Project Curvy pt. 3: References

If you go to my school and you've been snooping around the blogs of your classmates, you might be wondering why I have so little to show after six weeks. I knew what I wanted to do with Curvy (hence the storyboard), but I took a very long time in figuring out how I was going to do it. Thus, I spent a while gathering anatomy references while working on my storyboard.



First I looked for pictures of long-necked animals - everything from deer and giraffes to Apatosaurs. I wanted to get a good idea of how Curvy's neck would look if he was an actual creature (God forbid). I would've animated him based on that mental image when he wasn't dragging his head along the floor. Plausible Impossible and all that.

Then I found and liked some guides to animating equines. I knew from experience how hard it is to draw horse legs in a still image, let alone four dozen frames. Thus, I figured I should expose myself to lots of videos of walking horses long before I would get to animating. The top video is my personal favorite.

Project Curvy, pt. 2: Storyboard

Here's some more concept art for, uh, "Curvy." Yeah, I think I'll just stick to that name. I may not have gotten to animating, but I hope you can get an idea of what I was aiming for.

The animation was pretty much going to be an exercise in making shapes move fluidly, the starring shape being Curvy's curvy neck. I think it would've run for at least thirty seconds.

Project Curvy, pt.1: Concept Art

So I've been working on a hand-drawn thing for Animation class. I was supposed to post about it here a while ago, but I've felt a bit unmotivated so far this year. Here I am, thus, posting my concept art a week before the whole thing is due.

As this was going to be my first hand-drawn animation longer than 10 seconds, I didn't want to make whatever I'd bring to life too hard to draw. Since I still wanted to challenge myself a little, though, I thought I'd try making up something with four legs. Somehow I went from Waddles from Gravity Falls to a sort of long-necked, four-eared equine. If you asked me how I came up with that, I honestly wouldn't have an answer.

His limbs should be less like tentacles in the final animation.

Video Copilot: The Hand to Hold When Using AfterEffects

A couple of weeks ago, I was tasked with choosing a tutorial on Video Copilot (.net) to follow through in Adobe After Effects. Timidly, I chose this simple video - a guide to creating a spinning Earth in outer space. 

What I had when I was finished was a little bit different from what the video shows. Sadly, this site is keeping me from uploading the 10-second file. (Maybe I set the quality too high?) All I have to upload are a bunch of screenshots I was told to take while I worked. 

I took this one early on, when I had just taken a flat map of the Earth and bent it into a sphere. The tutorial pointed me to the "CC Sphere" effect (look to the right, under the "Effects and Presets" area). It pretty much takes any picture and rounds it into a 3-dimensional sphere for you. I was scared that "making the Earth" would be a longer, more challenging process, but all I really had to do was click a button. To say I was pretty grateful is an understatement.

Here, I was getting started shedding light on the planet. The tutorial wanted me to make a bright green glow on its right outline. I was confused about it at first, but it helped with creating a realistic blue atmosphere over the sphere a while later.

Observe. I can mostly thank the tutorial that it came out this well, but I'm kind of proud of it.

The video called for a scrolling "space fog" texture underneath the Earth. It ended up purple in the finished version, but this is what the texture looked like on its own. The classic "Fractal Noise" effect worked just right after a few edits.

It's not a realistic Earth unless it has clouds, right? This picture looks really weird, I know. It actually looked like a bunch of clouds after I lay it on top of the Earth's texture (which took forever for some reason). I set a few keyframes so it would spin just a little faster than the continents below it.

This is the closest you might get to seeing the finished animation. I took this shot before waiting about 10 minutes for it to render. When I saw the result, I was honestly stunned that I had made anything so good-looking.

Saul Bass, Master of Minimalist Movie paMphlets

     Saul Bass is one of the names to know among budding graphic designers. He was responsible for many memorable opening and credits sequences across four decades of movies.
     As a new graphic design student, I was recently introduced to his portfolio of movie posters. Most all of them featured only five colors at most (two of them almost always being black and white) and consisted of only barely edited shapes. Even so, they got their messages across as well as any other sort of poster. Observe:

   (Now, I can't really say this one was made by Saul Bass himself--his style is often imitated due to its popularity--but it's a nice sample of what he was known for.)

(Note: I'm not sure if I can count this post as finished. I'll leave this notice here, so I can remember to edit it later.)

Who Names a Game "Kern"?

So I played a "kerning" game earlier. Yeah, I didn't know what the word meant at first, either. Wikipedia tells that it's a typography term, referring to "the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result." Fittingly, the game involved adjusting misplaced letters in word after word while being scored for accuracy. I'm surprised and satisfied with the score I got.

eMagine 2014 - A Post-Event Recap by Someone Who Wasn't There

Keeping a conflict-free schedule helps a lot when you're trying to get good grades. Sometimes, though, it seems as if the school itself wants to make that difficult. Being in E-Communications, I was expected to attend an important event last Saturday. My Forensics grade needed a boost that week, so I had signed up to debate at a tournament on Friday. (When you tell the teacher you want to go to a tournament, you can not take back that signature unless it's an emergency. I learned that the hard way.)

