unit1 - Introduction to media processes and technical skills

6/9/16

This was our first ever lesson with Marshal and in this lesson we were looking at bridges and structures, with another class as well. Our classes were set a few tasks and out of all everyone picked the hardest task which was to build a bridge with marshmallows and spaghetti. And so there were groups that had to be made with 4 people and to try and mix so 2 people from each class was in each group if possible. In the second part of the lesson we was doing something similar to the first activity that we did. We were given a few supplies such as paper, paper-clips and tape the task was to build a tower that would measure up to 1 meter in height and that it had to try stand without someone holding onto it. we had 5 minutes to try get started so we thought of ideas in a group of 4 for 2 minutes. As a group we ended up having a good structure it leaned to the side and it was a little shorter than a meter so after Marshal had reviewed everyone's tower we had been given one minute to improve to see if what we could improve and make better. So we tried to add height to the tower by making it taller by adding papers in a cylinder shape to the top and using tape but because the height didn't match the diameter and the width in terms of the base for the tower it ended up leaning and then falling. This after Marshall used this to see what we could do and to see if we could use this time and criticism to improve as a group.

In the first lesson David put on a video and we had to discuss what we found that made it a bad short film. The reasons why we did this is to see what makes a bad animation and this gives us the chance to see what makes a film bad and what not to do for example; they are playing Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox360 and there playing and then they end up stop moving there hands and a game like that is a game that you cant pause unless you are doing campaign. Also the film was slightly damaged meaning that when you are watching it you can tell that the film tape is damaged. At times the sound is really bad for at times the sound is really loud and sometimes it is really quite.

 7/9/16

In this lesson it was only our class instead of another class as well and we were greeted by Marshal and he talked a bit about him self to get to know him better I guess. And this class we were talking not too much happened since this was our classes proper first lesson as before was a more of an way to be imaginative since he teaches us art. In this lesson the task Marshal had given was to look at a item in the class and to draw it, but there was a twist instead of just drawing it he said to fold the paper in multiple fold and then draw it so we did and when it opened you can see all the different patterns across the piece of paper. Also we did shading we talked about different ways to shade including tonal, hatching and cross hatching also whilst we was doing this individual work Marshal was explaining lighting and where the light is coming from and the how it effects the area where the light hits.

This is the first animation that I have made in lesson. The task that was set was to make a bouncing animation and then after, when the lesson had ended, we were told to improve anything that we thought could be added or improved. I decided to add a background to make it look a bit better and more attractive. The original animation that was first made is above this text. I didn't change the way the ball bounced but perhaps I could have made the bounce a bit smoother because in some places of the animation it looks like it jumps instead of bouncing. I really like the fact that we was starting from something basic and then asked to improve it. I thought it was going to be easier because I thought we were going use tween of some sort. Instead we couldn't use motion tween we have to use just the shape and make it by changing the shape of the ball. I decided to use onion skin so I could see where it was previously this way it made it easier could keep the distance of space consistent between every frame. I decided to improve the animation overall because I thought that I could make it look better and thought that perhaps I could give it the effect that it is bouncing better. Because I had done it once it was a lot easier and I found out how to do the bouncing effect more better and how to make it more effective.

In the first lesson we also discussed the different types of animations such as stop-motion and rotoscoping, we also talked how to do stop-motion and juxtapositioning. We then was asked to get in to a group of 4 and our task was to make a stop motion video out of a few objects we were given.

8/9/16

In Lissia's lesson, we were learning how to use the basics of Photoshop; the first thing we did, was take pictures of our friends in our class, or, alternatively ourselves. Then, we edited our pictures to make it look unique; using the liquify tool, we attempted to create a character. After this task this was like a small warm up then after we got set the task to make 2 characters, 1 made with house hold items we used google as a source to find the pictures. For the bit of the task we had to make a character made of metal items and try make him unique so it doesn't look like a bunch of items together.

