Digital Artisan

This took a little bit longer than I previously anticipated it to. It was nevertheless just as fun. Difficult and tedious, but fun.

THE PROCESS

We had to start with taking a video of ourselves with some sort of object that would ultimately be turned into our lightsabers. To be completely honest, I hit myself in the head multiple times in the process in filming…

Next we had to import the footage into Adobe After Effects and use the lightsaber plugin to customize the blade. After doing so, going through frame by frame was necessary for me in order to cover up the broom stick I used to simulate the lightsaber. The reason why I had to use just about every single frame was because I was moving it so fast that it was necessary to do so.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did creating it.

I decided that my previous logo needed some updating. After completely revising it, we were tasked with animating it. This process was much longer than I had previously hoped it would, but the final outcome was still just what I wanted.

THE PROCESS

After making it in Adobe Illustrator, the layers were then imported to after effects where the animating could begin.

Using a simple scaling effect on the head, I made it quickly increase it’s size before sizing down a tiny bit to give it a bit of a pop. I then used the stroke mask effect with the reveal original layer option to make the tentacles snake their way from the body. The wings were the tricky part. I used the scale tool to make them begin small, and I also used the puppet warp (with many, many pins on it) to make it look like the wings were folded and then unfurled to their full size. I then used the stroke effect to reveal the white lines on the inside of the object to give it depth and to give eyes to the creature.

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I had fun making this video. We were given the task to run around the school to find certain objects and to make a video with said object. I enjoyed messing around with some of the other guys in the class.

THE PROCESS
We first needed to get the videos required. It was entertaining coming up with ideas to match the prompts given. We then had to bring the videos back to the classroom. This became a difficult task because we kept finding things that we needed to finish up or change in the videos.

We then dived the videos among us to snap together in Premiere Pro. We then all uploaded them to our shared folders and got them all onto one computer. There was a lot, and I mean A LOT of stuff on that folder from previous students. We had no trouble finding some music that we wanted. We put the funniest one we could find in there and then we were done!

This was fun. I was assigned to turn my radio ad into a commercial, and I had a good time filming with my dog.

THE PROCESS

This wasn’t exactly a hard thing to do. I just asked my brother that when it was his turn to walk the dog, if I could film it a bit. We got my dog overly excited by asking him if he wants to go to the field, which always puts him into a state of extreme exhilaration. He had just been running around a lot before, so he wasn’t as crazy as I had hoped for him to be. I tried filming all of this before, and it was with my other brother. We got some really good footage of him acting like a spaz, but it wasn’t until I came home to work on the assignment, that I realized that I had filmed it all in portrait mode, and not in landscape mode. *facepalm* I had to restart the filming, and got some good shots of the dog again. In the last few seconds, where it shows the clicker in the grass, was actually filmed by accident. I had my phone out and was talking to my brother after I had set it down on the grass, and I didn’t realize I was filming for a few seconds of it. I watched and thought, “Hey, this would be a great closing shot”. So I went with that, and I put the correct footage together with the audio, and there you have it folks! I honestly can’t believe that this was my last assignment for the year.

The first type of camera Shot that I decided was one of my favorites, was the Extreme Long Shot. This shot captures the full subject from a long distance, and the rest of the frame is largely subjugated by scenery. This type of shot is often times used as the opening shot for a new scene. I like this one because it can capture a lot at once, and it makes for beautiful scenery.

Next, I chose one of my pictures that was just a normal Long Shot. This one is similar to the Extreme long shot in the fact that it captures the whole subject, but the normal Long Shot fills the frame with the subject just a tad bit more and leaves less room for the setting. I like this one because it does a good job of making a dramatic scene and it easily appeals to emotions.

I also liked the Low Angle Shot. This one is taken from a higher position than the subject and it looks down on them, easily making the subject look insignificant or afraid. I like this one because it makes the photographer look a lot taller and more powerful. It also can make the subject look innocent, which is an affect that is useful.

I also chose the camera angle of Point of View. This one shows a picture from eye level, imitating and creating the look that can be found from looking from one’s eyes. I like this one because it easily can give the effect that you are sort of there, giving the feeling that you are anywhere in the world as long as you have a picture of it.

Finally, I chose the camera angle medium close up. This one typically fills most of the frame with the subject, but not entirely. I like this one because it shows what in the photo is the desired subject with ease, and it still leaves room to show the environment that the picture was taken in.

