Final sophmore reflection (Video)

Hi everyone  this is James. I'm  about to give you my final reflection for sophomore video class.

 Over the school year I have learned how to do a lot of different things. For example i learned how to use the cameras along with how to  set up the tripod during my first project. I learned how to do this by watching my  teacher give us a demonstration. This is important because you need to know how to set up recording equipment if you want to film some thing. One challenge I faced during this was preventing my mind from wandering. This is something that i have learned how to control over time.
 Also, this is something that only time can help me with, another weakness is quickly setting up the equipment, a lot of our equipment needs to be repaired and to be honest it can  take a wile to get the camera and tripod set up correctly. I have improved this with  practice over the year.

One important skill I have learned this year is collaboration  .  I learned this during ur short film project  when  me and my group were going to film over the weekend wee all did a  poor job of planing and I was not able to get a hold of the people I needed to  get a hold of.  As a result we were not able to film  over the weekend. This experience has helped me improve my  collaboration skills  with other people. this is important because weather you are planing a project for school or a vacation for your family you need to know how to collaborate with others. I have improved this by planing events in advance for the project and by learning form my mistakes. Also, I will use this next year when  I am working with my  group members.

Throughout the year e-comm has helped my  communicate with others. for example in my last project we tried a second time to  film  over the weekend, we were able to find a time that we thought based on our analysis that we would be able to film  unfortunately  some last minute events came up with one of my camera man as a result we did not have enough people to film.

School in general has helped me improve my  project and time management skills for example, for my short film  project due to the fact that we had several  setbacks due to  apathy from  my director I had to come in after school and edit on my own. We also  did not have all the voice overs we needed as a result.

As a result of most of our projects being in groups I have been  able to improve my leadership skills. For example, during my  short film project m  job as sound director was to control the microphone and help the camera man  get the audio we needed. leader  ship skills are important thought life its self. Whether you are leading a group project or are teaching some one how to do something you need good leadership skills and you need to be able to  prevent your self from becoming irritated when  things go wrong.

Over all I have enjoyed this class and I will take what I have learned with me next year

professional project review of CGI Animated Short Film HD: "Spellbound Short Film" by Ying Wu & Lizzia Xu

Hi every one today I'm about to analyze a short film. This is a story about jealousy and sibling rivalry. A young girl is jealous of her older sisters awards and achievements. she becomes so jealous that she keeps writing one thing in her diary "I HATE MY SISTER". Eventually  after so much  hatred is pored into  her  diary  a monster appears that cannot be controlled, its only purpose is to  kill the older sister. this is evidenced by the fact that the only thing it says thought the story is "kill Sunny" which is the name of the older sister. suspense builds as Sunny is dropped off form school and walks toward the house unknown to fact that a monster is in the house. Eventually the younger is able to  defeat  the monster by rearranging the wording in her diary to say  that she forgives her sister.

the story is animated in 3-D I don't know about all the programs that were used  but according to the creadts  I've used some of the listed programs at school. However, I do  know this at video time 0:22 you can  clearly  see that one side of the room  is brightly lit up  whale the other is not. Keep in  mind the you tube video time clock is shown in minutes: seconds. Another  example would be at 1:09 the creature looks as if its going to  enjoy what its about to do.

some things I would include in my own  work  are the creators attention to detail, for example at 1:09 if you pause the the video and analyze it you can  see that the window casts a shadow along with  the creature which casts it's own shadow. you can also see the creature  is some what reflective as evidenced by  the fact  that you can see light on it as well as a crude reflection  of the sun  and the protagonist which the creature is looking at.

One element I have already learned is the principles of squash and  stretch which are applied when  the smaller creatures move.
one thing I thought the creators did well was the fact  that  the animation  was smooth.

One thing I think  The creators could have done better was make it a little easier to understand what the smaller creatures were saying.

Over all I think this was a good story, was well put together and was obviously worked hard on.

Spellbound. Dir. Ying Wu and Lizzia Xu. Perf. Sunny and Regina. Spellbound. N.p., 5 Aug. 2016. Web. 21 May 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_B2UZ_ZoxU

Technical Tutorial

Hi every one this is James an I'm about to teach you how to add textures in Maya. This is how to make something like a sphere look like a tennis ball. how you do this is 1) look up a picture of a tennis ball texture on the internet be sure the texture is flat like this example.

After you find a texture you like save it to your desk top, then find the file folder your using for your project and put the file in   your source images folder now you need to  create a sphere. to create the sphere select the polygons tab and then click this button .

After that you need to hold down the right mouse button  and select  assign new material after that a menu  should pop up when it does click  lambert. after that in the attribute editor click the checker box next to the color box. after that a menu should pop up when it does click the button  that says file.
then click the folder button like in this example .

