This short, one-minute animation tells the story of a highly improbable series of draws in a “friendly” game of Blackjack. The setting is a run-down tavern advertising itself as a far classier establishment than it is, hence the opening and closing slides. This was my first attempt at modeling human characters, and though they’re simplistic, I think a recognizable style emerged from it. Story, animation, and models are all made by myself, textures and audio from various sources.

This project was fun and at the same time infuriating due to missteps that I had taken. Although this turned out well there are mistakes that I could have caught onto before rendering. Though again, I think the animation turned out well and I got to learn or rather relearn to frustrations of rigging. Let us start with what I enjoyed from doing this and how it will have affected my own approach from here on. First off, the characters were designed to be slightly cartoony, though there was an issues with using too many edges so they required a quick cleanup of unnecessary things. After that though came rigging and my own personal nightmare in a way. Another thing I noticed only after I had rendered this was that some of the surfaces are reflective, something i didn’t notice until i had taken this to After Effects, though at that I could only work with what I got. Another thing that i had trouble with is of rigging. Rigging in my own opinion can be considered an art, one of which I became all too aware of during the times when I could rig. One of the things I noticed was that I was not properly parenting them, though I tried to fix that as much as I could. I don’t think it I did enough to get the rig to look right although what I got out of this mistake was experience for what not to do in the next rigging.
There are many things that I could work better on for the next time I need to rig a character for animation and what I’ve learned from here will prove invaluable in what to do properly at that time.

Music came from Free Music Archive: Oh! By Jingo! By All-Star Trio

For my PSA project, I focused on forest fires. Specifically, forest fires caused by cigarettes. Forest fires are a huge, even growing, problem in Washington. Forest fires caused by people is just as big of a problem here in the northwest.

The reason I chose this topic is because I knew that it would give me a chance to work with Dynamics. Using this topic gave me a chance to create a fire, smoke, and even attach smoke to an object. For me this project was all about learning.

I did not want to spend time with statistics and information. I decided instead to take a more emotional direction. By showing the animals in their everyday environment, followed by being run out of it, and finally the rabbit dying; I wanted to show the devastation caused by forest fires. By doing these things and asking people to “Put the Butts out”, I hope to help raise awareness on the dangers of flicking a lit cigarette in a forest

[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/156752567″]

Artist Statement:

For my PSA I decided I wanted to try modeling a realistic character. I learned to sculpt and texture in mudbox for this project which was something I’d never tried. I didn’t really have a clear idea of what I was going to do with this PSA, I just knew I wanted to work on a realistic character. In the end, the character became a Monk. This was partially because I didn’t want to create a hair system and he just sort of had that look to him as he was developed. Because I was short on time I decided to work on simple animation. I learned more about Maya paint effects to create the tree and I worked with ncloth but it was too slow so I then learned about wraps. The hardest part of the PSA was getting the clothes to deform with the body but because I modeled them separately from different primitives, It was very hard to accomplish, so there are parts in the video were the body shows through the clothes. I also had to learn about working with normal maps, and rigging a high poly mesh vs a low poly mesh. Because my scene was so dense in polygon count and had a short time limit, I had to render using Maya hardware renderer 2.0. During my trails with trying different renderers, I learned a lot about each one and also tried some new ones like vray and renderman. I feel the modeling and texturing of the monk is my best work yet but the rest of the project isn’t quite up to par and I wasn’t able to accomplish everything in the rest of the scene that I wanted too. Overall I feel I learned a lot of information during this project that I can take into other projects in the future.8″]

On this project which is 30 seconds I created an animation which helps explain a few ergonomic work tips. The purpose of this video is too raise awareness of really simple things that you can do in order to avoid health issues when working at a computer workstation. The video was designed in mind that there would be more videos regarding ergonomic work tips as if in a series of public service announcement videos. Being a short PSA this video focuses on taking a break every 10 minutes and what to do during that break. This information was taken from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), whom has gotten this from several studies. This wouldn’t just inform workers but also students and people using computer workstations at home.
The animation itself is set inside a office but tries to also offer a cartoon look. It uses text, voice and artwork to tell the PSA’s narrative. The text helps reinforce what the voice is saying and the artwork does so also but it a more creative manner. The animation I tried to always keep moving so that something is happening and so the attention of the viewer is always captured. But the animation itself also helps reinforce what the voice is saying with such uses as the clock moving or a person walking. The animation ends with text pointing us to the OSHA website where someone can get more ergonomic information.

