leg movements closely resemble how a jerboa hops.

Bionic Kangaroo

ROUGH DRAFT

Once all the keyframes and sketches were created, I combined them into an animation. These keyframes are in the process of being outlined and have smooth in-between frames. I plan to have this project finished by April or May.

INITIALS 2.0

Remember a while back when I said I would update my logo? Well that time has finally come!

Here is my new logo, which I created in Adobe Illustrator. I evaluated my new logo design on Behance, where you can read in full detail about how I formed my ideas to gain this new design. I also highly recommend that you'd follow me on Behance, which is where I will be posting more of my projects to. Go check it out!

WIX PORTFOLIO SITE

Along with my Behance page, I have created an online portfolio using Wix to showcase my projects that I have from the time that I was in e-Communication. Click here to access my Wix page!

BEHANCE PAGE

I have recently created a Behance account to professionally display my best pieces from the time I have been in e-Communication. My Behance account is still being updated, but feel free to take a look at what I have on there!



Click on the picture to go to my Behance page!

PURPLE QUEEN ANTIAS

During the beginning of the year, I was assigned to make a fish from scratch in Maya with bone rigging and painted weights. In this post, I will talk about the steps I took to achieve this, problems I faced, and what I could have done to improve my project.

BUILDING THE FISH

Scanned Drawing

Purple Queen Anthia

First, I drew a front and side view of my fish on paper. The fish here is based off of the Purple Queen Anthia breed of fish. The drawing was then scanned and brought into Photoshop for cropping.

Original Maya Fish Base

Next, I made the fish model by making a rectangular polygon and divided it into several faces. From there, I edited the fish's faces, vertices, and edges to give the rectangle a goldfish appearance without adding in fins or other characteristics. My apologies for the bad lighting on the image to your left.

MOLDING THE DETAILS

Maya Fish Photoshop Layer

Maya Fish Side View

Once the fish was assembled, I went into the Window Outliner to take a screenshot of the fish's side view. I then brought this image into Photoshop to make the fish's color pattern. After that, I dragged the file to the Window Outliner. In here, I shifted the faces to fit the fish model on Maya.
After that, I imported my fish sketches into Maya and edited the fish's faces, edges, and vertices to fit the side view. Next, I switched between the top and perspective view to thin out the fish and give the fish a realistic view because fish are thin scaly creatures with lots of curvy features. Then, I cutted out holes for the fish's eyes and extruded out some of the faces to create the top fin and side fins. Since this was done on one side of the fish, I then duplicated the fish's side, and merged the shapes' vertices together with the Merge Vertices option. I also made the fish's eyeballs with white spheres.

BONE RIGGING AND MOVEMENT

Fish with Bones and Joints Selected

Once the fish's visuals were completed, I then made the skeleton through a Lynda Tutorial. In this tutorial, I learned that each joint is connected and there is one main joint that is connected through all of the other joints. While messing with the joints, I discovered that if certain joints are selected, then the joints that are connected to that joint will move along with it.

Painted Skin Weights View

To fix how certain parts of the fish moved when certain joints were selected, I went into the Paint Weights Tool. In there, I selected each joint and highlighted the areas that I wanted to move when that joint moved.

PROBLEMS I ENCOUNTERED

While painting the weights, I happened to have one of my vertices stretched out past my fish. Despite my many attempts to move the faces, edges, vertices, and repaint the affected area, I could not fix it. Fortunately, I have a backup copy of this file, but that file doesn't have any of the animated keyframes.

CONCLUSION

Maya Fish Final Result

I enjoyed making a fish in Maya because it allowed me to have a break with 2d animation and expand my knowledge in Maya. Even though I ran into a few problems, I am happy with my results and liked learning about the Painted Weights and Bone Rigging.

FIRST SEMESTER PROJECT OVERVIEW (CMYK)

I have been working on my independent animation project this semester originally titled "Lost In The City". As I was working, I didn't like the title and eventually changed the name to CMYK. CMYK refers to the four main colors used in printer cartridges; cyan, magenta, yellow, and key, where key represents black. Like the RGB model, the CMYK model makes up all of the colors with different percent values of each color. I chose this name because the paint used in the project consists of all CYMK colors, plus a bright orange, neon green, and white. These extra colors were added on for contrasting reasons, and I wanted to give more color to the project besides the main colors as a way to avoid too much minimalism.

