Animation Portfolio Blog

Story Animation (no addendum here; the whole thing’s a meme anyways)

            The story animation we did in October was definitely my favorite project of the year. I learned how to animate a nonsensical story about a snickers bar with bunches of bad memes and entertaining moving text. I chose this project because, as I said two sentences ago, it was my favorite one to make. I think my greatest strength was the timing on the text, while I really could’ve done better at getting the little things, like walk cycles and the multiplane midway through, to look functional. If I could change anything, I’d keep the original scene that the tree scene replaced (director’s cut note: there was a bridge).

Ice Cream Spin (three hundred sixty-degree table spin with a sick olly after*)

            This project was a bit more recent, and a lot simpler. The assignment was to make a bowl of ice cream, a cone, and a scoop spin around a lazy susan. While it was simple and pretty serious, I think the music I used in the final video was a pretty good pun. I did learn quite a bit from this one! I learned how to use keyframes, I taught myself how to make a sign and sign holder, and learned how to use bump mapped textures (somewhat poorly). I’d love to use what I learned on other stuff, but I’m not sure what just yet. If I could change anything, I think I’d get the bump maps to work right. I did like the project, though.

*sick-nasty olly not included

Bounce Animation (really dropped the ball on this one, am I right?)

            This one was done early on in the year, and there’s not much to say. Again, I love the music I used, but that’s not very technical. The animation was a basic demo to show us some basic stuff with Adobe™ After Effects™ (CREATIVE CLOUD ONLY 20$ A MONTH BUY NOW USE CODE KEEM FOR 20% OFF). We made a ball, a foreground, a background, and a sky layer, and then we made the ball bounce up and down (without squash and stretch, probably because it was just supposed to be a two-day project). With what I learned from this project, I made some pretty high quality arcs in my story animation. For example, when the tree says “no” in the story animation, that’s some top notch arcing, it even bounces off of the dinosaur’s head (you can read about that animation right HERE). If I could change anything, I wouldn’t; I’d like to keep it as a benchmark for future generations.

Sick-nasty Hammer and Nails (stop, hammer time and et cetera)

            For this Maya Project, I made a pretty cool hammer with some nails and even an

all-wood backdrop*! There were a few challenges with this one, just because it took some time to get everything to look right (starting from primitive polygons is pretty darn annoying, let me tell you). I chose this project because it was pretty fun to do, all in all. It’s pretty presentable, too. I bet I could do some real cool 3D modelling with this, because it taught me how to make faces and such. If I could change anything, I’d spend a bit more time on it, for sure. The hammer itself looks kind of off.

*not real wood

Stalin’s Cook Walks to The Gulag

            In this animation, Boris, a skeleton and cook to the infamous dictator Glorious Leader Josef Stalin, is sent to a lokal gulag for making Josef’s stew wrong, as kapitalists tend to. This animation was fun to do just because of all the rigging I did on Boris’ model. I’d say I did pretty well on the character, but the background could use some work (if I could animate the very^veryveryvery cold wind I probably would have, but I didn’t know how to do that yet. We also learned how to scan in drawings, and how to make walk cycles, which I would’ve had to know for the story animation anyways. In some ways, especially how the character is drawn, it paved the way for the story animation. I chose this project because it was pretty goofy and fun to work on. Also, the word “duderooni” is pretty cool.