Coming to design this project was both interesting and a challenge because it could be taken in all kinds of directions depending on the theme. While my theme dealt with the humane society when it was storyboarded, I needed to further refine and deal with a single idea. Otherwise it would have gone in some other direction that would not have made sense and feel vague at the same time. So in those regards I choose to go with no-kill shelters.

After going with that theme, the next step was to look for audio and create the assets that would be used for the animation. Audio went well for all that can be said the assets however took a little longer than I would have thought because of ideas of what would work for the animation. Cat and dog were already planned out to be within the animation along with a person. This part of the animation took a little longer because I was using a tool I rarely used before, the puppet pin tool. This was great and annoying to deal with because if I moved one pin then the rest would deform. I worked out what needed to be ironed out later on in regards to moving them with the timeline and not making too many pins for me to deal with. Another thing that needed to be worked out was timing for the voice and animation in which some parts needed to be shown longer. With some rearranging of some assets timings and a re-done audio I think I got it solved.

For my animation I decided to try and persuade people to use or support their local public transportation system, in this case C-TRAN. Many people rely on public transport in order to gain access to opportunities and services including jobs, education and health care. I wanted to show that buses were an acceptable and in many cases preferable alternative to people driving themselves. For every person who chooses to ride a bus to get around that takes another car off the road which can reduce both traffic congestion and pollution. There are many reasons why someone should ride the bus whether they cannot afford a car or would just like to reduce their carbon foot print.

In the animation I show a city street with multiple people standing around waiting for the bus, as they wait cars drive by producing exhaust and creating a cloud of exhaust that blocks the screen. On the cloud is where I give my first statistics, after the cloud clears the animation zooms in on a public bus that has picked up the stick people and is now listing reasons to ride public transit. The animation ends with a screen which tells people how the can find out more about C-Tran.

I used Adobe Illustrator to create every asset in this animation with the exception of the C-TRAN logo and completed the animation in after effects. My animation changed a great deal from what I had imagined in my story board, in my storyboard I wanted to move across a bus station with buses moving across the screen each giving a new piece of information. I decided to change my idea after I realized exactly how short thirty seconds can seem when you are reading out statistics, people need time to be able to read what is being shown and by focusing on less statistics the audience is able to view the information I give for a longer time.

https://vimeo.com/156693384

My intent for this animation was to create a 30 second public service announcement, addressing the people Vancouver, Washington. My hope was to raise awareness about the dangers of texting and driving. For the presentation of my animation, I chose to have most of the animation be in the perspective of an individual who is texting while driving. I did this so that the viewer could potentially relate to the driver since they are seeing what they would normally see while driving. I felt that by doing this I could reach a more personal level of emotion which would then help to bring about more of an awareness to focus on driving and to not be distracted by a device while driving. I really wanted to get the message across that texting and driving does not only affect the driver. It also affects everyone around them.

To animate this I used Adobe After Effects. This was my first big project using After Effects so it was an interesting ride getting to know the interface. Though after getting to know the interface it became rather simple and intuitive. All of the assets for this animation were created in Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator was also a program that I was not familiar with so it was fun exploring the program and discovering the magic of the pen tool. The hardest part of this animation was getting the timing right for all of the small animation pieces, like the text messages moving. I solved a lot of my problems by pre-composing most aspects of my animation. This both saved me time and my sanity.