Final Animation Updates!

The walk cycle rig is complete! I may go over and make more edits to it as I learn more on after effects but as of now, I’m really happy with the result!

There was a lot of trial and error with this project as I had to figure out what methods were not only best for the animation, but also more efficient.

Rigging

First, I did the basic After Effects rigging of just parenting all the limbs together and using rotation to make the figure move.

Rig Test

While this workflow worked, there were efficiency problems regarding having to move the other limbs. My first problem was having to be more particular about leg placement as the foot kept passing through the ground. My second problem regarded having to animate all the limbs the same. It became a matter of me having to copy over values from every keyframe to make the walk cycle look clean. Overall, this workflow was fine, but became rather tedious.

Puppet Animation

I was recommended to look at this Linkedin Learning course specifically for After Effects animation.

Very helpful tutorials

There’s a tutorial that talks about using the puppet tool to just move limbs in place rather than having to place, limbs only using rotation. I was excited to use this method as it looked really easy, but it wasn’t a method that worked for my design unfortunately.

Puppet Animation Test

The movement looked unnatural and would bend at joints. The puppet tools seems more suited to rubber hose style characters so I’d have to go back and find a way to make my original workflow better

Easier Rigging

One thing my supervisor brought up that could help my animation significantly was to just animate one leg and arms at a time and just duplicate the animation, offset it, and place it behind the body to replicate multiple limbs. This seemed a lot simpler. While there was a bit of a workaround to figure out offset the limbs to match up the animation, it turned out to be the most effective and still obtained a good quality in the animation

Final Animation

I had a lot of fun with this project and learning about different After Effects methods I can use in the future!

 

 

KB Research – Background in Illustrator

Completion Status: Started on Oct 25

This week I completed a draft of my background that I’m doing for the KB research! I added on the following steps, shown through these images:

And then this is my final version so far:

 

STA Blog Banner

I’m also excited to announce that my submission for the STA blog banner was chosen! I had a lot of fun making this background; I decided to go the route of “mentally I want to be here”, so now everyone’s caricatures gets a beach day field trip.

Summer Marketing

Project: Summer Marketing
Client:  LAITS
Staff guidance: De’sha
Description/plans: We Finalized the design for the Fall Postcard, GPC Desktop Monitor, and Digital Display. I also began editing the Tution Guide PDF.

 

Fall Postcard

 

GPC Desktop Screensavers

Digital Display

Summer Marketing: Fall Postcard

Project: Summer Marketing
Client:  LAITS
Staff guidance: De’sha
Description/plans: Right now we are designing the Fall Postcard that will be mailed out to students’ permanent (home) addresses to get them to start thinking about their summer plans (aka taking an online summer course with LAITS)!

After our Summer Marketing meeting, we determined #4 as our strongest design, but we will continue workshopping #1 to potentially have another strong option.

 

     

 

Group Meeting 10/30

This week De’sha shared her passion project with us! De’sha is very well-spoken and inspirational when she speaks about her passion project DEFINE. It was nice to hear someone tell us how they found a project that also aligned with their skills and passions.

KB Research – Background in Illustrator

Completion Status: Started on Oct 25

This last week I’ve mostly been focusing on preparing research for another STA tutorial on the Knowledge Base. After learning a lot about Illustrator on my own and through classes, I wanted to propose an Illustrator tutorial in which an STA would create their own background in the program. My hope would be that the tutorial is something that is able to be done even by a “non-artist” and focus on breaking down simple steps to create a more complex whole. I’ve felt that this was important because I consider myself someone who isn’t very good drawing by hand or in a regular digital art program, so I want to decrease the barrier to making illustrations. I think this tutorial will also yeild a specific shape-based style, which I also think might be good knowledge if a client were to want something to that effect.

 

Starting with step one, here’s my inspiration board:

And then getting into the real creation of the image, here’s a step by step image process:

And then my next steps will include continuing to add gradients to create depth and add interest, changing color schemes, adding shadows and highlights, and more!

 

After getting this far I’ve noticed that there’s a bunch of useful tools that I can talk about in the tutorial and how using multiple together can be really helpful, including using the line width tool with the blend tool to create perspective, the blend tool to easily duplicate shapes, the pattern tool to create the vines or the leaf pattern, draw inside tool to cut off shapes, and a few others. Besides just the literal sense of creating a background I’d also hope that STAs would learn about these tools and start thinking of how to reapply them to other projects.

 

 

Summer Marketing: Fall Postcard

We started to explore a more whimsical appearance to the Fall postcards with colorful lines wrapping around the UT tower. The second version was generally liked, so I’ll just be making edits/adjustments to the design to make it stronger.

 

Basic Training: Custom Course Graphics

Drumroll please…. presenting the completed custom course graphic design menu! Earlier in the semester I was assigned to a custom course graphic task but I didn’t have much experience with it. Afterward, I decided to complete this training so that the next time I have a similar task, I’ll be well prepared.