END OF YEAR REFLECTION

In a few days, I will be graduating from high school and leave e-Communcation. I have greatly enjoyed my time at eComm, and am quite sad to be leaving the program. I have learned a variety of skills and beginning concepts of CARP, making storyboards and taking part in events hosted by eComm.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

I gained a lot of my technical skills through programs like Photoshop, After Effects, Illustration, and Maya throughout the years. I remember my sophomore year, I didn't understand how to use keyframes in After Effects and how to create certain items like a motion path and in Maya. By watching online tutorials and exposing myself to these programs, I gained a better grasp of following tutorials and used what I had learned in future projects. My technical skills were especially great in 2D Animation, where I excelled in the most. However, while making my bone rigged Fish in Maya earlier this year, I had trouble with the Painting Weights and got some assistance on that through classmates and Lynda tutorials.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Sometimes, the end result of a project doesn't show the effort that an individual took on a project. The effort came in while planning out a project and completing it within a certain deadline. During my junior year while working on Ten Apples Up on Top, I had to effectively plan out how to finish my project within a quarter. While I had planned out deadlines to reach certain pages at certain times, I found my end goal to be impossible to reach. This was when I started looking for shortcuts and spending lots of extra hours outside of school just to meet the deadline. Although my Ten Apples Up on Top project didn't turn out like I had expected, I used the animation skills that I learned from that experience my senior year to quickly finish up certain parts of my projects and focus on parts that required more attention. I wish I would've changed my project and not overwhelmed myself into finishing Ten Apples Up on Top in such a short amount of time.

From my experiences with time management with Ten Apples Up on Top, I successful used them again while working on Birds. The reason why this project turned out to be an overall success was not just because of my content, but my time management. I gave myself a longer time frame to finish Birds and thoroughly plan out my storyboard, animation cycles, and each scene.

COLLABORATION AND COMMUNICATION

In the classroom, I learned just about everything I needed to know through online tutorials and forums. My classmates also did the same, but sometimes, they needed a bit of a helping hand. I have helpedmy classmates evaluate their personal logos and websites they made present to industrial professionals  and Senior Showcase. While looking at students' projects, I offered suggestions on what design elements can be edited and what content should be added or removed. They also did the same thing as I presented my online portfolio and logo. This experience helped me improve my public speaking skills in a small group, help me understand what key points I need to cover while presenting and commenting, and listening to others.

LEADERSHIP

To me, leadership in eComm doesn't just mean taking charge of a group project or event, but taking charge of individual projects and doing what is expected. During my junior year while working on the Notebook, I took charge of the 2D animation part when the office supplies are inside the notebook animating them to life. While this was my central role in the project, I demonstrated my leadership by offering help to my other group members planning out the storyboard, taking still frames, and the overall appearance of each scene.

CONCLUSION

After spending several years in eComm working on a variety of animations and preparing myself for the future to come, I will use my 2D animation and design skills when working on designs for myself, family members, and potential clients as much as possible. I will continue to do what I've learned in eComm no matter where I am, as it has helped me become the person that I am today, and I am very thankful for the teachers and students that have helped me be a better person.

SENIOR SHOWCASE

Route Sixteen Entrance

This past week, I was a part of e-Communication's Senior Showcase, where I showcased all of my work I have done relating to animation since I joined the program. The theme for this year's senior show was "Route Sixteen", which focused on how far each senior has come in eComm and what their next destination will be after high school.

My Senior Showcase Table

All of the seniors were assigned a table to place their business cards and computers to play their demo reels, showcase their websites, and or their graphics. They were also given a name tag and if an endorsed senior, they received a special sign on their desk. Both of these signs had the same color and represented each specific strand. Along with that, seniors could also place additional items on their desk that relate to their work like a sketchbook, camera, or other special awards a student has earned.

Dr. Poss Visiting My Table

After my table was set up, dozens of people came in to see what work I had ready to showcase. I met a variety of guests there from underclassmen in eComm, parents of eComm seniors, industrial professionals, and district employees. The most interesting people I got to meet were the middle schoolers about to enter in eComm. They came in either learning about their desired strand and or getting to know more about each strand. I felt like I was leaving a legacy behind on these future students as I discussed about my work.

Guests Enjoying My Demo Reel

As people came to my table, I introduced myself as a senior animation with a focus on 2D Animation. I had my demo reel playing in the background so people could see my work and understand what kind of animations I have done. A lot of people appreciated my work and asked several questions about what programs I used, how long each project took me, and my future plans after high school.

Parent Watching Demo Reel

Client Asking Questions

Route Sixteen Brochure Station

Even though Senior Show ended, you can stop by here and revisit the event by learning about each senior and the work they have accomplished!

You can also watch my demo reel that I presented at Senior Show here!

EMAGINE 2016

eMagine was this Saturday, and I decided to enter in my Birds animation like I mentioned before. I also submitted my blog for eMagine under the "Blog" category because of how well I have cleaned my blog up to look more professional. My Birds animation didn't make it to the top 5 category under 2D Animation. However, this blog was a finalist for the Blog category! I was very surprised about this, even though I anticipated to earn an award for Birds, or at least become a top 5 finalist for 2D Animation.

During the eMagine ceremony, I saw all of the other entries and paid close attention to the animations and websites that were entered in. When my blog came up, the screen showed screenshots of my blog posts from Birds and Poly-Jerboa. I felt like my blog was pretty average compared to the others since I only slightly modified my given template and edited the colors-nothing too fancy. The reasoning behind this was a time crunch and I couldn't figure out what additional HTML5 codes I should've added to my blog layout. While I didn't make it to the top 3, I am honored about how far my blog has progressed in the last year. I also felt like Birds should've been a finalist, but I guess the judges didn't recognize the effort I put into my project.

With this being my final year of eMagine, I really enjoyed this year's celebration and every aspect of it from cheering for all of the entries from Olathe Northwest, endless laughter, and having everyone see my blog. It was a great experience for all students, and hope to come back to more eMagine ceremonies in the future!

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!