The Chase

In my animation there is a girl on a mars like planet being chased by a big black dog and to get away from the dog she jumps into the water.

When I first thought of this it was actually just the girl running then jumping into the water but then I needed to add a plot so I added the dog so there was a problem and a solution. Before I added the dog I had already plotted out the scenes in a storyboard. One of her running through my multiplane background, which I had already made in a previous project. Then a worms eye view shot of her jumping off the cliff and after that a side view of her falling into the water. Finally, I added the dog to the scenes. I drew my characters and scanned them in. To give them color and shadows I used Photoshop. After that I put them in After Effects and put the anchor point in place. Then I added the key frames and rotation key frames to make the running scene. Which took forever! Then I added the the backgrounds that I made in Photoshop as well as the other views of the characters and put in their key frames. I also put in a splash that I had to move around a bit. Finally I went back through it and made little adjustments to my animation like making the characters in the running scene bounce when they run.

While working on this animation I learned a few things. I learned how the tabs at the top of the view work and what they do. I also learned about meeting deadlines and how you should try to spread out your focus so you don't spend forever on one single thing.

If I had to do this again I would change the dog into a dark cloud or something for a few reasons. One it would be sooooo much easier to animate not to mention it would probably look a lot better and two it would be a bit easier to draw and color. If I could keep something the same it would be the background and girl because I like the way they look and how I made them.

I will use what I've learned during this animation by spreading out my focus and planning things all the way through to make sure I like what i'm going to get. But overall I think I did an ok job even though I would change a few things about it. This was pretty fun to do even if it was a bit frustrating at times.

Snail Shadow

In this tutorial I learned how to make a realistic shadow. First I chose an image, in my case a snail, then I selected it by using the magnetic marquee tool. After that I put it in the background of my choice, wood chips, by dragging and dropping. In order to make the shadow I followed the tutorial and made a layer copy. Then I used the transform tool and stretched it to take the form of a shadow. I made it a black to white translucent gradient to make it look like a shadow but since that didn't correspond with the background so I used the eyedropper tool to replace the white with a tannish color. Since the shadow didn't quite mach up with my snail I used the puppet warp to get it connected to my snail. Finally I used the burn tool to blend the background and snail together while adding a shadow as well.

Annika's Sky Line

          In this image there is a floating mountain in the sky with a large planet in the background. There is also a few pegasi in the background. I also added a light blue title in the corner of it.
  

   I started by using the also tool to select the mountain in a different picture with the lasso tool. Then I clicked the refine edge button to well refine the edge and get a cleaner edge. After that I cut out the bottom part of the mountain and moved it down to make the mountain longer. Then I put it in the photo of the sky and to make it look like it was floating I did the same thing I did to get the mountain on its own layer to the cloud that was behind the mountain. I also added a shadow with the burn tool on the cloud. Then I added a few masks to make it all blend together. Finally I added the pegasi and planet to the background using the same techniques I used to make the rest of it, also the title in the corner.
   I learned how to use the lasso tool to select a cretin thing or part of a thing and put that on a new layer. I also learned that you can ask your neighbor for help. If I did this again I would redo the shadow for the mountain and the clouds around the planet. This is because It doesn't look very good and the clouds around the planet are only on the edge.

         I will use the skills I learned while making this floating mountain like the refine edge tool or  lasso tool and put that into future work that I do. And overall making this was pretty easy and fun to do. I feel that I learned something very useful and I will probably use it a lot to get clean extractions.



           

I learned how to make it look like the mountain was behind the cloud in front by selecting the cloud with the lasso tool and hitting the refine edge tool. I also used this on the cloud in the back to the left so it was in front of the planet.

Creative Spheres

http://designstacks.net/magic-and-special-light-effects

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-create-an-ultra-glossy-flaming-ball-in-adobe-illustrator--vector-6024

Spheres symbolizes nature and have a global or earthy feel to them. They also can symbolize controlled chaos but at the same time they can represent unity, perfection, wholeness, and completion. Which is cool and unique that it can represent two opposites.

As for my work process I start by scetching an ideas that come to my mind then narrow down the options to a few spheres. After that I go in to the program, Ps or Ai, and start bringing my scetches to life. While doing this I start experimenting a little by chafing around the colors or messing with the shape. Then I choose the one i like the beast and focus one that one until I finish it. Finally I save it to my file.

While making these spheres I noticed a few differences between Ps and Ai.  Ps uses a bit map program, gradient overlap, and is a better use for photos. Ai uses fill and stroke, net layers, and to replaces gradients. In the Ps tutorial I learned how to use the gaussian blur to make it look like light is coming in. In the Ai tutorial I learned how to create a flame and use the blend tool. Both of these helped my understanding of each program a lot but I would like to learn more about creating a glow in Ps and softening a glow in Ai.

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-create-an-ultra-glossy-flaming-ball-in-adobe-illustrator--vector-6024