Animation Sizing

Yesterday I made the mistake of turning 4k files into an animation, then saving it as an animation archive. It was over 18 gigabytes in size and it wouldn't play right. One of the teachers showed me how to change it to a more reasonable file format. I'm still new to using After Effects and making videos so her input was helpful. I'm looking forward to learning how to use Adobe After Effects in the Future.

Illustrator Intro

Today the class was introduced to Adobe Illustrator. I've had two years practice in Illustrator, so I doodled while the class learned how to use the pen tool. Before I came here I was in an art high school and I focused on Graphic Design. Most of these introductions are pretty pointless for me, but its nice to have a refresher course once in a while. They also went over how to put gradients on shapes and paths, a very useful tool for illustrator.

It was entertaining to mess around with Illustrator after a month or so of not using it.

Video Timeline Intro

Today the class learned how to use the video function of the timeline. We used Onion skins to see before and after our current frame so we could better align our animation. This class was somewhat useful for me, since I already knew how to use onion skinning and the video timeline, this was more of a review if anything. Still, it was nice to go over it after a summer of barely using it. I was slightly agitated for some of the day though, not that that was a big deal. I'll be happy to be able to relax after school today.

Timeline Intro

Today the class learned how to make animations using the timeline function in Photoshop. I learned this skill 2 years ago in my graphic design class. It took an annoyingly long time to scan all the pictures so i could make the animation, id much rather just draw it all on the computer in the future. I did learn how to change the function of the timeline from video to frame by frame, which I couldn't find last week, so thats useful. It was fun getting my animation to look just right on the computer, which is pretty nice. The teacher is a very good instructor, the teacher that originally taught me how to do it was painfully vague so at least I learned what exactly to do.

Masking and Selecting

The class learned how to mask out objects to create convincing blends of pictures. I learned this my 4th year of high school. We also learned how to use the magic wand tool, which I learned how to do in grade 7. They learned how to colour mask pictures and edit photos that way, which is already second nature to me. Altogether this class was slightly educational, but it just let me brush up on some skills I already have. The class was however, engaging. The one thing it did let me do was learn how to use a tablet more proficiently.

Photoshop

Today the class learned how to use photoshop on mac computers. they learned how to use the paintbrush tool, the select, rotate and erase tool. They learned how to use layers and how to make part of layers invisible by using the erase tool. I already know how to do all of this, as well as make use of the timeline toolbar to make animations. I've used photoshop since before I started high school. My dad taught me the basics and after that my friend from singapore started critiquing me on my photoshop work, which helped me to use it more proficiently.

Freak of the Week

Recently I found an animated music video by the band Freak Kitchen. The animator of the video was Juanjo Guarnido, who is also known as the lead animator of Tarzan and Atlantis. As a fan of metal, and as an animation student I enjoyed this animation immensely, not only because of the subject matter, but how they mixed together the use of a hand drawn master along with CG animation to make the video. Needless to say this song will be in my music library soon.

Animation studies 2

Today our class worked on making an animation of anything we wanted.  I was having trouble thinking of an idea so I brainstormed in my sketchbook. I decided to draw a dwarf with a fat bird bouncing on his head while trying to fly. I haven't finished yet but I've made good headway from having no idea what to do.

Animation studies 1

Today we turned in our ball animations and our pixellation videos we worked on on thursday. I still haven't finished my pixellation and I hope I can get it done this Wednesday.  After lunch we started on a pendulum gif animation by using animation paper. It was 24 frames of a looping pendulum. Later we're going to work on a looping gif of anything we want. I'm looking forward to it.