Than click the file you need and press the button that says open.  Now in the attribute editor you should see a box with a picture of the image you used.  If you  see a picture of the image click on the sphere and press the 6 key now you should see something like this.




you need this skill if you want to add a texture to any shape in Autodesk maya. for any one reading this weather you are doing a project for school, work, or just for fun you will need this skill to add a texture  or to add color to  your object.

Thanks for reading.

plausible impossible

Hi everyone this is James. I am about to  tell you about a few clips from disney  and tell you how this could happen  but is still imposable.

First lets talk about this picture.  in  this picture Mickey is walking through  a mirror. This is posable in the cartoon world because characters are able to use mirrors and on rare occasion black holes as a means of travel.  But in  the real  world this is not possible because in the real world you cant walk through  glass.

In this picture the king card is fighting Mickey using two heads. This is plausible because  in the cartoon  world cards can become animated.  Also, the king card has two heads so why can't he use this fact to help him fight. In the real word this is impossible because inanimate objects cannot come to life.

Now lets talk about this picture.  Here you cant see it but Mickey is using a fountain pen like a gun to fight of an army of playing cards. This is plausible because in the cartoon world you can use objects like pens as guns. but in  the real world this is not possible because there is no way you  could get enough pressure to do any real damage besides staining someone's clothes.

Now in this picture the cards are throwing their symbols at Mickey. this is plausible because in the cartoon world on rare occasion drawn objects can leave the paper they were drawn on and interact with the cartoon world. this is not  possible because in the real world drawings cannot leave the paper they were drawn on.

Now for my last example. In this picture Mickey is being shuffled into  a deck of cards.  In the cartoon world this is plausible because in some 2-D animated cartoons the character can become completely flat for a short time which would allow this to happen. However, in the real world this is not possible because in the real world you cannot become completely flat.

personal blog post

Hi everyone this is James Riddle and I'm about to tell you about my snowflakes animation  project. For this project we had to draw the outline of the snow flakes using the cv curve tool. The pre-production process was to learn how to complete this project. As I worked, I followed instructions on Google Classroom to help me understand the items in the project.

Along the way, I learned how to animate in Maya. Specifically, I learned how to make something look like glass. I used that knowledge to create a window in my project, something I had not done before. Professionally speaking, I asked table mates to provide feedback on my project. Unfortunately, I got behind on this project. I spent lots of time after school trying to complete the assignment.

If I were to do the assignment again, I would try to work more quickly so I would stay on target for when the assignment was due. I liked the way the color codes turned out for the snowflakes and the frame and would choose to do that the same way.

This project has improved my time management skills. I learned that the longer a project takes to complete, the more impact it has on my grade as well as personal time.

movie trailer project

Hi everyone this is  James Riddle and I am about to tell you about my movie trailer project for entertainment  video. Basically we had to chose a high school themed movie  and use that  movie's trailer as a template to figure out our scenes. Before we could film  we had to chose a movie, my group chose a movie called Fist Fight, get permission from our teacher, create a story board using scenes from the trailer, and then figure out where we were going to film our scenes. After that we were able to film our video.

 First we used our story board to figure out where we were going to film and then we started to  film  our  video.  Unfortunately we id have a few setbacks along the way,  one of our group members caught  the  flu and we had to use members from  other groups for a lot  of our scenes. Also, I unfortunately was not able to finish editing my version of the video.

Some things I learned were how to  add color filters to different clips, this was very  helpful when I needed to correct the white balance of  a few scenes. Also I learned it is very difficult to  perfectly line up audio from a movie trailer to a different person due to the fact that every one talks at different speeds.

One thing I will do differently is next time I will edit the video  as we get our clips. Also, I will figure out how to  use  video filters in my transitions. This way I will be able to get the editing done on time and the video filters  will be useful if I need to put information in a specific background.

Another thing I will use next time is the feed back we got in  the video. This will help me edit our next project. Also, I will use similar transitions from  this project in our next video.

I will recomend this project for next year but get them turned in on time.

James Riddle

hour 4

2-06-17

Hello everyone this is James Riddle and I am about to tell you about some feedback I got from my class. I was told that I did a good job editing my video. Someone told me that my idea was clever. For the first part of our project, we had to select a song. My group chose the song, All alright by FUN. Next we had to get the copyright information for the song. After that, we completed our beat sheet, drew up some ideas on story boards, then we worked on our blog posts. Finally, we were able to film!

 It took us a while to learn how to use the new equipment. We also had a few problems with the tripods. Along the way, we learned how to use a dolly which is basically a device that gives a tripod wheels. After the filming was finished, we each had to edit our own video. Editing took a while, it was difficult to line up the clips with the song. I learned through working with my group that staying after school with your group helps a lot with filming. It was also helpful when people remembered to bring props for the video. Next time, I am going to get a better tripod. Unfortunately, most of them are broken! I thought I worked well with my group. I thought we collaborated well. Also, I learned it's a good idea to ask for outside help.

some of the feed back I got from my class was that I did a good job editing, i should say it was very difficult to line up my clips with  the parts of the song that I needed.