(Insert pictures)

As home work for this lesson we had to draw the characters in at least 3 different positions of one of the 2 characters (metal one or one using house hold items). So I ended up doing 4 posses 1 of them I drew on a piece of paper and the others was done on animate on the computer. This was quite challenging because I'm not to good at drawing and so I found it hard to try and draw the character I did in different positions. This piece of work was due in for 15/9/16

9/9/16

On this day we had Vinny For 3 lessons essentially for half the day. And he had previously talk about the 3 types of animations that we would be doing which is stop-motion, rotoscoping and green-screening. This lesson Vinny had shown us a video clip of him doing a stop-motion using his brother and how it looked like items was moving themselves. Vinny had a small box with lots of small items in there such as small toys etc.... before we started this as we were split into groups of people that we would want to be in. So we choose the to work with our friends as a 4, the 4 items that we were given was a toy character Jibanyan from the anime series Yo-Kai Watch, two 2p coins, small plastic yellow duck and a small Eiffel tower souvenir. So we decided to make a short stop- motion that was only a few seconds. What happened was 1 person ended up getting a piece of string and tied it to the Eiffel tower therefore he could hold it without his hand getting in the picture. And we decided as a group to make the duck the villain and make the and to make it look like it knocked over the Eiffel tower. When we did this we thought were done but we realized that this was less that 3 seconds and was too short to explain anything or to even make a story out of it. So we decided to make another scene were the duck and Jibanyan have a show-down kinda like a western. And then we made the duck miss when he slid the coin and Jibanyan the cat hit him and the finally we made the camera zoom in on him. All together this took a very long time because we had to move it slowly then take a picture also the person who was holding the Eiffel tower struggled a bit because it meant that they had to hold it in the same position for a very long time and the slightest of all movements made it fall.

For this lesson Vinny set us home work. The home work was to represent speed in the animation. He said that it will have to be at least a few seconds long this is so you can actually tell the speed its meant to represent as in slow or fast also he said that try keep tweening to a minimal, he told us that we had a week to do this as it was needed to be ready for next week Friday lesson. This work that we had been set was to be done by ourselves. 

12/9/16

For this lesson with David we were listening to different types of audio and we listened to a small audio clip of air conditioning that had been stretched to make it have a scary theme to it. So David talked about important sound is and how much it can make an effect and was saying that sound is now mostly a lot nowadays for thing such as movies and games. He asked how many people have played games without sound and I raised my hand to answer the question and I replied. " That playing without sound is good and bad, the advantages are that I can concentrate properly but then the disadvantage is that if I'm playing a shooting game then I wont be able to use sound to see if anyone is shooting me or moving. So then after for the rest of the lesson we was asked to go out of the class and walk around the Stanmore College campus and see what interesting sounds we could find in a pair so since I didn't have a phone at the time I teamed up with a friend that had a phone this way it was a lot easier.

In the later lesson that I had with Lissia we were asked to make a character and to make improvements for the lesson so I drew a stick man then I improved it by turning it into an actually guy on Adobe Animate. I did the stick man simply and used that to help me draw a man who looks evil and with his left hand he is pointing at the screen and with his right hand he has his fist clenched and squeezed. I used the stick man drawing to my advantage by turning on the onion skin which shows the outline of the previous drawing and I was able to add 2 lines and I tried to make the line for the arm as an example in the middle this way it looked better. I made the man look evil by the eyes because I added a glow to them of a dark color and also the way I've drawn his mouth it looks as if he has a lizard tongue and fangs.

(Insert drawing of stick-man and man)

14/9/16

This lesson we did more tonal value shading, hatching and some cross-hatching on pictures on balls also we had to do it from different light angles so it was harder because you have to think about where the light will shine how much and where. also we had to add a minor shadow to add more effect. We had a sheet with balls already on it and there were 6 that we had to do different types of shading. 1 ball was for tonal shading 2 were for hatching, 2 were for cross-hatching and the last was

for any of the type we wanted to do. I didn't end up getting to that one but I just did 5.

Later on in Vinny's lesson we ended up writing up on our blog and having the chance to do the home work which was due in for the following Friday 16/9/16. that lesson I asked for feedback on what I had already done to see what I could improved so I asked Vinny to view the few seconds that the video was and he told we that it needs to be a bit longer also try and add more.

