Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

One-Point Lighting (Directional)

Two-Point Lighting (with Fill)

Three-Point Lighting (with Rim)

Building a Scene in Maya

Third Term Paper Option

My first two term paper scores were 90 and 80; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline of Third Term Paper

I. Introduction
 A. Films - Totoro and The Old Mill
 B. Thesis - Both films show how easy rain can be animated in 2-D, yet to carry a certain mood makes it a bit more challenging.
II. Body
 A. The Old Mill
    1. Use of rain effects to create the creepy and stormy mood within the story.
    2. Explain in detail how animators create rain in this animation.
    3. Tie in with thesis.
 B. Totoro
    1. How the rain effects differ from the first example.
    2. Mood - How creating the rain pattern helps with the mood of the scene.
    3. Tie in with thesis.
III. Conclusion
    1. Creating rain in 2-D animation uses a simple technique, yet trying to achieve a certain mood or feel changes how the rain animation is done.
    2. Reiterate examples and add in concluding statement.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

"Love at First Bite"

Working in a group animation project is a bit of a challenge, but also made it a bit easier to animate, time wise.  I teamed up with Chris and Hunter on this stop motion project and we had fun putting our character animation together, despite having to do 5-6 passes.  Working with the props was a bit difficult since the cracker would shift around a bit and would make the animation a bit funky. It took roughly 30 mins to come up with a story idea and how we wanted to execute the animation. For the next 7 1/2 hours we shot the animation then  edited the shots together plus add sound effects and music. There wasn't just one person working on a single piece in the project.  All three of us rotated around to help pose the characters as well as help with the cracker and soap parts. Most of the time we were playing musical chairs since in some shots it required us to switch seats to be able to get a better idea of how to pose the characters and set the scene.

Chris and Hunter trying to animate
the sliding cracker.

Jenn working on 2nd snail's
head shake.

Original set up before we
slightly changed it.