That tournament lasted until 8:30 pm. I woke up a few hours late the next morning, too groggy to do my homework until the next day. In the fatigue I must have forgotten my e-Comm obligation. Thanks to my obligations clashing yet again, the following recap will have to be restricted to a third-person perspective.

The eMagine Media Festival was held at Olathe Northwest to celebrate the many skilled students in the Kansas City area. By "skilled," I mean creatively skilled, as a good amount of the contestants are involved in the E-Communications program. They've made graphics, animations, and short films that they're proud enough of to let be judged by professionals and displayed to perhaps a thousand other students. The best of the best earned their creators medals, certificates, and a clear, cubic statue called the Pixel Award. To make a long story short, it's sort of like the Oscars.

One of the winning short films was shown to my Animation class. I wasn't sure about its plotline at first (it involved a man with a gun, and I hate the sight of those things), but the sudden twist at the end left me speechless in an enjoyable way. I believe its creator deserved whatever he won for it.

Artists at the Nerman, pt. II

Art and religion are actually kind of similar. Hey, don't get offended just yet - think about it. They're hard to comprehend sometimes. In the wrong hands, things get messy and people get mad. And when the really provocative questions are asked, everyone gets uncomfortable. See? They're similar. At least, in the mind of a sir Dylan Mortimer.

We all want something that is a little more edgy, sparks some debate, challenges us, makes us think in a different way than we had. (sic) That’s the point, to me, of both art and religion.

                                       ~Dylan, "Kansas City Artist Dylan Mortimer Wants You To Activate His Halos, Or Not" by Laura Spencer of 89.3 FM

Seeing more in common with the two than some, the artist has blended the two in creative ways since attending Kansas City's Art Institute. He's edited many a street sign with Photoshop to feature Christian allegories, and has established nine "Prayer Booths" (see below) in Kansas City, New York City, and the space in between. His work has earned him some hateful feedback, as one might expect, but he's alright with that.

I know that sometimes, in some people’s opinion, it’s been too far, too preachy, or too this or too that. But I have no problem with making those kinds of mistakes in public, and trying to navigate and learn from it, and see what comes of it.

                                      ~Dylan, same article

Artists at the Nerman, pt. I

A couple of remarkable artists had their work displayed lately at the local Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Chances are, you've seen that odd statue sitting in the front. In case you somehow didn't notice it:

The articles I've seen written about "Companion" here were quick to note how its attire resembles that of a certain mouse. Brian Donnelly - or as more people may know him, "KAWS" - originally created this...thing for display in Hong Kong. According to him, its design came to him when he saw where it would sit.

Originally it was in Hong Kong for Harbour City. When I was invited to do the piece, I went and saw the site. And immediately I was like, “God if I had to sit out here, I would just be mortified if this many people walked past me.” And that’s how that pose came.

                       ~KAWS, in an interview with The New York Times Style Magazine

The man has a very diverse portfolio to his name. He started off as a graffiti artist in Jersey City; from there, he went on to design things from vinyl toys to a limited edition beer bottle, work on a few Disney cartoons, and parody iconic characters like The Simpsons through sculptures and acrylic paint. Yeah.

The Plausible Impossible

Now that I've gotten past not being able to access my other blog, I can begin this Plausible Impossible thing.

Pictured above are Donald Duck and his cousin Gus Goose shaking hands. Gus, being the bigger bird, inadvertedly lifts Donald off the ground with his strength. Plausible is that if one shakes the hand of another with enough force, they might end up shaking the rest of their body as well. This is likely impossible, as no one is strong enough to lift someone by the arm in that way.

Here, Gus prepares to create a tall stack of sandwiches...by shuffling the bread and bologna like playing cards. It's plausible, as one can imagine the bread stack and the bologna stack overlapping. Yet it's impossible, as the bologna likely won't slip in-between the bread as easily as playing cards would.

Right after, the goose pulls out a pair of needles and knits a sock out of spaghetti. (He proceeds to slurp it down by that one loose end.) Noodles are similar in shape with string or yarn, so knitting something out of them is plausible. Unlike string, though, they are slippery and can be ripped into smaller pieces by accident, making this feat impossible.

In another show of strength, Gus squeezes a pair of bananas until they pop out of their peels and into his beak. One might consider this achievable with enough force. Chances are it isn't, even with said force. Bananas are not as elastic and "popable" as balloons,  as suggested here.

As one last example, here's Gus sucking up peas through a straw. The peas roll towards him in a straight line all the way from the other end of the table. Yeah. Perhaps with enough suction, it could be done. Only a machine could achieve that kind of force, though. Even then, it could not suck up the peas in a way that makes them form a conga line.

That's it, I think. I'm glad I got this done before the hour ended.