Tech Tutorial

       These kinds of blog posts are solely dedicated to showing you how to do stuff with things. Not specific enough for you? Yes? Deal with it. Today, I'm going to be showing how to make a basic pen in Maya.

        I'm making a certain pen that I own for my animation final in Maya myself, so all I'm going to do is go back and look at the past incremental saves I have, to show you what I went through.

        Let's just assume that you already know to set up a new file in Maya, as well as all the layouts and what every tool means. I also should have mentioned that this tutorial is for those who already know how to function Maya, and just want to make stuff. Fear not, let me be your guide!

Just a lonely little cylinder

        The base of the pen is the easiest part. All you have to do is make a cylinder on the plane

          And scale it to the proportions that you want your pen to be.

What's this? Cylinder is evolving!

Congrats! Cylinder evolved into a... Taller Cylinder?

        After that, move the camera so it's aiming down at the top of the cylinder, and hold Right-Click on your mouse. After that, select the "vertex" option, and you should see a bunch of purple squares where the "points" of the circular top should be. 

Points on a circle? How does THAT work?

       After that, move the very middle of the cylinder top up until you get it to where you want it. You do NOT have to put it in the same place as mine, mine is just placeholder for your creation.

NOW it's starting to look like a pen!

       After that, make another cylinder, and move/form it so it's directly in the middle of the pen, where the point is. There should be absolutely NO tip of the pen showing. 

Look, Ma! No top!

       After that, select the two cylinders. This part is extremely important, so pay attention. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE LARGER CYLINDER FIRST!!  If you accidentally select the smaller cylinder first, then the entire base will disappear instead of the cylinder. After that, go to the "Mesh" option on the bar at the top, and go to Booleans-Difference. After that, the newer cylinder should disappear, and you have a hole in the top to put the part where the ink comes out (I have no idea what it's called, don't judge me).

Where the ink comes out

       After that, the project is yours! You can make the pen and ink-distributer however you want! I hope your pen turns out much better than mine!

Story Animation Blog

     So, I made a full animation using After Effects, and the end result is something that I think is better than anything else I have ever done! Basically, I had to edit a character in Photoshop, upload that into After Effects, and then make a story with it using backgrounds that I made in Photoshop as well. The entire project was fun to do, and I just let my imagination run wild! It was seriously a fun project, I can't stress that enough.

       My original idea was to actually have two characters fighting to "save the universe" or some cheesy crap like that. Instead, I started to think about having one of the characters steal something, then the other character try and get it back before the main character leaves. I then realized that that would be way too difficult to animate in the time that my teacher allowed. So I just went for the traditional, "Person-Creating-A-Universe" idea. It turned out way better than I imagined, and I am very proud of my accomplishment.

       I learned many helpful components along the way. Like how to make it look like the character in my story was turning around to walk in a different direction. Another big thing I learned was how to make a walk cycle. True, that had been an earlier project in the semester, but I mean I learned how to incorporate it into a story. It was a (somewhat) grueling process, but it paid off in the end.

       What I would do differently in the future would definitely try and find the final product for my animation towards the beginning of the time allowed. I was going through idea after idea until I found what (I had initially thought) was the final idea. But the after that, I kept thinking and thinking, and then I came to a new, and better, conclusion.

       Then there's the prospect of what I would do the same. I would love to use the character model again, because this one was very easy to work with, and turned out to be very cooperative when it came to positioning his arms and legs. And the whole process of making the animation, I wouldn't change for the world. After Effects is a very good program to use, and I would love to keep using it.

       I will OBVIOUSLY try and keep an idea earlier on in the project until the absolute end of it. I needed to find an idea, and stick with it, but I had to start over multiple times. What I would do in the future is just try and use my time better to my advantage, because I only have a limited amount of time before the project window is up, and I didn't realize that at first.

       This project was so much fun, and I would love to do it again! I hope that we do more projects like this in the future! When my teacher reads this, I hope he knows that story projects are super fun, and that it's a good way to use the imagination that so many of us need in our tech-driven age.

