Week 7: Outside of Class - Finished animation

https://youtu.be/XNO3LqHzf84

This is my final logo animation. I didn't actually change much from the 75% done one, however I did play around with some sound effects. None of them really seemed to help or add to what I was doing. It was especially difficult since my animation could only be 5 seconds long. I think that this solution is the best one.

Week 7a

Today in class we had a mini-critique for our 50% done animations. I got some feedback, but nobody really told me anything major that needed to change. I asked a few people what they thought about the white background, and they said it didn't really bother them that much. However, they said if I wanted to push my animation, I could include some things that bring the character to life. One of their ideas was to have it blinking, or to have the whiskers/nose twitch. In class, I tried out the puppet tool, which one of my classmates taught me how to use. However, I don't think it will work for what I want to do. One of my ideas is to hand animate the eye and put it into a gif that will only play once. I will have to see how this goes. Originally I was just going to turn my project in on Wednesday, but I think I will wait until after break. Hopefully I can make the changes necessary to really bring this project together.

After attempting to do the eye blink with a gif, it appears that I wont be able to. This is because the gif keeps corrupting when the composition is rendered. So, for now I have just made it so the background color and colors of the words/figure change to blue/white.

For next class we have to have our animations at 75% done, so here is mine:

https://youtu.be/Df2lqeP5g_0

Week 6: Outside of Class - Animation 50% done

Today for class we had to have our animations 50% done. Here is mine:

So far, I am happy with it. I think I may add the character winking or twitching his whiskers to really solidify this idea of animation. My logo is essentially telling the story of animation, so having that final touch might help.

I wanted to have the background be a color, but I ran into an issue with that. If I change the color of the background, you can see the path of the illustration's reveal. I am not sure there is a way to change this, and I also don't know another way to do the drawing-in effect. I will have to see what people say in class on Monday.

Week 6b

Today in class we got the go-ahead on animating. Since I wasn't really sure how to do the drawing effect I wanted in Adobe After Effects, I looked up a tutorial. This tutorial taught me how to do exactly what I wanted using the brush tool. Basically all I had to do was take the brush and draw in 1 stroke how I wanted it to animate. The effect looks convincing and was much easier than I expected to do. Since I used this method, I am also able to easily change the color of the lines in my original image. So, I just added in keyframes to have the color fade from gray to black. Professor Pannafino taught me how to use a mask to have my words fade in. I am essentially over halfway done at this point, so from here it will just be adding finishing touches.

Week 6a

Today in class we had our storyboards looked over and critiqued by other students. My fellow classmates didn't really have anything in particular that I should change. They said they liked the idea and thought it would be effective given that the company I am doing a logo for is an animation company. Basically my goal is to sort of tell the story of 2d animation through my logo animation. Professor Pannafino said that I needed to fix my marks, and that my idea may be difficult. However, I feel determined to do it anyway since I love the films this company has made.

Here is my fixed storyboard:

I basically just cleaned up my marks and made them more uniform. This seems to be a bit clearer now, at least aesthetically.

Week 5: Outside of Class - Vector Storyboard

This is my first vector storyboard that we had to have done for Monday. Basically my idea is that the character would be drawn in starting in a light grey,  pencil color. Once it was fully drawn in, it would then transition into black and company's name would fade in from the same direction that the illustration was drawn in.  I will probably also have some color in the background or maybe animate the character a little. We will see how it goes when I finally do animate it.

Week 5b

Today in class, we chose our logos to animate. I decided to do the Studio Ghibli logo, which as a reminder looks like this:

We had to create 2 different storyboards for how we wanted to animate the logo. For the first one, I decided to do a drawing animation to represent the fact this is an animation company,which is known for their 2d films, many of them being traditionally done. Here is my first one:

For the second one, I had some trouble thinking what I wanted to do. I am not sure how possible this would be, but I thought I would have the characters blink and then have the text appear, since, once again, this is an animation studio. So, here is that storyboard:

I think I will go with the first one. It seems to make more sense and ultimately I think it will be more effective. 

Week 5a

This week we had to choose some logos and discuss different elements about them. Here are my logos:

1. Bee and Puppycat (YouTube animated series)

This logo is from a Youtube based show which updates every once in awhile. This logo describes the title of the show, so it would be shown before the show begins (an opener). The company which produces it, Cartoon Hangover, is an animation company which produces short animated shows like this. Since this show has a very cutesy vibe, if I were to animate it, I would want to stick with that feeling. I think having the bell jingle and the ribbon tie into a bow, with the sparkles twinkling, could really help intensify this logo and help even more to give off the idea of what the show will be like.

