We began the 3D Animation module with a lecture that covered the basic principles of Blender. Mike then gave an overview of Blender by showing us how to use its features and several useful shortcuts. Following the presentation and demonstration, the first workshop task we were given was to make a table and chairs. Since I’m a beginner and have never used Blender or any equivalent software, creating the table and chairs was much more difficult than I had anticipated and slightly chaotic. It was challenging for me to scale the cubes and then arrange them to resemble tables and chairs due to the fresh knowledge that had been presented to me in the morning. In addition, I’m having a lot of trouble getting used to using the mouse to move Blender objects smoothly. As I saw the demonstration, I did not anticipate the amount of time the first section of this activity would take. The second section of the task was adding colours to the table and chairs which I’ve simply applied brown to the table and red to the chairs.
After lunch, we received the assignment to create an animated snowman. A quick demonstration was presented. The snowman completed effectively. I then scaled everything to maintain its proportions so the shapes wouldn’t act weird when animated. I noticed having to parent the snowman’s body was the most difficult aspect of completing it. To get everything moving in the proper positions, I repeated it a few times, making sure there were no mistakes made.
To make the animation more engaging, I chose to give my snowman a friend and attractive surroundings. To create the snowman friend, I copied and pasted the original snowman by selecting every aspect of it and then clicking Shift D to create a second snowman. Afterward, I decorated them in different ways. In the background, I used a cylinder and cones to create a tree, then I applied the same copy and paste method. I used a sphere to create an igloo as well. I experimented with the lighting a little before animating. Applying lighting had given the snowmen depth and a lively atmosphere. Animating the snowman wasn’t as challenging as creating it, it was straight forward with the demonstration video, so I completed it smoothly with no chaos.
