Seamus's Blog

The thing I enjoyed the most about the first project is just playing with the camera’s and learning about the different  angles and how they affect the image. Prior to this, I have only taken photos on my I phone, and never really used a camera like the cameras we are using. They were quite fun and easy to use, and it was a great introduction to photography.

As mentioned before, I have never used a camera such as the DLSR, so I was new to the tech. I needed some help on how to  operate the camera, with things like how to focus on something in a image, and what the different lenses did. I also had some trouble with uploading the images to the computer, but a couple of my classmate came to my aid, and I was able to do it.

As time went by, I began to become to more comfortable  with the camera. I started to notice things that would not be good to take a photo of, like things such as places with bad lighting, and I also learned what angles make a photo better. I would also like to take more picture’s next time, so I have more to choose from, as I felt like was too focus  on getting one good image rather than multiple.

 

 

I liked how this project brought out the creativity side in me. It challenged me to come up with creative ideas that would be good for this project. I also enjoyed how I was able to use and explore photoshop because this was the first project I have ever done. Somethings I did not like, is how repetitive it was and trying to find an actual that would work with actually making a cinemagraph. I was also able to learn how to use a quick mask, and the basics of photoshop. Some previous skills that I applied in making these cinemagraphs were masking. One thing I did well in this project was finding the right videos, and I believed I was good at masking something to make it look like it is still. One thing I could work on is finding my way around photoshop, and getting better at the basics of it. On the creative side, I would say I was pretty creative. Both of my cinemagraphs, were creative in their own way. My favorite cinemagraph was the one with my cat because I just thought that it turned out very, and I also like it because my cat is in there.

   

All of the gifs that I made in Flipanim, were pretty similar and they all had a very similar look. My first one was a tree falling. It starts off as a nice day, and then a gust of wind comes and knocks over the tree. The sun in the top of the corner is happy at first, and then the tree falls over, and the sun becomes sad. Some of the elements that were included in my art were space, color, line, and form. The next gif I did was a rainbow. There are heavy rain clouds, and then it starts raining. Once the rain goes away, the sun comes into the frame and a rainbow forms.At the end of the rainbow, there is a pot of gold. Elements that were used in these pieces were color, lines, value, and form. My last one was a tree being struck by lightning and then the tree caught on fire. 

I created my artwork and gifs by drawing frame by frame. I would first  determine how many layers I would need to make the artwork the way I wanted. Once I figured out how many layers I would need, I then drew my background which would be set for the rest of the animation. For one artwork, in particular, the rainbow one, I first drew the rainbow, then I erased it. After I did that I moved the frames around to make it look like the rainbow was forming from start to finish. This saved me a lot of time, and just made it easier, then opposed to drawing a rainbow from start to finish frame by frame. 

There was not really a big idea or a reason behind my artwork. I stayed to a similar theme throughout all of my art pieces. All of them had to deal with nature, as seen with a rainbow, the wind knocking a tree over, and a lightning bolt striking a tree. There was also a recurring theme of the sun in the top left corner. Depending on what was going on, the sun either had a smiley or frowny face. When something bad happened, he was sad and frowning, and when something good happened like the rainbow forming, he was happy.

My goals were really just to create a successful animation that people could tell what the animation was about. I have never really done anything like this before, so I was just trying to create one that looked good, and people could tell what was happening. I also wanted the artwork to look nice and not sloppy, so I would put a lot of effort and work into it. I do think that I was able to achieve my goal and I was quite satisfied with what I had put out and done

Overall, I feel like I was able to make a couple of pretty good animations. I learned a lot doing this project with flipaim. I learned how to work with it, and how to use the layers, and how different layers affect the drawing, and overall it makes it easier to produce a better product. I feel like some of the animations could have been a little more cartoony, and there could have been more aspects to it. I also think that it could have been a little cleaner, and some of the art was a little messy and sloppy. I will take the lessons and skills I learned from this project, and apply them later on down the road, to future projects that we will do in motion graphics. Lastly, I had a lot of fun on this project and learned a lot of things.