2. CATFE Lounge (cat cafe/coffee shop)

This logo is for Catfe Lounge, which is a cat cafe in Michigan. A cat cafe, for those unaware, is a coffee shop that has cats roaming around, or in a separate area. It was popular in Japan, and now the US is trying to move in on the trend. Essentially, this is a coffee shop. I think this could be an endtag after a tour of the shop or commercial. Basically, it would be used after a video of some type. It could be an opener too. If I were to animate this logo, I think having the cat come in and curl up could give off the idea that cats are actually at this cafe and you can hang out with them. The logo as it is now doesn't necessarily give off that idea. It could just be a cafe dedicated to cat decor, but having a moving cat may help nudge it towards the fact that there are living, breathing cats at this cafe.

3. Studio Ghibli (animation studio)

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation company known for their films. They are popular all over the world. Their films are pretty unique and they are essentially the Japanese Disney. This logo is used as an opener for their films, so it’s context is in film. Since it is an animation company, I think taking that into consideration when animating the logo is important. Having the characters being drawn out could help add to the logo and make the company's purpose clear.

Overall, it seems important to keep in mind what the company does when animating a logo. If there is a way to enhance it's meaning based on what the company does through motion or design elements, then that will only help to create a stronger design. I was easily able to think of ways to link motion to the logo and the company. Hopefully, when I do decide what I am going to do, I can continue to think about the approach. 

Week 4: Outside of Class - Quote Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSZxl8rAAyk&feature=youtu.be

Here is my finished phrase video. I am overall pleased with how it came out. I think I conveyed the emotion of the phrase successfully. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was trying to employ a dreamy effect, because this quote is speaking about the past and it is also about love. I did this by using the opacity effect, and having the words fade in and out. I also used a dreamy background, and a more playful font, since this is a kid speaking. I am curious to see what others will say.

Week 4b

Today in class we discussed examples of how to achieve our next exercise, which was to display a phrase meaningfully through timing. We could not use audio and were limited to black and white for colors. I decided I didn't want to do the Hobbit quote, since I misunderstood that we didn't necessarily need audio. Instead, I am doing a quote from one of my favorite movies, Moonrise Kingdom. Here is the quote:

"We knew people would be worried, and we still ran away, anyway. But something also happened, which we didn't do on purpose. When we first met each other, something happened to us."

I really want to try to capture the emotion behind this quote, so I think I will employ a dreamy sort of atmosphere when creating the video.

Week 4a

We did not have class on Monday, so we were asked to find a phrase to animate in the next class. I had a couple of potential phrase ideas, but they were very short and so I didn't think I could use them. Ultimately I decided to pick a scene from the Hobbit. Here is my phrase video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG4Ua70mJvw

My particular phrase will be from 1:19 onward.

Week 3b

In today's class we were able to redo our sound rhythm project. I was pretty happy with mine, and was even used as an example in class. However, I decided to play around with the different transform options and key frames. I did not finish mine so I did not upload it. It definitely was not as successful as my first one. I was trying to put more and more effects on so it would be more complex, however, I think that simpler was ultimately better. The next thing we did was learn about and begin our next exercise, which is to represent the word rhythm through type and movement. I started thinking about a good way to show this, and I figured that a song which had a very repetitive beat would be a good inspiration. I tried to make a pretty fast rhythm, however, it was too fast and almost painful to look at. I ended up scrapping that one, however it did give me a better idea of what direction to take. I think that I will develop a better one outside of class.

Week 3: Outside of Class - Rhythm Exercise

YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/WQD4OXBMnCc

Infinite Looper link:

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=WQD4OXBMnCc&p=n

For this week's assignment we had to create a video that would loop and describe the word rhythm strictly through movement. This was a very difficult assignment, not so much in how it was done, but rather in the concept behind it. Since we could not use music, we essentially had to make up a rhythm in our heads, which wouldn't necessarily work in real life, or even sound good. I was trying to imagine a techno song, or other type of song with a consistent bass beat that was very repetitive. I remade mine two times, as I just couldn't seem to get it right. I think this is the most successful out of my attempts. 

Week 3a: Shape Rhythm exercise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3AmKgGmfp4&feature=youtu.be

For today's class we did another exercise. For this one we had to take a song and then use shapes to go along with the rhythm. I chose the more techno beat and tried to pick colors for my shapes that I felt went along with the song. I was kind of imagining those laser pianos, see below:

This was the primary inspiration for how I went about this and I think it was successful overall.

Week 2: Outside of Class, Sequential Dreamscape

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AhqfArVa1I&feature=youtu.be

Here is my sequential dreamscape. I actually liked how it turned out and I think you can gather the warmth and happiness that was in the dream. I wonder how it will be received by my class. I know for the last project, there were many interpretations and I would not be surprised to see the same here. Hopefully a majority of the class can understand the main thing that happened in this dream, but it will also be cool to see what other people think and how far off or close they may be overall.

