Best Work #1:

Silver Medal submission to the SkillsUSA animation competition

Last year we had to do the SkillsUSA animation competition. We had seven hours (420 minutes or 0.375 days) to fully rig, model and animate a virtual “Greeting card”. Given the time restraint, we had a lot of work, and barely got it in on time. My partner and I ended up with a silver medal (second place)  for our effort.

This animation was a 2 person effort. I mostly animated, and my teammate did the modeling.

Modeling is the process of creating a 3D or 3 Dimensional object that lives inside the computer. The process is very complex, but it gets more simple over time.We used Blender to model and render the finished piece.

Blender is an open source, free to use 3D modeling and rendering program. 

We used the Blender animation window or tab to animate on a timeline. 

 

To animate on a timeline, we had to click on the object we wanted to animate, and press the I key to insert a keyframe (keyframes are a pose or position that any given object needs to be at at any given time. the computer fills in the blanks or Interpolates between keyframes).For example at the [insert time here] mark, the characters arm (being distorted by a virtual bone) is waving back and forth, the keyframes being the pose where the arm is up and the pose where the characters arm is down.

 

Rendering is the process of saving the 3D scene as a final 2D or 2 Dimensional video. because 3D scenes take up a lot of space, it's easier to render them out as a 2D video instead. Rendering takes a lot of computing power, and can be pretty slow. Because of the strict time limit, we really didn't have enough time to redo much of anything. We ended up adding on a lot of extra stuff that wasn't necessary, and that ate up all of our time that could have been used to fix things. We ended up just having to send in a final result that was less than perfect. 

 

I chose this animation for 3 reasons:

  1. It's the only animation I've ever gotten a prize for (the prize being a Medal, certificate and $950 scholarship to any school in the Vermont State University) . 

 

  1. It was a good learning experience. I learned a lot about animation, the pipeline and time management, as well as production and task delegation.

 

  1. I couldn't think of any other pieces aside from the 3 (Three) pieces I am writing about.

 

I learned a lot about time management and scope creep (the idea of adding on more and more small changes until the finished project is too big to handle). The main thing I learned is that it's better to get something badly on time, than perfect and later.I probably would have allotted more time to fixing the animations and dialed back the scope a bit.

I am proud of this animation, and feel pride in me and my partner's work.