Conversation of the week: "Kevin, do you have anything I can do?" "Can you learn Maya in 15 minutes?"
So... I started to play around with Maya a little bit. I created a person and was experimenting with animation and how the camera moves. It's such a complex program that i'd really like to take a class on it to understand it all.
Pretty much these two days were slow as far as actually work goes. The final cut of Autodesk was up and I got to see that. It included my little animation that I did of Japan, as well as many of the maps that I worked on.
Today everyone was working feverishly to finish up their sections of Autodesk. The deadline was quickly approaching and things needed to be done very soon. Sean needed help rotoscoping some frame and showed me how to go about that. I had never really worked with masks much in photoshop, but it was really good stuff to learn and i'm glad I did, even though it got a bit tedious.
Sean let me use his tablet, which made things go SO much faster. I fell in love with that thing. I mean i have my own, but it's nowhere as good. I should start using one more at Logan.... After I was done rotoing a few of the frames he needed, Jessica arrived, and we watched the latest cut of the Autodesk project. It was so amazing to really see how much of my work was actually coming to life. It felt good to be part of such an involved process. Really makes it all worth it!!!
I'm staring to really love after effects. It has so much new potential and possibility. Today I started working on video clips of screens from computer programs that were being used(such as AutoCAD). These animations were to be composited into the 3D fly though. I just pretty much got to play around with it and make the interface look more attractive using filters and masks. It also had to integrate better to the colors of everything else in the video. After I finished that, I left early to take care of some other school business.
today was probably one of the slower days. No one really had much they need to do. I got a project from megan, who was creating silhouettes of different people and objects as part of this 3D fly through for the Autodesk project. It was kinda depressing that it wasn't more of an exciting day, especially since for everyone else it was a holiday and they were at home having fun. Oh well....
(I did all the colored silhouettes, plus the parking lot in the stadium shot)
Definition of the day: Frame fucking - analyzing a live action/3D animation sequence frame by frame to figure out how the 3D was composited in with the live footage.
Since it was a friday. I only spent half a day here again. Today was mostly devoted to doing research on spaceships and robots. It was meant to give the modelers ideas for the spaceship that would be used in the end of the Autodesk Video. It was cool looking though all the photos at the diverse range of ship models that had been created by people.
Came in to some fresh baked mint/fudge/brownies from Brian's fiance. Spent the morning mostly observing other people working on projects, then started learning new things on other programs. Eventually, Kristen started helping me look for something to do. She asked if I knew After Effects, which I said I knew very little, so she got a project from one of the animators, Shige, for me to do. I was to create the animation of these little circle bubbles popping up over eastern Asia that were to meant to represent exchanges. Shige gave me the map image and an animation template to work on and I went from there.
I really knew so little about after effects, but I watched closely as Shige created the template and then dove right in. I forced myself to learn very quickly and get and overall understanding of the program. The set up of the program is pretty intuitive, so it didn't take to long to figure it all out. I worked on the animations for a while, finessing each circle to make it look like it was really popping out rather than just a circle scaling up. After I created the basic bubble elements, I added them onto the map image, varying the size and timing to create an even flow.
I eventually showed it to Shige to see if I was going down the right path and he asked me to do a different transition out which I easily implemented. After I filled up the map with a few more circle animations, I started adding circles that trasfer from one place to another, because I feel like this is what she had in mind. When Shige saw it, he loved it so I just kept it in.
It felt really going learning After Effects. I had been wanting to learn it for a long time now. I would especially love to learn how to more stuff with lines that follow a path. Hopefully soon! After I was finished with the animation I put it in the drop box and called it a day.
This monday was another slow start. Nobody really knew what needed to be done and Beth, who usually gives me stuff to do wasn't in until past 11AM. I worked on some of my own stuff for a while. Finally, she came in as well as Alex and some other people. We found out that the template we had used to create assets for the globes that would be mapped in 3d was not fitting correctly. That was bad news because it seemed like we were going to have to redo a lot of what we had already created. Luckly, Alex saved us and figured out a way to make it work so that we would only have to redo a couple maps.
I spent some time talking to Alex about his trip to New York. He had just gotten back the night before sounded like he was still a bit jet lagged. He told me that there were a lot of Japanese designs at the competition, but it was hard to judge them because no one really understood what they said, but they were pretty. It sounded like a lot of the entries, especially the commercial work, were not to amazing and that it became painful going through so many entries. Sounded like he had a good time though.
Later, I observed as he was working with one of the 3D artists on mapping out maps to the globes that would be used in the video. I was also watching other 3D artists creating some amazing fly threws for a different part of the Autodesk project. I spent the rest of the day fixing some of the other maps and it was lucky we didn't have to redo as much as we had originally thought.