Day of Design: George Hakim

The second speaker I attended for Day of Design was George Hakim, a Creative Project Manager at Toyota of America. I was interested in this talk because I know how important storytelling is for a business, but also because another field I am interested in is animation, which is big on storytelling. Hakim gave a brief introduction and said that he came from a background in graphic design and worked at many different places before ending up at Toyota. He then went on to describe some history of storytelling, in that we have been telling stories since the beginning of time. With developments in technology, we began to see new avenues of storytelling. One of the most recent and important ones being virtual reality. After this, he showed us a short clip from a TED talk describing the Golden Circle as a method of thinking. The speaker in this video described how the average person thinks of the what, then the how, and finally the why. He said that the difference between these people and successful, inspired leaders was their thought process. He gave Apple as an example and said that great companies like these think of the why, then the how, and then the what. The ultimate message of this video was that people buy "why" you do what you do. George Hakim then went on to say that Toyota uses this thinking process and goes even further by asking "why" five times to find out the core message of the product. He then explained some different important terms they use at Toyota. The first was "hoshin" which means goal. They pay a lot of attention to the big picture. The next term was "muda" which means waster. Hakim said that they wanted to be able to explain to a non-technical person what they were going for and to avoid inaccessibility. Another term he described was "genchi genbutsu" which meant to go and see or to get to the source. At Toyota they always research the history of whatever they are doing to better understand it. After he explained these terms he went on to show a commercial for the 2014 Toyota Corolla (which I'm pretty sure I've been to the filming site of, as a side note). He used the commercial to explain that when marketing to people they wanted to keep in mind their target audience. For this commerical in particular, the appeal was supposed to be to a younger audience and to highlight that the car never goes out of style. While they wanted to attract a potential new audience, they also wanted to maintain their current audience. Hakim said that Toyota was all about customer first, and that that drove all of their decisions. The other core component of Toyota was "kaizen" which means continual improvement. After talking about this, he went into their process of development at Toyota which is to ideate, create, test, refine, repeat. Another way this was described was to plan, do, check, act, then repeat. What I found interesting about this was that it was very similar to Alexander Reyna's description of the process at MLB. What this says to me, is that it is likely a consistent process throughout much of the industry, so it is definitely something to keep in mind. While I found all of the talk interesting, the most interesting part was when Hakim talked about the Kiki/ Bouba effect. I actually wish that he would've gone more into this, however what he did say about it really interested me as it had to do with character creation. Basically this was a theory that people attributed certain characteristics to certain shapes and that more "bad" characters had Kiki shapes than "good" characters, who were mostly made of Bouba shapes. However, the fact that they still take this into consideration made it interesting in this context, nonetheless. Overall, I found George Hakim's presentation to be interesting as I never really thought about what exactly went into storytelling from a company's perspective. His talk definitely gave me some things to think about and I will likely research more about it as I later move into my career.

Day of Design: Alexander Reyna

The first Day of Design speaker I attended was Alexander Reyna who is a Creative Director for Major League Baseball. Initially, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this talk, however I actually found it to be the most fascinating of the two I attended. Reyna first spoke about his background in the industry, about 25 years, which he boiled down to making stuff, tinkering, motion, interactivity, art, and curiosity. He then went on to speak about what he does as the Creative Director for MLB. The goal for MLB is to make the future and to drive innovation in the field of baseball. For Reyna, this means pushing the user experience and interaction. Some of his experience in this field has dealt with creating user experiences at all intersections of media. One example he gave that he said was a huge breakthrough was the creation of instant, 3D play-by-play moments on live TV. This allowed for the viewers of the game on TV to get in depth statistics about the play that was happening right then. This was a big example of what kind of experiences they were trying to push for. After speaking about some of his career examples, Alexander Reyna went into talking about his process and some simple rules he wanted to share with us as we progressed into the field. His process was very simple, being sketch, feedback, wireframe, build, and repeat. I found this to be interesting because it is very similar, if not exactly, what we are doing and have done here in school. It was nice to know that what we were learning was applicable to "the real world".  He also spoke a lot about personas and how important they were when developing a product or experience. Hearing this was also reassuring for the same reasons, and I also found it interesting how in-depth he went with them. One of his examples was for this game that had to deal with dogs that was aimed at a younger female audience. He said that while they consider age, gender, likes, dislikes, they also think about the users family life, their parents, what types of devices they have access to and for how long, those kind of things. Some of the things he listed I had never thought about, but now that he mentioned them, I see why they could be important and definitely why they are helpful. Finally, Reyna spoke about five rules that he has come across in his time in the field that he lives by. His first one was to aim for simplicity, because people should just get good design. The next one was that honesty is obvious and that UX doesn't hide the truth. He said that designers needed to avoid dark patterns and gave us a website that could help us better understand what he meant by that. Looking at the website helped me better understand what he meant by this and simply put, a dark pattern is something that tricks the user into doing something they may not want to do. His third rule was that users who trust, stay. This one was pretty self explanatory and really extends to all facets of business. His fourth rule was that consistency equals comfort, meaning that a consistent design makes a user comfortable. His final rule was to create delight by making products that work right. This rule I really liked because ultimately, that's what most designers are trying to do, but sometimes it can get lost in the process. Overall, I found Alexander Reyna's talk to be really interesting and also reassuring. Perhaps the best part for me was when he talked about being involved in the game design industry because that is where I want to be some day. It was a great experience hearing from someone in the field and knowing that there are plenty of opportunities out there for us in all fields.

