STA Blog

Changes…

By

Many things have changed since I finished Rockshelter. I got a new interactive assignment but also a whole new project! I’ve been spending half my time collaborating on a website for a French class with a different section of LAITS (more on that later).

On to the interactive: the challenge here is that it’s a long one. More than 30 slides! This is why we split the work between Bryan, Nick and I. Here are some pictures of my slides. I can’t show the video but I added some more animations than the original to make it fun for the kids.

You get the gist. The kids have to take the little armadillo on a journey to find the secrets of ancient poops! I think it’s pretty fun how you get to move him around the screen sometimes and it was fun to make.

 

U10_1 Scene Illustration

By

I’ve been busy working on scene U10_1!

Scene description: Polina and Oleg are sitting inside a homemade pillow and blanket fort. They’re reading a book by flashlight.

I started by roughing out a composition in Photoshop.

 

After some feedback, I decided to reuse the living room scene background.

I started placing in the puppets and began to roughly draw in the overall structure for the blanket fort! I wanted there to be multiple blankets and to make it clear that it’s being held up by various objects that may be found in the living room area… such as tables and chairs. I also edited the living room scene to make it look like it was taking place at nighttime.

Started blocking in colors and repositioned Polina so I could add the flashlight she’s supposed to be holding. I also thought adding Christmas lights would add a fun, dreamy touch to the scene. I also added in a stack of books as a fun extra detail.

I finished adding in the extra lights and added a glow. I also gave the blankets different prints to make the scene more playful and colorful.

After some more feedback, I added more lighting and some shadows to create more contrast… I also changed the background so that the lamp would be lit as well. I also changed the time on the clock and aded some stars and the moon outside in the center window.

I finally added some finishing touches and made some minor adjustments to the lighting… I tried to make the lights more “glowy” and adjusted the shadows so that they would make more sense with the light sources… I also added some lighting to the trees outside as an extra detail, which I feel really pulls it all together!

 

This was a really fun scene to illustrate! I really wanted to capture a playful, dream-like feel… Almost a little nostalgic? I hope I was able to convey that!

Clio Feature Update

By

Coming back and watching Clio become adopted by so many people across UT is a surreal feeling. I’m glad to be back on the team that created it, where I’m working on new features that will make the software even easier to use, as well as feature upgrades/bug fixes for the version in production.

Progress on RUS407 Animations and the Finalization of the Oleg Family Tree!

By

 

Hello world! First and foremost, I now have  a completed Oleg Family Tree! I have posted that file here along with some of the earlier drafts to show some of the process. And I am getting close to wrapping up all of the basic symbols and animations for RUS407, I have included some of the progress I’ve made there as well. The dog walk cycle has been looped with three different colors so it can be used with three different dogs. There are also some set pieces and I added a range of eyebrow movements to give the characters more expression. I have learned so much from working on both of these projects, I’m looking forward to working on illustrating the Oleg scene that the Family Tree will appear in as well as finalizing some of these RUS 407 animations! Oh, and I also completed an STA blog picture! I have included that illustration at the end.

GIF
GIF
 
GIF

Quick update

By

Hey! Just a quick update:

I’ve been spending my last few weeks polishing my old work. I played around with the spinning clock animation a bit more to make it complete and then spent some time figuring out how to improve Rockshelter. Finally I finished a new animation: the Population Puzzlers. The challenge with this one was basically that you had A LOT of different little picture and object interactions with minimum animations. It was kind of long and boring to make but I finally finished a version that looks almost identical to the original. Stay tuned for updates on Rockshelter.

Animation and Illustration Progress

By

GIF
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted a progress report so I thought I’d share some stuff today! I’ve been chugging along on both the Family Tree for the Oleg Illustrations and the animations for RUS407 online lectures and have made a lot of progress! Included here are a number of animation symbols, sets, costumes and cycles that I’ve completed! The Family Tree is almost complete, I’ll wait until it is finished to upload it;)

A “Mother” outfit
A “Lecture Hall”
A Briefcase and Fedora for some office scenes.
Will be on the map of the world for some animations where a plane flies in between Russia and America.
Will also be on a map of the world for the animations where a plane flies between America and Russia, may have snow on it or leaves falling down depending on the season.
A “Child” Outfit

GIF
GIF