Tiger Tank Model

Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. E

In animation, I modeled a German Tiger Tank, which was developed in 1941, and used in World War II. I worked tirelessly on it, and structurally and visually, it became a very accurate representation of the real monstrosity. When I was almost finished with the entire project, a node or piece of data became corrupted, keeping the file from opening. I tried everything I could think of and read possible solutions online about recovering a corrupted .mb file, but I could not bring it back. Here's what I accomplished before I lost everything:

Hull

I started by creating the basic body of the tank out of one shape. After I had sized and angled it correctly, I attached additional plates of armor onto the hull, and left space for the tracks. After adding further details like the frontal machine gun, the driver's viewport, and utility cables, I proceeded to the tracks.

Tracks

For the tracks, I noticed from blueprints of the tiger that there were 2 different types of wheels used, one like a car rim, the other a gear to propel the tracks. I modeled the two different wheels separately, lined them up,, and got ready to create the tracks to wrap around the wheels. To make the tracks, I created a pipe, extruded the faces on it to form it into tank tracks. Then, I generated a 2D circle, and positioned it around the pipe in the same configuration. Using the wire tool, I was able to attach the tracks to the circle, which made the tracks act in the same way real ones would. I positioned them under the tank, where I had left space for them, then I decided to move on to the turret and gun.

Turret and Gun

For the main turret piece, I started with a cylinder, cut it in half, and extruded the flat face created from the cut. In order to develop gun mantle that was elevated apart from the main turret, I had to do a series of extrusions, then use the wedge tool to make bends in the mantle so it would follow the shape of the turret. I lined up multiple pipes and beveled all of the edges, and created a specific piece on the end of the barrel with parts cut out of it to replicate the muzzle. I also placed the commander's hatch and the main crew hatch on the top of the turret, which provides the crew access to the tank. There are containers attached to the back of the turret for the crew to store items in, which I just extruded off from the main turret.

Rear Details

On the back of the tank I added exhaust pipes hanging off the back of the vehicle and a shelf attached to the hull, holding a hammer, which was a common utility item used on the tank. By extruding a shape along a CV curve, I was able to make a zig-zag shape and subtracted duplicates of it from the main hull, making vent slits.

References:

https://youtu.be/u5jQqsiUlHQ

https://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints-depot/tanks/ww2-tanks-germany-2/sdkfz181-pakpfwvi-tiger-i.png

Partly Cloudy Disney Animation

The disney animation, Partly Cloudy, is about a cloud that creates babies for a stork to take down to earth. Instead of creating puppies or kittens, the cloud makes dangerous babies, like alligators and sharks, and the stork keeps getting injured by these animals. The stork always has feathers falling off and a tired/scared expression because of what the cloud makes. The cloud is very fluid in his motions and creates lightning and rain when he expresses different emotions. The animators kept a similar style throughout the whole animation, and the characters had believable personalities, even though they were extremely different.

Link to the Original Video

Glow Surface Tutorial

In Maya, you create a lot of things. Sometimes, an object you're working on may need to glow a little bit, but how do you do that?

1. Create a shape in maya.

2. Add a texture to it.
ex: lambert

3. Apply the desired color.

ORIGINAL SHAPE IN RENDER VIEW

4. In Attribute editor, go to special effects and change the "Glow Intensity" option.

SHAPE IN RENDER VIEW W/ GLOW

Glow Intensity will affect various shapes differently.

Professional Article

The Professional PowerPoint article talks about how to improve Powerpoint presentations by adding effects and transitions, and why it is significant. 

The animations make the presentation more interesting and help the viewer stay engaged in your powerpoint. There are many examples on the page for the reader to reference that support the original assertion that more interesting visuals would make your presentation more interesting and successful. The examples are simple, but the reader is able to modify it to meet their needs/preference. The author emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of diagrams and mentions different ways it could be completed.

The article as a whole looks interesting, helpful, and concise. It also provides many templates and designs that can be purchased by people, along with specialized tutorials for visitors to the site.


http://www.presentation-process.com/powerpoint-custom-animation.html#.VzyektNVhHy

e-Communication Reflection

During my sophomore year in Animation, I learned a lot of new skills that I can continue to use later in high school and after I graduate and move on.  I became more familiar with programs like Maya and After Effects, and made new friends that I completed projects with. I learned to work hard and meet deadlines for the most part, and when I was gone I forced myself to get caught up. My technical improvements included extruding shapes in Maya, adding a glow effect, or animating a 3D object, none of which I knew how to do before the class.

