Senior Year of e-Communications

This 2016-2017 school year was my last in high school and in e-Communications and it has been an amazing year. I figured out what path I want to take for college and for future career goals and I learned much more about animation, graphic design and photography.

I have definitely learned that animation is not something I want to further my knowledge on but rather graphic design, photography and digital media. Animation thankfully incorporates all those things into it so animation gave me more opportunity to learn graphics and digital media. Animation has helped me start towards different creative fields that I enjoy more and has taught me that it's ok to step from animation to photography and graphic design and use what I learned from animation to guild my new creative outlets. Last year I had started to realize animation wasn't my strongest skill and I was worried I would disappoint other creators by not continuing to try and improve in animation. I realized this year that it was ok because animation is one of those amazing fields that can incorporate everything in e-Comm in some way.I'm happy to say that while I haven't improved in animation I have increased a lot in photography and hope to continue improving. My hope is to somehow combined my hobby of photography with my career goal of being an Ultrasound Technician or some sort of nurse so I can take photos of medical procedures and anything to inform and show people of diseases or injuries.

If I had a chance to go back and choose graphic design instead of animation I wouldn't. The experiences and the people I've met in animation are priceless and I have learned so much from it all. Step by step I figured out what I wanted to do in the future and animation helped lead me there.

I have to thank my friends in animation (especially Greta) who encouraged me to keep trying to animate and complimented my photography and graphic design. I also must thank e-Communications program for the software I was able to have at my disposal during my time in e-Comm; Maya, Adobe After Affects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and many more. Lastly I would like to thank Olathe Northwest High school and the teachers there for teaching me what I needed to know and what I wanted to know. Teachers I especially want to thank are the e-Communications teachers who lead me and others through the whole program into bright creative futures.

My portfolio: https://katelynbrule.wixsite.com/portfolio

Beginning of the Year Expressions

Earlier in the year I was given a 3D model in Maya and an emotion I had to animate it doing. The emotion I got was embarrassment. Embarrassment was one of the harder choices of emotion and I wasn't looking forward to it. I was thinking that it was not very easy to portray embarrassment in just movement but once I started to work on it I started to understand how people looked and acted while embarrassed. 

People are evasive and shy when embarrassed and aside from the face turning red or pink I had to make my model evasive. I made him avoid eye contact and look shocked like someone said mentions something embarrassing he did as a kid. I tried acting out myself being embarrassed and thinking of what I would do in an embarrassing situation. I even looked at some videos of people being embarrassed. 

A person usually is shocked at something that happened and then the embarrassment and evasiveness sets in. So I first made him looked shocked and then moved on to the embarrassed discomfort. 

My Progress on Food-imals Semester 1

My progress since my last blog has been actually rather productive. Unlike my other animation projects over the years I have been working on this continuously and I haven't given up. Like I've done that before, (cough cough) Totally haven't carelessly given up on a 3D dragon. Anyway I am actually super proud of myself for getting this far on a project. I was able to incorporate my love for graphic design into this and make them move in the commercial. While I'm not yet done, I am very close to finishing.

(No audio)

I need to mess with the color so it doesn't look as light and grey. I also have made a script so I will add audio to most of the scenes and definitely add music in the background.  During the inside of the fridge kingdom scene I am going to animate the Food-imals moving. 

I hope to finish all this before Emagine next semester. I'll post an update when I'm all finished. Happy Holidays!

Food-imals Part 2!

Food-imals are back, baby! It's been two dang years since I've messed with this Food-imal idea. For anyone who has for some reason read through this whole blog you'll know that the Food-imals were created way back in the dark ages of my Sophomore year in the 'Olathe donut' graphic design class. 

I decided to animate a commercial for the Food-imals project that Greta and I had Sophomore year. Before any animating started I had to storyboard what I wanted my commercial to look like. I started the commercial with the fridge that will open up and show the Food-imals then the door will close, open again, and zoom into the fridge to transition to the Food-imal kingdom.

After showing the kingdom I plan to show off the mini fridge more and have the narrator talk about the product.

It will then state the price and where to purchase it and a number so someone could order it.

After I was done story boarding I realized I was going to need to rework the old design. I asked Greta to sketch up some Food-imal ideas for me and then I created them in Illustrator and edited the existing Food-imals into a new style. 

Some of Greta's sketches:

My Food-imals created in Illustrator:

I extremely revamped the style and colors of the original Food-imals. After I had made all of the Food-imal characters I started to make props and the world around them such as their fridge that was also originally designed Sophomore year and then revamped this year. 

Here is the old VS new fridge:

As you can see I changed the style and colors a lot. I added lines, shading, and made the colors more intense.

I have not yet finished my animation but once I am finished I'll post the video and an update blog! Hope you enjoyed~

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!

2-D Project Progress

For my next personal project I'm taking a step back from 3-D animation to work on a little 2-D. The title of this animation is Dream. It's about a young girls dream of what she wishes her life was. 

To start my process I story boarded what exactly I wanted to happen, as seen below.

After I finished story boarding I started making my characters in Adobe Illustrator. I had to use a lot of refrences to get the basic human shape down but I finally created my first character, Kara and then after her I made her family whom i'm still in the process of making.

This is Kara who will be my animations protagonist.

Below are Kara's parents and her aunt. Her aunt may be aded to the story I'm not sure yet. I will be making the other characters soon.

While I was working on on making my characters my animation teacher asked for those of us in his class to make a poster of an animation we made or are making so I paused my animation for a short time to make this poster. 

I will make an update post once I actually start animating all my characters! Until then  enjoy my lovely poster.

Semester II Group Project

This project was a stop-motion collaboration between Greta Lundy, Jake Combs, Anna Gaiche, Sierra Draney, and myself. When we first started we had no idea what to do. We knew we had to make something stop-motion but were weren't sure what it would be about. We started with a lot of ideas some of which included clothes moving a wall and perform tasks, some story using all Bionicles, and even the same story as what we did but the monster would've been one of us eating candy.

All of us finally agreed on the gummy bear story and we had Greta storyboard it for us so we knew what kinds of shots we would need and about how long the animation would be when finished. 

After we had everything planned we brought in candy to make our set and cast. Sierra, Anna, and I created the houses and main set. It was very fun and most of the candy that didn't end up in the set was consumed by us; including the bag of gummy bears that Jake brought. We started with a giant five pound bag of gummy bears and ended with...well probably a lot less then a pound. If you're reading this Alli, I blame Jake. 

We then started filming once the set and actors were all ready. I didn't do a whole lot during this part because Greta and make were our stop-motion experts. I mostly watched, turned on lights when we needed them, and ate the remaining candy. The filming took about two weeks and once we were finished Greta started to put the footage together while I made the credits and title card. Jake made the words in the title card bounce and while Jake was busy making the words bounce I looked for music for the whole short movie. Greta then added the music, title card, and credits. After some adjustments in the audio and video the short was done! 

Now that I can see the finished product I notice that one thing I would do different is that I would make the story longer and add more detail. Although the movie was supposed to be very short but if I ever had the opportunity I would make it longer. I would also do more set design to make the set look more like a village. Something I would do the same is use candy to tell a story. It's easy to animate and makes a cute story. If I could do this again I could even make the gummy bears talk or have a deeper meaning to the story.

I had a lot of fun on this group project and I'm glad to have done it with other amazing creators. I would love to work with this group again on another project!