Journal2( Michelle)

Through the tutorials, we require to create 3 main objects needed in our animation, mainly - Floursack, Legoman and the Bouncing Ball.

At first, I took alot of time to make the bouncing ball work right. The squash tool either was too short or was separate from the ball. I did not realise it would be easier as time to come, where I have to create mulitple balls over and over again for different uses- such as a ball bouncing, a ball being kicked, a ball being thrown and so on. Different ball moves have different effects on the balls. For example, a golf ball do not squash and stretch, therefore I do not require the squash and stretch tool. Through my short experience, I was able to understand why I must lock certain values and not follow the tutorials blindly but understand them.

The floursack looked simple but was the most difficult to do. There are many steps to it such as rigging and so on. Even to move it was difficult. However, the outcome of the animation of it if it were to be sucessful is a good one (e.g. classmates' moving flour sack) that makes people smile or laugh; find it cool or cute.

LegoMan has limited moves. Therefore, I created a Legowoman in my project. A lego woman has a smaller waist and therefore is able to play golf that requires the movement of hands across the chest. Sometimes, objects can be modifed slightly to meet our needs for animation. In real life, we make characters that can move in their special ways. They have different functionality to move differently.

Rendering is a new concept we got a a little grasp about in this semester. It is useful as it makes our final product look more realistic.

At first, I was unfamiliar with animation using Maya and had trouble getting used to the keyframes. By the time I got used to animation in Maya, my computers crashed.

I was not able to fufill making the images realistic, but there is the storyline. Knowing that quantity is no better than quality, I also believe that the storyline is also important in an animation. A storyline definitely requires a nice animation to go with it. As I can see some of the classmates' work , some of their work really resemble or can be movie or game trailers. Camera angle is also important to show the views of the object, the expressions and the mood. For example from top view, object looks weak. From bottom view up , object will appear magnificient. Such techniques can be used in animation.

There are some rendering problems in some computers in school and we can search online for solutions and that includes any other problems or ideas we have in mind that we want to research or implement on.

Realism in important as it makes people interested in the animation. If there is something that goes wrong in the animation , people will be distracted with that and therefore not find the animation a good one.

One regret that I had was that I was not able to make my animations look that realistic or industry based. Better textures and shaders make objects look more realistic. Especially the movement of the characters, too.

Physics concepts are also important. Such as the falling of a ball will become faster and the ball will start to slow down in bounce level as it goes on.

Patience, creativity and passion is needed for a nice animation. Carefulness too. I think that perfectionists do well in Maya and we should learn from them and complete everything well.