Well this was actually lots of fun making. Of course, it is pretty cringey because I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to recording audio. I still had fun trying to come up with ways to make the audio sound like something from the video.

THE PROCESS

I first had to come up with few ideas on how to create the sounds. Footsteps were easy, I just watched the video and whenever they took a step, I just tapped my table. Next I had to make noise for the dough hitting the wall. I literally just slapped my stomach to make that sound effect. I know, embarrassing… I then used an kneaded eraser to make the sounds for the guy molding the dough. The weird, kinda gross, gooey noises. I then voiced over the guys with the help of my brothers. Then, I used a febreze spray can in an attempt to imitate the sound of the flour.

Next was the tedious part: putting it all together. In premiere pro, I couldn’t figure out how to add more than 6 audio tracks, of which I had much more than that, so I had to do what I could, then I put the video I just imported back into the project, and then I put in the rest of the audio files. Getting then timing lined up with the video was more difficult for me than I previously thought that it would. I still got the project done, and It was very entertaining to create.

This was a fun project that I got to work on with my brother. I was a little hesitant to record my own voice when it came to the final bit, because I very much am not fond of hearing my own voice on a recording. From what I have seen, not many people are. Anyway, I hope you think that this radio add is just as fun to listen to as it was making.

THE PROCESS

The first part was the hardest part in my opinion. That was, coming up with a product that I needed to advertise. After spending a few days trying to come up with one, (I know, I seriously spent days on it) I decided to go with my dog’s shock collar. Don’t worry, it’s not one of the mean ones. It’s one of the ones that you have to manually shock him, and it’s not powerful enough to hurt him, just enough to get his attention. I wrote a script for the ad, and then I recording my brother reciting the first part. I have an awful sound quality on my $80 phone, so I used a little trick that I picked up when helping my friends film a movie over the summer. For a good muffling effect that filters out unwanted noise, I just put the recording phone in a sock, and it works surprisingly well. I recording my brother’s section, then mine, and then I recorded my dog barking. I got that last one easily because we had taught my dog to speak. Following that, I needed background music. I accomplished this by collaborating with my brother on the guitar to create a chord progression that would sound well with the ad. We recorded that the same way, and we had everything that I needed. I had to crop out some of my brother’s pauses in between sentences, and I had to cut down my part a bit too in order for it all to fit in the required maximum and minimum 30 seconds. I had fun with this, and I hope you enjoy!

This is one of the most tedious and exhausting things that I have ever done in all honesty. This was a very long process and it took me much, much longer than had previously anticipated. During the quarantine of COVID-19, I picked up a book containing all of the stories written by H.P. Lovecraft himself. I have become obsessed with The Call of Cthulhu. The aquatic giant has captured my attention and I have drawn so many things of him and I love re-reading the story. When I began this animation, I began it with the intent of putting some sort of Kaiju in it. I later was inspired to put the Great Old One Cthulhu in there instead, and the result was quite satisfying.

THE STORY

A young boy has ventured to the beach adjacent to his family’s vacation home, has found himself caught in a bore. To entertain himself, he decides to take a walk along the beach and search for cool rocks, as children do. As the boy looks, a looming storm draws nearer. But this is no ordinary storm. Something dwells at it’s eye. Oblivious to the danger coming to light, he continues his probing. The lightning flashes, and the boy ignores it. The lightning comes once more, and the boy notices something… The light that was supposed to be emitted around him has been replaced with darkness. He stands and turns around to figure out what has caused this obscurity. The boy, in awe, comes to face the Cosmic Entity of The Ancient One Cthulhu himself. Caught in daze the boy hears the voice of his mother calling to him from the house. Concerned about the lightning getting to close, she calls her son to come inside and obviously doesn’t see the Cosmic Horror. “Why not?” the boy wonders as he returns his gaze to the monster. However, in shock, the leviathan monster has seemed to disappear without a single trace of being there….