Video Game Animation

       I know that this blog is supposed to be dedicated to animations used in movies and television, but for this blog I wanted to point out the importance of video game animation. In any video game, there are certain animated actions that need to be performed. Some of the most common include walking left, walking right, and jumping. However, there are certain times when those animations fail, and the result is a (surprisingly hilarious) glitch. One of the games that has been called one of the glitchiest games in existence is Skate 3.

       Skate 3 is the third installment in the Skate series. As the name implies, it focuses on skating around various locations and performing stunts like the pros in real life. If the player does not know how to pull off the complicated controls to pull off the stunts, then the result is some hilarious glitching like the ones shown above. Just try and watch it without laughing at least once. The game seemed to be rushed for a release date (seeing that it was made by Electronic Arts, or EA for short) and it turned out to be garbage, just like every other rushed video game in history. However, this game has come back into the public eye, and has been regarded as a really fun game because of all of the glitches.

       The actual story of the game is to try and start a successful skating company as the main character and your friends. The game also includes a multiplayer so you and your literal IRL friends can try and build your skating empire together. But a long while after the game's release, EA took down the multiplayer servers. The game soon got revamped for the online community game center, Steam, and their own servers were put up. Soon, the gaming community fell in love with the game and all of its nasty glitches all over again. One feature in the game is to use the "Force" and make your board levitate towards your character. A useless mechanic, unless you're a bro-ed up version of Luke Skywalker and love skating while listening to Nickleback and drinking Mountain Dew.

       If I ever get the chance to work for a game company and work on the character animations, then I will try and not make them like Skate 3. Game animations should be fluent and never breaking. Take Super Smash Bros. Wii U for example.

       In this game, the animations are almost flawless. The developers took their time, and made sure that every animation looked believable, unlike Skate 3.

        Video game animation is just as important, if not more important, than movie animation. The characters are controlled as opposed to set up in a scene, and the graphics have to look just as appealing as animated movies, since the player is staring at the game for extended periods of time. You could argue that it's the same way with movies, but with video games, you are personally controlling what's going on. It's like a movie you can control, so the way everything looks when you control what's going on, everything needs to be fluid and presentable.

2016 Oscar "Best Animated Movie" Predictions.

       The 2016 Oscars are poised to be Pixar's main comeback. With Inside Out being regarded as the newest classic in Pixar's lineup, and The Good Dinosaur getting fairly well received reviews, Pixar may finally be back on top as the (other) animation juggernaut. However, there are many films this year that may make it on the list. The article I chose highlights the other choices in a manor I see fit.

The Top Five Oscar Picks

Check out the website here: http://www.indiewire.com/article/2016-oscar-predictions-best-animated-feature-20150525

Joy, Fear, Anger, and Disgust in Inside Out

The entire cast of The Peanuts Movie

           While Pixar put out one of the year's best (and one of the best looking) animated movies, there are still some movies to take into consideration. The Peanuts Movie was another animated movie that came out with rave reviews, just like Inside Out. The return of the American classic comic strip-turned TV specials is certainly a deciding factor on whether or not Pixar can stay on top. One factor that may give Peanuts a higher-up from Inside Out, is the overall look of the movie. While Inside Out looked absolutely stunning, Peanuts had a certain charm to it, using modern 3D CGI to make the characters look like their classic 2D counterparts. But, on the contrary, The Good Dinosaur may take the overall "Best Looking" category, because of the outstanding set pieces.

       Pixar may in fact be on top again this year for the Oscars, but with movies like Peanuts, they may have some serious competition in the coming years. Just as a reminder, Disney is still making animated movies. Whether with annoying songs that get stuck in your head for weeks, or with giant huggable robot nurses, they will stay an animation powerhouse. In the coming years, Disney is supposed to release Zootopia, a film where it goes full-on Anthropomorphic animals.

Anomalisa

       There was also the (surprisingly rated-R) Anomalisa. It was regarded as one of the very few perfect movies to ever come out. One critic said that it was "the most human movie of the year, and not a single human starred in it". Pixar may win the Oscar, but that doesn't mean that there will be a close runner-up.
stop motion movie),