15/9/16

In these double lessons we had Lissia and we had homework due in but I forgot it at home so I said to her I would bring it in the next lesson. In this lesson we was told to write in our blogs what we have been doing in her lessons and how we have been finding it. To me I find it challenging since I'm not too good at drawing also I'm not too good at using Photoshop since I've never used it before. So because this is my first time using it as well as I may be struggling but I'm also learning this could help because if I'm making ideas in Photoshop this way I will be able to have more ideas happening without it stopping me because I'm not able. Since there was not too much too do except expand on the character that I created so I just ended up blogging for both of the double lessons this was good because it meant that I get some time to type what, is happening in other teachers lessons.

16/9/16

In this lesson we were looking at the homework that was due in, which was the homework Vinny set that was to show some sort of speed I had to done 2 animations but one was more of a side animation and there was a main one that I had this was the one that I worked on a lot and spent a lot more time when I had finished the animation I felt like it wasn't bad and that it was a lot better than the originally that I did. The whole class logged into a computer and had gotten there animations ready to show to the class as the class walked around to view other peoples. I got criticism saying that it needs to have a bit more faster of a slice effect and that was all. that piece of criticism is for the main animation. When I showed the smaller animation people said that i need to draw in more frames so that it looks more realistic. The main one was about a gun shooting and then killing someone from the bullet slicing of there neck, and then blood sprays every where. And the side animation that was also for this piece of work was an animation on eyes that close and the open. 

In the next part of the lesson we were put into groups of our choosing so I decided to work with 3 other people in a group of 4. And our task was to make an animation that would advertise something and the requirements was that everyone has to do something within it and the duration has to be 15 seconds minimum to 30 maximum. Vinny set us this task and we was thinking of ideas and I thought of the storyboard. The idea was that a person is washing up, then on one of the glasses the person has a stain on it and the person cannot remove it. And because the glass is fragile she presses harder top remove it and ends up breaking the glass.

19/9/16

On this day we had David and we listened to some spooky and scary mini soundtracks. They were made using sounds like air conditioning but the people who made the sound clip stretched the sound the sound to make it sound creepy. This surprised me because I didn't think that normal everyday sounds that we hear every day could be altered to make seem scary by just making it longer. In that lesson our teacher showed us a website called sounddogs (www.sounddogs.com). And we was asked to get scary noises since  the focus for the upcoming animation is going to be horror. So we got a sound of someone screaming and scratches and our teacher said to play around with it this way you can understand better how the program works. The program I used was Adobe  Audition, so using this program I found out how to make sounds sound sometimes louder or quiet this way i can make some specific things sound louder that other. 

20/9/16

This day we had Marshal my art teacher and our class was doing realistic drawing. and for his past few lessons we were doing realistic drawings and since I'm not really patient but can draw over several hours. But in his lesson we were told to draw an eye and I think I did a really good attempt at trying to draw the eye. After I drew the eye  Marshal said to try and add hatching into it to give it the effect that it's 3D or that it looks as if it was actually looking at the viewer. I tried to add as much detail to the drawing but I think there is too much hatching therefore it is quite hard to tell where the light is coming from and what it is hitting.

23/9/16

This is the day where we showed the animations that we did whilst we were in groups. We decided as a team to go and do the storyboard that I had made from last week. In the group I helped do multiple things such as help colouring gradients doing the voice acting and helping putting the sounds that I found to the animation. We ended up viewing other peoples animation as well as our, when we did this we all had to say what was good what they liked and they didn't really like. We got lots of comments such as: I really like the voice acting, the animation looks good, the sounds is at the right moment. Someone said for the bit that they didn't like to well is say that it was clear and partially agree because if we made a new scene saying here's the washing product it would have made more sense.

In the next bit of the lesson we were put into groups that we had no control over. The group that I had been put into was a group of 3 so me and 2 other guys. We were given the task to look at 3 case study's and try think of a storyboard over the week. This would all be in set-up for our new task to make an horror theme animation lasting 1.30 - 5.00 minutes in general.