Character Animation

Throughout my entire life, I have had a passion for movies. I love how they are made, the many different themes and types of drama of different movies, and the way it has an impact on my life and everybody's lives.

For my character that I came up with was to bring a film projector to life because of how much I enjoy movies.

I really enjoyed being able to create my own character and then make it come to life on the computer. I liked learning the different tools throughout this process.

First, I drew my character on paper and outlined it with a dark marker/Sharpie and then "printed"/uploaded my drawing onto the computer into Adobe Photoshop.

Then, I made duplicates of the head, arm, and the legs and them put the all together into one piece/character. It took me a while to fill in color into my character because of the little detail like the eyes and camera.

Next, when I finally got my character set up I dowloaded my character into Adobe After Effects and went from there to make the projector move and walk.

Once I finally got my character to move, I then Rendered it and uploaded it to Youtube.

My strength during this animation was the way I made the four legs move and made them not slide too much.

My weakness would be still trying to understand the program and figuring it out on my own, so I don't have to keep asking for a lot of help.

Overall, I thought it was fun being able to make just a simple little character/drawing and make it come to life.

Wormy

The scope of my animation of my worm, Wormy, was to get the feeling of understanding how to make a certain object/creature move the right way.

The process of making Wormy come to life was a little tricky for me. I had to make him first on Adobe Photoshop and add the different features/accessories on him. Then, I transferred Wormy into Adobe After Effects and add Puppet Pin Points with the Puppet Pin Tool. I had to start over two times because I didn't save Wormy right and I didn't save the Background right, so it messed up my After Effects. When I finally got the layers saved to the right form, I then went ahead and started to move and time the different positions of Wormy. Finally, I got him to move across the screen and have a shadow following him when he moves.

I learned how to add the different Pin Points (joints) onto a creature/object to make it move a certain way, how to render it out, how to add a certain shadow on/around Wormy, and how to have Wormy inside the grass rather than on top of the grass.

I would have liked to add clouds because it would have made the movie a little more realistic, but I ended up not having very much time.

I would keep my grass color the same because it looks more fresh and new around Wormy.

I will try my best next time to figure out the different tools on my own because I have been asking for a lot of help, I am still trying to get use to using a Mac computer and the many different settings that will effect my animation.

Overall, I thought it was fun to bring a simple little sketch to life.