Friday I came in a few hours to help finish up for the Autodesk boards since the deadline was that night. There were two frame remaining to be completed and so I was set to work on one of them. The frame I worked on was a shot of the US with a graphical representation of political party demographics. I only had a few hours to work on it, but Jessica came in after me to help finish up. When ever I make a frame, I also must create the full world image that will be mapped onto the globe by the modelers/animators. So for every frame you pretty much create the mood in the frame image and then the actual resources as the full expanded space.
I'm starting to get a hang of the daily routine here at logan, which probably means its about time to break out of it and explore more of what logan has to offer. It will be easier though when Alex returns from New York next week because then I can talk to him.
The first thing I learned today, which I actually already kind of knew, was that sometimes you put a lot of hard work into a design or an idea and it just doesn't fly with one of the clients. One of the frames for the boards of the AUTODESK people was pretty much rejected. Luckly I hadn't really spent TOO much time, but still it's always a little depressing knowing you did something for nothing, especially when its an unpaid internship.
The first project of the day was working on another map, trying to get it stylized in illustrator to look like this image created in photoshop. It was tricky, because it didn't seem to want to match up very well no matter what I did. With the help of some of the other designers ideas, I managed to pull something off that got pretty darn close.
After that was done, I got to work on a frame that was a little more creative. It involved taking an areal view of a map and adding 3-D like buildings to t that were represnetiations for data(as in the buildings were bars of a bar graph). I learned all about the cool 3-D functions of illustrator and I felt like this frame was a lot more of my original idea as opposed to just copying someone elses frame. I finished up with this by the end of the day.
The beginning of today was pretty slow, I guess because it was a monday. Didn't really know exactly what I should start on since most of the people who had been giving me work hadn't arrived yet. I worked on finishing up a map that I had left over from Wednesday, though I wasn't sure if it had already been finshed by someone else.
Eventually Beth arrived and gave me storyboard work to start on. This was better than what I had been doing the week before. I wasn't quite sure the instructions exactly at first though. I don't know if this is because I don't understand what I'm told very well or if Beth doesn't explain what she wants. I try to ask questions, but sometimes I get a little hesitant because I'm not sure if I'm asking a dumb question.
I was working putting a flat map on a globe to make it look three dimentional. I wasn't sure how to go about this at first and so I was forced to learn a bunch of things in photoshop and illustrator really fast to make it happen. I must learn on my own quickly because everyone else is busy doing their own thing too.
I got some good feedback from Beth and as the day went a long, I was able to work faster and get more frames done. It will be interesting to see what ends up getting used at the end. Jessica and I were talking about how it is crazy how much time and effort is put in to the boards and presentation alone, without even knowing if the ideas will be used. Then eventually everything has to be totally recreated in the final production and post production stages.
Today started out slow and pretty much stayed that way for most of the day. I was assigned to an autodesk project where I needed to fix pathes that created the outlines of countries on a map of the world. I spent most of the day working on this and it was a very tedious process. Not exactly the work you look forward to as a designer. Most people didn't arrive until more towards the afternoon. I try hard to listen in to other conversations about project, but most of the time it's hard to pickup on what they're talking about. It seemed like one project that was being worked on really came down to the deadline and they barily finished on time.
I went out to lunch with some of the other designers/animators and found out that most of them were just doing freelance and weren't actually staff. I guess that's how it works in that particular field. It seems like you would get hired and fired pretty quick depending on how much work is needed to be done and the quality/quickness of product you are able to produce. I also found out that one of the girls (i think she's an animator) was a DMA grad student at UCLA for one year, but then dropped out to start work. The people I went out with didn't seem to be the most interesting and they talked about going out to gun ranges and playing video games a lot.
Later in the afternoon Alex arrived, but I continued work on the map project. I suppose I learned a little about pathes in photoshop, but nothing to amazing. It's interesting to hear the conversations about client feed back and how a lot of the time they just don't like the product at all. Alex had a conference call with a client at some point and I kind of wish I could listen in on those types of things. That's what I'm really interested in. The creative/client process. Hopefully as I am their longer more opportunities will arrise.
I really feel the need to learn Maya and After Effects so I can be put on some of the cooler projects. I don't feel like I can ask people to help because they are all so busy trying to make dealines. I really hope I am able to learn somethings, but I just don't know how to go about it yet.
Location: Thousand Oaks, California, United States
I'm a Design|Media Arts student at UCLA. I work at the TV station and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. I also take photos for the Daily Bruin and now I'm interning at Logan!
