Amelia Sims's Blog

Summary  In this post I will explain how to light a scene so it looks like the objects are around a campfire at night in maya. This can be used to set the tone so the person viewing your work has an idea of whats going on. This skill is helpful to anyone who wants to make their animation more realistic. Steps  First create the scene you are going to light and position the objects however you want. I used shapes for this example. Next turn on lighting by clicking six on the keyboard. Add a point light and more it to slightly in front of the center of your objects. The screen should now look like this. Since we are baking a camp fire we want the light to be dim so change to decay rate from none to linear  if its too dark you can change the intensity. Then change the color of the light so it has an orange tint. Next duplicate the light and give it a slightly yellow tint to create the middle of the fire. Change the settings on this light so it has a quadratic...

Summary  The plausible impossible is where an event that would be impossible in real life is made to see plausible in the animated story. Walt Disney made a documentary over this topic showing lots of examples of the plausible impossible. Here are some of them. Examples  While Donald duck is eating the doorbell rings. In real life a doorbell ringing would not cause your head to shake because it is just a sound. However in the animated world this is plausible because a doorbell can surprise a person and make them jump. Also the sound of the doorbell mirror the way Donalds' head moves. When Gus Goose shakes Donald Ducks had it shakes him up and down. This is impossible because someone can not lift another person up and down just by shaking their hand, gravity won't allow it. This is made plausible by the fact that some peoples hand shakes are very hard and can make you feel like you are shaking. Also Gus Goose is winds up for the hand shake to add momentum. He is als...

This project is the science project that my partner and I are sharing outside the classroom. Our guiding question was how can we create a protein bar for athletes to eat before or after a workout to help improve performance? 

Summary There are many different attributes in company branding. Symbols and logos are used to create a combination mark that showcase a brand. Lettermarks can also be used which are abbreviated versions of the whole company name. All of these can be trademarked so they legally belong to a company. Pictographs are also commonly used to provide instructions without words. There are many attributes to a good symbol. It should show positive aspects of the company and be easy to identify. It needs to draw the eye to it using a thick weight and whitespace. The symbol should  not be too abstract or need more than one color to succeed. It should also be able to reduce down to half an inch. Symbols and Logos   There are many differences between symbols and logos. A symbol is a shape or mark used to identify a company. They represent the company is some way and do not use type. A logo is type that has been designed specifically to represent a company. When a symbol and a l...

During this project I created snowflakes in Maya and animated them to look like it was snowing. First I used the pin tool to create a design. Then I reflected it and rotated it six times to create a snowflake. I did that for each of the six snowflakes. Next I used the extrude tool so the snowflakes were not flat. Then I put color and texture on the snowflakes so they looked more realistic. I also used one of the Maya feature to soften the edges. Next I created a new file in Maya. I made a vertical plane and extruded the side create a frame. Then I added different textures and colors to make the wall, frame, and window pane. After that I created another Maya file with all the elements from both pervious files. I set up a camera and animated each individual snowflake so that it fell. Starting from above the frame, dropping and spinning all the way out of sight and the repeating. I had to stagger the times, sizes, and distances to give it the effect of real snowfall. After that ...

The Functions of Posters  The function of a poster is to inform a reader or viewer of information. Posters can provide information about many different topics such as politics, public announcements, advertisements, community events, etc. Posters are used not only to inform but also to pe rsuade  and motivate viewer to buy the product on the poster or go to the attraction on the poster or do what the poster is trying to get them to do. Posters are made to maximize the information that the viewer gets in a small amount of time. Laws of Poster Design  A good poster attracts attention from people walking by. It will get them to stop and look at the poster. After someone stops to look at the poster the poster needs to establish a connection with them to keep their interest. General Demands A poster needs to be legible, understandable, and interesting. It needs to contain information that may be important to the viewer. A poster needs to be simple and...

Photoshop Tutorials  The first project we did in graphic design was a series of Photoshop tutorials to expand and enhance our knowledge of the Photoshop software. This took about two weeks for us to complete. A challenge I faced during this project was learning the basics of manipulating some of the tools. Most would work fine but some required a few tries before I figured out how to best use them. Throughout these tutorials I learned how to use Photoshop. I learned about tools such as content aware fill, the patch tool, the clone stamp, layer masks, and the spot healing brush. I also learned different skills such as how to effectively use layers, how to use the content aware scale tool, how to use an adjustment layers, how to transform and warp objects, and how to create a shadow. Some feedback I was gives was that the photo on which I used the patch tool did not look realistic. I changed this by going back into Photoshop and fixing it the patch tool again. My overall opinio...