TH E PROCESS

This took me literal months to finish. I in way too much detail in the background of the first four seconds and that automatically put me way behind. I then got really far into the animation, and one day as I got on to work on my project, the whole file got corrupted. I then had about 2 weeks to finish everything that I had done in the past month. I got back to work as soon as I could. Another obstacle entered my path then. I decided to import videos of people that I had filmed and draw over them. The problem was, the videos would only import in slow motion. I decided to do what I could to pick frames from the videos and chose them for my key frames. This caused it to be too fast in some places, and too slow in others. That made the whole video take much longer to create than it would’ve taken according to plan. A lot longer. Then I was proposed with another problem. The file wouldn’t let me export it as a GIF file. it would for some reason not allow me to use all 256 colors in the table as it should’ve. Instead, it gave me two. Black, and white. And the file became very pixelated. I went with another exporting option and it severely decreased the quality of my work. I was severely disapointed with the outcome and it seemed like the months that I had spent where for nothing. Later on, my teacher then found a way to export it on his own computer in the fantastic quality you see before you. I am actually quite proud of this one. And remember…

 Well, this was one of the easier things that I have made, well, it was only easy once I understood how in the world I was supposed to do it. I’m also a musician, I play the guitar and the piano, and one thing that I could never seem to get right was the timing that was needed to play the song. I’ve always have, and I still do, struggle with that. And it seems that the problem followed me into my animation endeavors. Creating a motion tween looked really easy watching others do it, but trying to get it to repeat itself without making it look like it was jumping across the screen was a much more difficult task than I had previously anticipated it to be. Anyway, the end result was satisfying to say in the least, I know I had fun with it.

THE PROCESS

I first made a new document that was just a copy of the walk cycle that I had uploaded recently, and then I needed to resize the entire canvas to make the mini-me smaller so that I would have room for the environment. I increased the document size to an outrageous size in order to make it look normal, because I was NOT about to go through every single frame, on every single layer, and re-size it to a smaller ratio. Anyhow, I next created the first part of my world that would be moving/the foreground. I opened up Photoshop and I used the brush tool to make myself a path. I then separated it into 3 similar segments so that it could repeat itself.

I next opened up Illustrator, and I used that program to use its splendid pen tool to make myself some taller grass for the middle foreground.

It took me a while to get those two to match up when the animation would repeat, but with a lot of time, and a lot of patience, (and a lot of help from me teacher) I finally got it to look the way I wanted it to.

Next I needed the middle background, and i decided to go with mountains, because I love the mountains that I live on and I spend most of my time there in the summer. I once again relied on Photoshop to do the trick. I separated it into about 6 segments so that it would take longer for the animation to fully cycle, thus giving the illusion of motion and perception.

The background was the easiest one, I needed 7 repeating segments to make it move the slowest, but it also looked kind of goofy due to the fact that it was just the same few clouds over and over again in the sky. I didn’t have the time to come up with a solution, so I just left it how it was. Hopefully, I can come back to this one day and make it much better.

I then just plopped in a light blue sky behind it and there you go! I had myself a Hotshot Hike.

I was so excited to start this unit in animation. That’s exactly what I want to do when I’m out the door and thrown into my own life. I want to be an animator and CGI specialists, hopefully working for Legendary Entertainment, someday. This was a heck of a lot of fun and I know I say that all of my projects take time, but by far, this one was probably the most tedious.

THE PROCCESS

To start, I needed a reference. I’m awful when it comes to drawing people, so to have something to work off of would be ideal for myself. I had a classmate follow me out into the hall, and we filmed each other walking. I then imported that video into the background layer of an Adobe Animate file. I then proceeded to trace myself, I did that every other frame, for a total of 20 frames. I then added my hair. I wanted to give it a little bounce as I walked, so I created it on a separate layer. Of course, my hair didn’t bounce in real life like how I wanted it to in the animation. I learned that the hard way, because I once again, went through all 20 frames trying to trace it, just to find out that when my hair “moved around” in the animation, at times, it would look like a buzz cut, and others it sporadically jumped into an Elvis pompadour. I then went through the frames again, drawing them without the reference video. It took longer than I hoped it would, but it turned out really nice in the end.

After that, I needed color. Naturally, I decide to take the easy way out. I just copied the animation frame, and then pasted it into the layer I would use for colors. Then I took ages trying to throw together the right colors necessary to make the image look right. My color blind eye holes did not do much to assist me in this endeavor. After I took days to just find the right colors, and then use the paint bucket tool to color it in, 20 times, again, it was time to start the next step.

I next needed details to make the image come to life. I needed a face, and that was probably the hardest part. I made a symbol, and placed it on all 20 frames, again. I then proceeded to see what would look natural on the body. Let me tell you, cartoon eyes are not as easy as Mickey Mouse makes it look. I finally found a look that I liked, and then I went through …. all… 20 … frames … AGAIN, and added details. Shadows, highlights, and some fine tuning.

And then I just played the cycle on loop and there you have it! A “basic” walk cycle that took me much longer than what was necessary for anyone else!