Reflection
This semester was really fun. I enjoyed using Blender much more than I did last semester, I think that is because I understand it better now, and I have been using it for a little longer. I learned how to use the Cameras, How to Rig, How to Weight Paint, and How to Add Controllers. I also learned how to animate facial expressions using shape keys. I didn’t get to use shape keys too much or weight painting, as my character for the group animation was a music box that didn’t warp much, I rigged the ballerina but the box was just rotated as needed cause I didn’t want the hinges to warp. The class was really fun, although some of the lesson videos were a little confusing, they were easy enough to follow if you take your time watching through them though. I did quite enjoy the group work this semester, it was really fun to get feedback and help from friends as I was working, and getting to make a larger-scale project was really rewarding, getting to see a full animation that contributed to was so cool.
One thing I was not a fan of was the presenting to the class aspect of the project. It was really nerve-wracking, and even though upon looking back it was very useful, in making improvements to the animation, and getting outsider input, it was still my least favourite aspect of the project. I always looked forward to other people’s presentations, but when giving our presentations, I always felt unprepared even if I knew we had done everything we needed to have done. Which caused a lot of anxiety, luckily we had Amy in our group who is really good at public speaking, and did most of the talking for our presentations, which helped ease some of the anxiety, as they took the social lead of the group, and Chloe took the scheduling lead of the group; helping keep everyone on track, and making sure everyone had their work done by the time it needed to be done by.
Some problems we had as a group was however a lack of communication and understanding, meaning we would express what we wanted from each other but often it would be miscommunicated and thus had to be redone. An example of this happened quite a lot with Shane being we often had to ask him to fix things, although some of this seemed to be less misunderstanding and more a lack of effort on his end. Even in the final animation, we asked them to fix their model, but instead of fixing what they had they decided to completely restart their model? This made the model they gave us for the final animation, weird, clunky, and bumpy, it looks rushed because it was. and then they did their animation and sent it to Chloe to add to the animation file, but as it was leaving the candle it became weird and the texture became messed up, but we weren’t sure how or why, so we asked them to redo the animation or fix it and they said they did and sent it back… but nothing changed and so it was just left in as we where all focused on getting our own work done.
This has made me want to try to make my own animated short, completely on my own, which might be overly ambitious, but I feel like it is doable although it will take much longer. But I am excited to try because I know understand blender much better and want to try to make my own things. I also want to try to learn how to use Grease pencil in Blender, because there is a youtuber/ Instagram artist, who uses Grease Pencil to make some really cool things, they also use such cool colour palettes. So I really hope to try to follow some of their tutorials over summer when I have more time: I think since I now have a base understanding of blender it will be much easier to understand the tutorials, as I tried to follow the tutorials before but I got confused and gave up. But now that I understand it a bit more I think ill be able to pick it up much easier. That makes me really excited to try out more of blender. Which I am really surprised by considering how much I disliked using Blender last term, and how much I complained about it, and compared it to Maya. I’m not sure if its just because I haven’t used Maya in so long, or that I just understand enough about Blender now that I don’t miss Maya as much, But I haven’t found myself comparing Blender to Maya as much this term, which is nice because I felt really disheartened last term because I was good at Maya, but I felt I had to start from worse than nothing because I kept trying to used blender as if it was Maya, rather that just using it like its own program.
This Project has made me want to work with other people in the class, as some people made such cool things, and I feel like I often try to stick in my comfort zone and work with people I already know, as I’m not that good at talking to people I don’t know. But I want to get better at talking to new people and I wont be able to do that if I always stick with people I already know. I did try my best to talk to people in the class though but I find it hard, as I feel like I need a reason to talk to them, so I don’t bother people, but it is hard to find reasons to talk to people. I hope there is more group work next year, so I can get to know more people in the class, as everyone seems so nice and so cool, and talented. I hope Next year is as fun as this one was, and hopefully less stressful… although I doubt that it will be less stressful, as anything with a deadline is stressful.