Week 2b

During this class we were given the assignment to create what is called a "Sequential Dreamscape". As I wrote about previously, my dream was about finding a kitten. Since we could only use abstract patterns and display one word at a time, I had to really think about how to approach this.

My idea so far is to start with it being dark and having the word "meow" flash on the screen a couple of times to represent the kitten calling out. Then, I would switch to the word "footstep" and have that flash a few times in the hopes that it could be seen as walking. To represent picking up and holding the cat, I would have the background change to a warm color. After that, I would repeat the footsteps going back to the car, have the door open and close, and then begin the driving sequence. To represent driving, I would have the word drive on the screen and then alternate the background between darkness and a blurry light image to show driving under streetlamps at night. Finally, I would have it show the car park, open and close the doors again, hold the kitten, and bring it inside. After that, it will end.

I will update my blog later with the finished video.

Week 2a

This week we were supposed to think about a dream we've had and then write about it. One time I had a dream about finding a kitten. I can't remember exactly where I found the kitten, it might have been in a parking lot or something similar. After finding the kitten, I drove it back to my house wrapped in a sweater I had in my car. I remember that I kept looking over at it in my dream to make sure it was okay, at one point I might have even held it in my lap while I drove. I might have even been speeding. When I got back to my house, I snuck in because in the dream I felt that my parents wouldn't want me bringing in a random stray. I went into our first floor half bathroom and closed the door. If I am remembering correctly, the kitten was like a grey tiger/tabby type and it was very small. It was dirty from being outside, so I decided to wash it off with a cloth. Then, the kitten perked up and it started to run around and play in the bathroom. My other cat, that I have in real life, Smudge, also came in and started acting motherly toward the kitten by grooming it. After that, I woke up. This dream I remember was kind of fuzzy overall, as in, none of the images were very clear. Some dreams I have are very real and memorable, but this one was almost like watching an old, fuzzy movie. I also remember the colors being muted and time seemed to work in a strange way. My dreams have a tendency to vary in terms of visuals, so this is by no means unusual, but since this next project will have to do with visuals, I felt that this would be important to include.

Week 1 Outside of Class: Completed Line Project

(https://youtu.be/kUz5oSygEqI)

Here is my final line project animation. It took many attempts to make something that I felt conveyed the emotion I picked, which I will list at the bottom of this post so as not to give it away. I decided to start with a heart breaking which then transitioned into a person who was crying. It was difficult to give off the idea of sobbing since I couldn't really give my "person" a face, so I tried to do some quick inhaling motions like someone who was sobbing would do. I then had them lie down, which was sort of supposed to represent being exhausted from the crying. I then transformed the line into a scene where a cross stood to the left. The "person" comes in from the right and sits down and cries a little again before both things simply disappear. I hope that I effectively conveyed this emotion, but I guess I will know when my fellow classmates either guess it right or wrong. I feel kind of confident they will know what it is. It is:









































Grief!

Week 1b

Today in class we picked emotions and then acted them out. This exercise was to prepare us for our first assignment, which is to animate a single black line to show whichever emotion we picked. I chose grief, which turned out to be more difficult than I though to depict through one line. My thinking for this project is that there are several stages to grief, specifically denial/isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/). I think I will try to incorporate all of these moments in some way to create a successful depiction of the emotion. I will update later this week with what I have done, as well as my finished project.

Week 1a

Today was the first day of this class, so most of the time was spent doing housekeeping type stuff. However, we did experiment with zoetropes and thumatropes. I found this to be interesting and tried two different ones for the thumatropes. I did one that was more complex and it didn't work as well and I would've liked it to. The other one was much simpler and obviously was more successful. I am excited to see what else we learn in this class, as the first day really piqued my interest.