BUILDING THE CITY

City Street Sketch

City Street Outline

City Street  

City Street Full Color

I made the city scene one layer as if it were a strip mall. In there, I included apartments, a coffee shop, and a library. The environment of the street is fresh and lively full of street passers like a biker, a stray cat, and children playing jumprope.

However, the main character is feeling neutral and not very upbeat, which explains why the beginning scene is completly black and white.

To make the scenery, I sketched out the street buildings, then scanned the drawings to Photoshop to construct each building using several shapes. After that, I made a street layer and a median layer with trees and grass on the front. I formatted each layer to a PNG file to avoid the shapes rasterizing, or getting blurry when zoomed out on.

PAINTING THE WALL

I first began making the wall by sketching outlines for each thing that would go on the wall. They mainly consisted of abstract and themes that don't really clash together like a claw machine full of toys, a forest, a koi pond, marker, and electricity. While making my sketches, I looked at several references for inspiration on how they should be made. Once all of the items were sketched out, I made them into shapes using the colors I selected. After each object was made, I brought each object to their designated group 

Koi Pond Sketch Progression

Concrete Wall Sketch

Concrete Wall Full Color

I originally planned on Luke painting the wall, but that involved adding in a lot of masks on After Effects. Below here is an animated loop of Luke holding a paintbrush and painting the wall.

ANIMATING THE CHARACTERS

Animating each person involved the same steps of making the primary frames, then adding in-between frames. For animating the stick figured humans like Luke, I looked to this video, which is an animated loop of a stick figure walking on the side view and front view. 

This video was very useful when animating the part where Luke enters outside. To get the feet walk cycle in correct swing, I used rulers to measure where the arms and feet should end. 

Full Image of Rulers

Legs with Rulers

STREET WALKER ANIMATED CLIPS

Below here are some of the animated characters I made. They loop back each other back and forth, and make short appearances out in the street (with the exception of Luke).

Luke Walking Slowly

Mother and Daughter

Kids Playing Jumprope

Alley Cat

THE DOOR

I also made a door for the beginning of the project. I sort of had to because Luke is entering outside his apartment and needs a nice door. I made the door using two rectangles and a thin rectangle that would depict the door's side edges where they would meet. I animated it using a Youtube tutorial, and added in the side part of the door between the two door faces. Adding this in gave the door a 3-dimensional appearance in a 2-dimensional platform.

MIXING IT ALL IN AFTER EFFECTS

Concrete Wall Masks

Effect Settings

A lot of my problems came in while using After Effects. Most of them came from the fact that I was under a huge time constraint. While I did get all of my layers in, I didn't have enough time to fully animate them, specifically on the part where the concrete wall is being painted. I only got one part of in, so I cutted my project to half and won't use the footage where Luke paints the wall.

Paint Buckets

Walking Through Town

I did, however, get the beginning part in the city streets animated, and added in the concrete wall paintings already painted on the wall. As Luke walks by the drawings, the city will gain it colors again and be bright. Once that is done, the whole city street is shown in full color.

To make the city add color, I used the Curves and Leave Color effects. To change the colors from Black and White to the desired color, I added in two Leave Color effects, where the first color was any color I wanted, and the second color was the color I wanted to appear on the screen. 

Below here is an example of the city changing color to blue. 

After everything came together, I made the credits, which consisted of the title "CMYK", and my name. The credits started out with white text, and eventually fade into the CMYK colors in order as shown below. I really like this because it explains the title in a short way and makes the project very unique.

Credits Example 

VIDEO FOOTAGE PROGRESSION

Here below are a set of video clips from my project that depict the project's progression and improvement overtime. They consist of different scenes. It is best to watch these in order from top to bottom to see how much the project has developed overtime.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This project went pretty well with the exception of time constraints. I took a different approach to my time constraints and remained relax not rushing over parts, which is better than how I have reacted in the past. Luckily, I found ways to cut out parts with what I have and made them work together while keeping the end result the same. I enjoyed making the concrete wall, some of the street passers, and the end result of this multi-planar animation.

You can watch the full version of CMYK here!