Self Evaluation

Overall i think i did a decent job. I have had a lot of obstacles to to go over this semester and i don't think i could have done much better than i have. I had a great idea and story about an ant, but due to the difficulty i was not able to complete it. Then i continued to move on and started to make a neighborhood, but yet i was still not advanced enough to complete it. I realized i was trying to go to big for this project. I tried twice to do something that would blow peoples minds, sadly i couldn't finish them. I am glad i tried though. I learned some new things and i also learned exactly how good i am at animation. I really made me take a step back and look at myself. I realized that animation was not for me. I saw that even though i loved the final product, getting there was not as fun for me as it was for others. I made me see what i really want to continue to do; video editing and web design. But at the same time i am grateful that i tried this. I tried to make animations that were out of reach. I strived to do great things. After all is said and done i am still happy with my final product and watching it makes me feel good and laugh.

Story board

Here is a crappy picture of my storyboard.

The animation

Next i made the animation. I did this using key frames. I was having some trouble rigging my previous ant so i figured basic shape with key frame movement i would be able to do. I also added walls around the table to give the illusion that it was in the house. In actuality the house is much smaller than the table. I did this on accident and then came up with that tricky solution to trick the viewer into thinking i put it in the house. After that i added the music in with final cut.

The house

How i made the house was i first made a polygon box. Then i grabbed a couple vertices and pulled them upward so i would have place to put the roof. Then i created the roof from two different boxes i made. For the door i used the extrude tool and then pulled out a door shape from the faces. Then i took that same shape and pushed it back in to make the trim. I did the same thing for the windows as well. For the chimney i just made two different shaped boxes and then extruded the one on top to make a little hole. I than added a doorknob out of a sphere and cylinder. I shaded everything in with their respective color and tada i have a house. I put the house in a big black sphere to make it dark around it. I also added in a cool light inside the house.

Meatball

How i did this was actually rather simple. I first made a nurb sphere. Then i gave it a color close to a red, brown color. Then i added a bump map to it and messed with the different randomness and thresholds untill i found the type i was looking for. I didtnt want something that looked real. If i made it too real looking than i would not make it look good when it bounced. I kind of made this as a joking around parody of the bad food that people always eat.

What i had already

So i just want to make clear what i had already. I already had the table, table cloth, fork, knife, plate, and glass. The things i will talk about later are the house, meatballs, camera and use of lighting.

Proposal for final

My first proposal for my final was going to be an ant that crawled up my table that i made for my midterm. Then the ant would grab the steak from off the plate and throw it on the floor. He would grab it and walk away. That was my first try at my final. After i ran into some issues with rigging the ant i decided to part ways with the idea. So i went on to my next idea. I then decided to try and make a neighborhood. I thought it wouldnt be that hard. Wow was i wrong. I made a few housed with windows and chimneys. Then i made a street. I tried to make grass, but every time i tried sadly i failed. I couldnt find any grass that was good enough for me. So after a week of work i decided at the last minute to drop it and move on. So just a few days before the final i got an idea and rolled with it. I decided to make meatball for my table. I was able to use the house in the beginning scene, so it didnt go to waste. I made the meatball bounce as if it were made of rubber. I even gave it a rubber look to it! after the chaos the meatball was stabbed by the fork and it ends. I also added in a nice italian song to go along with it. I edited it all with final cut and i was finished.