In order to learn and practice these skills, I listened at the beginning of class, referred to Google Classroom documents, and asked friends or looked for tutorials online. For my final project, I worked with some awesome, hard-working guys.  We all contributed to the project, and the final project turned out even better than we thought because of all the time and effort we put forth. My group members pushed me to do my part and learn how to create a realistic hologram.

The ability to cooperate and create high-quality products is vital to being an animator, because those things are used on a daily basis in the workplace. The things I’ve learned in my animation class are things that I will take out into the animation industry, so it makes sense to perfect them now instead of in the future.

 As a fairly inexperienced animator, I still make simple mistakes in my projects, like an object going through the floor, or adding an object into a scene without working on color correction. I still turn things in on time and correctly add textures, mattes, and special effects.

I would change the communication between teacher and student, because sometimes the students are not aware of certain assignments or do not have adequate instructions on the location of files or due dates. This could be corrected very easily but many times is not. Then, students will have NHIs or assignments that “need improvement” and the teacher will not always bring it to their attention.

Animation has been very beneficial and has taught me many things that I may use later if I decide to pursue a career as an animator. There are just a few things about the process and communication within e-Communication that are tedious and badly set up.

Toy in Maya

Toy in Maya

For our toy project, I decided to create a doughnut themed car, because, the idea of doughnuts just came to me that day...yeah...only that day. I started with simple shapes to build the body, and a few small additions to make the sensor and battery port. The idea was to make a toy that was small, quick, and fun! It would be remote controlled and easy for young kids to learn how to use it.

Lighting

The lighting for the most part was adequate to show the toy and the track that it's on. The spotlight needs to be repositioned so it doesn't create an uneven shadow on the ground.

Photo Composition Site

Photo Composition

Using various techniques and knowledge to improve the quality of your photos.

My photo composition website illustrated the major and minors details that you should look for or try to emulate in a picture. It provides many examples showing each of these photo aspects in effect. For example,  clipping and framing in a photo are important parts of a picture, and there is at least on photo for each example.

Responsive Site Example

Trent Walton is a designer and web builder that created an example responsive website.

His site contains 3 different points at which the site changes in order to fit a computer, tablet, or phone screen. His design is very subtle, with just a few changes in image size or text location, but his small tweaks have a large effect.

Computer

The original website, intended for computers spreads across the whole screen, and the visuals are easy to see. The text is centered, but there is padding along the edges of the site, which creates a lot of extra space.

Tablet

The first transition does not change much about the original. In fact, the only differences are the reduced picture sizes and less free space surrounding the different items on the page.

Phone

The final transition is used for phones, where the text is gathered together with minimal space used, and the pictures are the most prominent feature on the whole web page. 

Web Mockup

Website Mockup

I created an alternate website homepage for Olathe Northwest using the design of creative capital's website. I incorporated vector shapes along with original Adobe Illustrator objects in order to establish organized navigation for users. I took certain parts of the current ONW website and added them to my own site, and allocated some space on the homepage to display news and multiple tabs on top to allow grouped topics. I tried to make everything line up with other parts of the page to make it look nicer, and have a sidebar on the right for information to be posted. Even though I took some aspects of the current website, I changed a few little things to alter the feel of the website. All of my graphics maintain the constant ONW color scheme presented.

3 Projects

3 Projects

Beatboxing Tutorial Website

Simple beatboxing tutorials can be found on the official Beatboxing Techniques website, created to teach the history and tips for beatboxing. The first page is dedicated to explaining the origin of replacing percussion with human sounds. Free photos were added to every page to highlight where/how beatboxers perform. A simple grey color scale mimics the colors of microphones and speakers used by beatboxers.

This project combined all of the techniques used in Web Design over first semester in one website by using a basic layout, then adding information to complete the final project. Managing time was very important because the total allowed time to work on the project was about one week.  For my website, I had to stay after school for over an hour to finish my project because I was absent for two days.

The website has multiple pages to teach about basic and more advanced techniques of beatboxing. The reader can pick apart individual sounds and learn at their own pace, and there are a few audio examples to show them how other beatboxers sound.

I hope to build off of what I've learned so far so I can increase the quality of my sites.