About my redemption...Next year, I am most looking forward to redeeming myself in many ways. First of all, I am excited to inform you that I will try so hard to not procrastinate, as I have not done all my assignments at the last minute. Second of all, I hope to make sure that I really read EVERY instruction ver batim, so that way I will NOT forget it in any way possible. I am also excited to redeem myself by not calling upon you when something goes wrong; I will try and fix it, and I will only contact you if i can not proceed in any way. But with that out of the way, let us get into the content for next year I am most excited about. So what else am I looking forward to?Next year, I am very excited to move into board and video game development, what this will entail I do not know, but I am most looking forward to working in a group with ambitious people who strive to make sure the product put out is as good as possible. This will be evident through my hard work and newfound ability to comfortably meet deadlines and crunch time. In addition, I am also looking forward to drawing up concepts for a potential game, and perhaps in my spare time I may be brainstorming ideas for what to do about the assignment. But I am looking forward to something much closer. I truly believe that my summer assignment this year is not worthy of a B or a C but of an A. If it is not, please let me know and tell me what I can do better, to start the year off on the right note To sum it up
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DrawingAfter Winter/Holiday/Christmas break, we took a small break from drawing sketches and focused on modeling once more. However in February we started back up again with our power monster sketch, in which we had to draw a monster that had a head, body, two arms, and an optional tail. In order to do this assignment, I had to use online resources to base my drawing off of, and then expand upon that. Another example of a drawing assignment during this time was the Dragon assignment due after the shutdown began. In this assignment, I had to draw a dragon, either a villainous European dragon of medieval times or a wise, omnipotent Asian dragon. I chose a European dragon and used an online sketch guide to help sketch out a very solid looking dragon. In all, the drawing assignments expanded from drawing simple hands and other trivial things to more complex things like monsters and dragons. ModelingAfter I got back from the break, I was relieved to have finally gotten past the flag and Sleepy Sack of Potatoes assignment. I was then able to begin the Simulations project, in which I had to use previous assignments including the neighborhood, fountain and the wall. This assignment was tough, but I liked how it turned out so much that I will link it in this post. After I completed the ten second animation, I moved on to UVW mapping, which I also struggled on. I especially struggled on UVW texturing the robot, an assignment which I found tedious and very difficult. Eventually, I was able to UVW unwrap the robot sucessfully by using separate parts to unwrap it. After this, we moved into lighting which included creating a Lit scene, an assignment in which I had to use various lighting techniques to light up a lamp, which was completed at home after I had a tough time with it. To sum it up...
ReferencesDrawingIn first semester, I was introduced to a new type of assignment, a drawing assignment. At first I was confused, but only just now do I realize that you actually teased this to us in my freshman year when Mr. Gearhart came in and showed us how to do quick 5 minute sketches. At first, I thought that I did extremely poorly on the sketching assignments, as I had to use these tutorial books which I did not think were effective, but I did them anyways. Still, my drawings, especially the hand sketch, turned out poorly, as I ended up just tracing my hand, which was real lazy and in retrospect I would have done better. But then when I got the go ahead to proceed with out the books, I was thrilled, and so I just started tackling them head on or watching a video. ModelingSo in modeling we began with a refresh of the skills we learned in freshman year, such as the splines, which I struggled with back then, I realized I had mastered them now, thus starting the year on a good note. Then we began to move into our first new objective, compound objects. I then got a love for the terrain compound object, which I used in great success for the Wild West scene. After compound objects, we moved into a less memorable, but equally important parametric modeling unit. I was able to use prior knowledge of chamfers, tapers, etc. to be able to complete the assignments and the big neighborhood project, which I love how it turned out. Later, we moved into simulations, in my opinion the toughest unit of the year, in which I struggled to complete the "Sleepy Sac of Nightmares" as I called it, before I finally completed it and MassFx to round out the year. To sum it up...
