End of Year Reflection 2016

This year in e-Communications was one year of learning, minimal progress, and at many times frustration. I ran into many problems over this last school year and I have now learned from them.

My year started off great with a tutorial from instructor on how to use the Motion Path in Maya. We created a fish in Maya and animated it swimming. Sadly my Maya folder corrupted and I lost my fish and the animation because I had not fully rendered out my fish. I then learned to make multiple copies of a project so I don't loose a lot of data. Data that I didn't lose from the fish was it's original sketched design. 

After my fish I started to work on my own personal project which was modeling a dragon. Oh boy was that dragon "fun". If you have read my previous blog about my poor failure of a dragon you will know that my dragon is still not completed due to my complete lack of planning and knowing what exactly I wanted to make. I have now realized that I need to make a clear and better plan before diving straight into animating. My mistake with my dragon was that I was so eager to animate I didn't properly plan out how exactly I was going to make it happen. I only got about halfway done because I got so frustrated with what I was doing. I have temporarily given up on that dragon.

If there is one thing I've learned from this year is that: YOU.MUST.PLAN.

Trust me if you actually plan out what you want to do before you start you will be a lot better off. It's easier to start and easier to imagine what you want to create. I actually planned for my next animation which is turning out great so far. 

After Semester 1 I was given an assignment to make a stop-motion animation with a group.  my group was made up of five people including myself. Our animation was "A Beary Bad Day". We got a giant bag of gummy bears and lots of other kinds of candying made a little candy village. We then took stop motion pictures of our little gummy actors. "A Beary Bad Day" actually won second place at E-magine and we were all extremely happy to have won anything at all. 

Later in Semester 2 I started on my 2D animation "Dream" which is still being animated but is going great so far. I planned and storyboarded it and I am currently making all my characters and the backgrounds. My hopes are that I will be able to finish this animation over the summer. 

As my Junior year of animation wraps up I am happy to say I have learned a lot this year and I am looking forward to my Senior year next year. I hope anyone reading this has a great summer!