Photoshop
I chose the 2D digital pathway because I was really interested in learning all the different softwares that was mention. The only software I had used prior was Photoshop but only a few times to doodle something random, never to animate or do something serious. So in the two weeks that we learned photoshop I learned a lot about the software that I didn’t know about before.
The first task was to look at the paintings of a particular abstract artist, take a shape from one of his works and animate it showing an extreme emotion. The emotion I chose to show was fear, I had the shape jump in panic and cower away in the corner. I animated this with straight ahead because I didn’t know how to do pose to pose using photoshop yet. For the grumpy chair animation, we were shown how to animate with pose to pose–which was to animate each key on a different video layer. It was easier for me to work that way because I could drag the frame to make it however long I wanted instead of having to manually extend it frame by frame. For the final task I animated the shoulders with pose to pose and the face with straight ahead. At that point I got more comfortable with using photoshop’s animate feature so I was able to chose the best and fastest way to get the task done.
Moving forward, I hope to never work on a big protect using photoshop to animate. It’s a drawing software, not an animation software so it’s not comfortable to use at all. Even using it for these small task was a bit of a headache I can’t imagine how stressed I would feel using it to animate a bigger project.
Animate cc
For the next two weeks after learning photoshop we moved on to learning Animate CC. We started off with creating random strokes on the page then with a small brush turned it into a figure. The idea was inspired by Raimund Krumme.
I always struggle with tasks like these, especially when there’s a time limit because I don’t do well under pressure and sometimes I really can’t think of anything to do.
Next we worked on animating the silhouettes. The first one I did was the guy dropping his ice cream and I finished mine fairly quickly so I did another one just for fun. Animating with animate CC was far easier and more bearable that with photoshop. There’s still quite a few functions that I’m not used to but I wouldn’t mind using it for future projects.
Out of all the task we did so far, this one was my favourite. I starting with doing a bird animation loop in place, and a cloud boil loop. And just from those two simple animations I was able to build this scene that showed depth and movement. It was really fun to do and once you know you’re way around the software it’s pretty simple. If I have time, I want to come in and just play around more with the software and try out functions that we hadn’t tried out in class.
This task was for sure my least favourite. I’m not entirely sure why but I just hated it (T-T). Perhaps, I just found animating to the music timing difficult so it stressed me out a lot. This animation has music to it, but I couldn’t figure out how to add it. I was hoping to learn how to use the puppet tool for this task. But I think because we were running out of time it would’ve been too much to go over. The puppet feature, was one of the things I really wanna learn and use in the future.
Blender
The main reason I choose the 2D digital pathway was because the software I wanted to learn the most was the “2D” side of blender. I saw those really cool digital art that was 3D at the same time where the artist could zoom into the picture and move around like it was a 3D space. I was really interested in learning in it, so when I saw we would have a chance to learn that in the 2D class I couldn’t pass up the chance.
I hope we get more than just 2 weeks to cover Blender, I couldn’t really get what was happening in the first class and I struggled to keep up and grasp the functions. So I would really like more than 1 more class after the Christmas break, especially considering how much more complex Blender is compared to Photoshop and Animate CC. I also plan/hope to come in when I find time and practice on my own. I want to create a simple art piece and move around it using the 3D camera function. And hopefully become an expert with the software and make a film using Blender.
After effects
We spent 3 classes on after effect, I missed the first class because I had to travel. However, since I’ve had previous experience (not a lot) with After Effect I was able to catch up in the next two classes. I really like After Effects and I want to become a pro or semi-pro. In general, I quite like editing. This car test we did is kinda hectic in my opinion because I was just trying out everything and adding as much as I could.
character animate
The last class we had was on character animate, personally, I would’ve liked to have more classes on this software and learn more in-depth stuff about it. It seems really cool and I had no idea this software even existed until we had the class. It was really complicated so I struggle to understand it. So, I supposed it’s down to watching youtube videos and self learning lol.