Next week, I will begin to take DDA II, a class that will focus only on 3D modeling. This class has me cautiously excited. But in order to talk about this year, first we have to discuss last year. Last year, I was pumped heading into this class, I thought you were just bluffing about it being very tough, but it really was tough. In Quarter One, I got an 83 in this class, my lowest grade on a report card of all time at that point. So I was really bummed. Then in Quarter Two, I started out strong, getting all the way to a 96 at one point, but then I got complacent and I fell to an 89. After that quarter, I had a good Quarter Three, earning a 92. I did not get complacent and I went to tutoring every Wednesday I could go. In Quarter Four, I finished strong and got a 96, bringing me to exemption from the final test. Next YearWhat I am most excited for next year is enhancing my 3D modeling skills. I hope that we learn about meshes and skinning, as that is what I REALLY want to learn. Also, I hope to just generally show off what I can do, now that I understand how this class works. Another thing that has me pumped is learning how to animate characters that we may create. Since I am also a Medieval II modder, learning how to make meshes and skinning could really help there in addition to this class, if I can find time to do that with my brutal schedule this year, that is. Overall, I am really excited for this year in Game Art and Design. That and your humor, of course. Piece of Artwork from SummerTo sum it up...
Skills LearnedIn unit 4 we were introduced to video editing. This unit presented the ability to compile videos and create a montage by using Premiere Pro, like doing fades, as in the routine activity. Also, it can be used to edit music. In unit 5a, we began 3D Modeling via 3DS Max. First, I learned how to use standard primitives and manipulate their individual polys, which gave me the skills necessary to create intricate objects with primitives. Later, we applied texture maps to our models to enhance our model using UV mapping, which took long to comprehend. My mastery of this came in making the flower and rocks, which would still be a challenge today. In unit 5b, we learned to animate 3D models using interpolations. The most important skills here were the keyframes and the timing of individual objects. I mastered this in the spaceship project, where I put all my skills in Unit 5 to good use. Processes learnedIn unit 4 we continued the same post production as we had done in 2D animation. However in unit 5, we had to do rendering, which was more difficult. We had to get the right angle by rotating our model so the image that we wanted in the 2D rendering were there. In part a, it was simple, as evident by the rendering of the tank, where I preserved my tank's image in a 2D rendering! Later, in part b, we had to render animations. I had to get the right angle, but I also had to render it as an animation, which took up to five minutes to generate the necessary frames. And then we converted them into mp4s and put them on youtube. I proved my mastery of these on the unit project where I rendered my animation quite sucessfully. To sum it up...
Skills learned this yearI learned many new skills during the course of the school year. Since I explored so many skills, I will have this post focus on the first three units, and and my next post which will be up in a few weeks will contain the last two units. First, we explored Photoshop and how it worked and I was able to complete certain tasks I would have founded nigh impossible before the school year began. These include moving pictures and parts of them and making adjustments such as lighting and noise. Then we moved into Illustrator, in which we learned how to manipulate lines. This includes the dreaded pen tool (of which I still oddly find annoying!). I would say that is by far the most useful skill I learned, but if there was a second, it would be the mesh tool that we used on the hamburger assignment. In the third unit, we did an 2D animation unit in which we learned to use Animate to create simple 2D animations using tweening. We also used After Effects for keyframing our first animation, which was so painstaking and so complex. Processes learnedIn the entirety of the course, we used a three step formula; pre-production, production and post production. Usually pre production did not matter, with the exception of unit 3, where we had to storyboard out our animations which were graded. In the first two units, we learned to export our work, we must click save as and save it as a .jpeg. Things got more complex when Unit 3 rolled around and we had to save our work in local format and then import it into Media Encoder, when we converted it into a .mp4. After that, we had to upload that .mp4 to YouTube and then share it with you. Overall, we learned a lot of new processes in the year. To sum it up...
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AuthorHello my name is Owen Howard. I am a junior currently enrolled at Durham School of the Arts and this blog will document my experiences in this class. Categories
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