Over the course of my first year in my Animation Course I connected with so many people who were also interested in making art and animations like I was. I learned a lot about using 3D software such as Blender and how I can create stunning effects on my models using tutorials and learning through the videos our teachers sent us. I enjoyed hanging out with my friends through private meetings and through the classes we had.

The people in my group were Cor, Sean, Shane and Chika and I had a great time with each of them, talking with them over how to approach the prompt we were given and what our concept should be about. I laid down my ideas and helped them get out of a tight spot in conceptualising the project.

I found it very fun interacting with the rest of the group over Discord. Talking to my peers was a good deal of fun and we were able to decide and lay out who was doing what in the project. We also organised independent study work meetings on days that we weren’t in to help each other out in the project and also to hang out.

Overall I found this semester to be very good as it allowed me to properly connect with others and share ideas and opinions with them and develop a good friendship with each of them. They were able to get a lot out of my contributions and I had a lot of fun animating and working in this module. At the start of the year I was timid and did’nt really engage all that well with my peers, but after collaborating and working with them I have become a lot more open and able to engage and interact with people and work with them on creating an animate project.

This semester I had to do a 30 second animated project focusing on escape with several other collegues. We first settled on an idea concerning ghosts escaping from a ghost hunter. My ghost is inspired by fantasy creatures and sea butterflies as well as the pokemon Flutter Mane, a paradox Pokemon from prehistory, with a slight inspiration from the Ultra Beast Blacephalon.

Here are the initial concepts and designs for my ghost, along with inspirations for the character.

I also worked on an early storyboard for the 3d animation that was later revised and expanded upon.

I then worked on creating the model of my character and applying knowledge I learned over this year to his creation. the character was 100% hard modelled in Blender and textured using Photoshop, and then given a ghostly emission effect from following a tutorial on Youtube.

The model went through several iterations and many troubles trying to get the eye sockets properly created for the eyes. I found I can use a cube and subdivide it, cut half of it away, mirror it, and then delete faces to create eye sockets and then used Loop Tools to change the shape of the hole. Then, I extruded out sockets for the eyes, and then subdivided the sphere again.

I then applied an armature to the model and did several tests before animating each of the scenes we were given.

By using Blend Shapes, I also created facial expressions for my character. By creating copies of the basis head and modifying them, I was able to create different poses for the eyes and give my character emotions. Shown down here I created a very good demonstration of what my character is like.

I also did previs work on the project, creating several previs models of rooms to use in the project along with a model of a picture, which I made original art for, using a tutorial of making a picture in Blender.

And now, here are the animations that I made for the project: