Katie Conleys Blog

I learned so many new things about Animation and I acquired many different skills to go along with my newfound knowledge.  There were many projects this year that I struggled with, actually, I struggled with almost every project we did this year. I think this year was a really great learning opportunity for me. Technology I learned a lot more about the 3D modeling system called Maya. I learned how to sculpt 3D objects, how to give 3D objects skeletons, and I learned how to animate things in Maya. I was not very good at animating in 3D because my computer kept glitching and I was not very good at painting weights. But I still learned how to apply all of the things that I learned to make a swimming fish. The fish that I made had a lot of glitches but it still swims so I count that as a win. This is how I advanced my technology skills this year. Collaboration, Communication, and Leadership This year we only had one group project and that was our stop motion animation projec...

The first thing I did for my project is pick out what audio I want to use with my kinetic typography. After spending many days trying to decide I chose to do Happier by Bastille. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mtbGedn1V4 I plan to use the first minute of the song not the entire thing. The next thing I will be doing is creating story boards for my project so I can plan out everything that I want my words to do. Once I have finished storyboarding I will animate every thing in after effects Here are some tutorials that I plan on using

Time Management One project that I really had to use time management with was my ghost going through walls project. When we were creating this project I had to leave for Florida and I missed three days of school. I learned how to use my time to my advantage and how to get things done under pressure. I ended up getting this project in on time and I did not completely hate the final product. This is important for the future for when my boss or someone above me wants me to get a certain amount of work done in a short amount of time.  Collaboration and Communication I learned how to effectively communicate my ideas with others and collaborate with a team to create my final video project in animation. In our most recent project I collaborated with my peers to create an animation short film. We worked together to create the concept and we put our heads and ideas together to make this project. We also communicated any problems we were having or scheduling issues with each oth...

Our short film Our short film is called connected. It is about this girl named Alex and she is halfway through freshman year when this new kid Jaxon shows up. As soon as this kid shows up she started getting these strange dreams and Jaxon gets them as well. Jaxon confronts Alix and they and out that they're both getting the strange dreams. They decide to do some research and they come across a blog. This blog was written by a girl who experienced the same thing that Alix and Jaxon were experiencing with her brother. Alix becomes upset because her Aunt never told her that she had a brother so she dragged Jaxon to her house and confronted her Aunt. Her Aunt was shocked because they were never supposed to find each other. The tag line for this production was going to be don't take the pills but I changed it to they're hiding something from you. The log line for this film is g irl is connected to boy via dreams. One key element I incorporated into this film was when Jaxon an...

Sketching First thing I did was I practiced sketching 3D labels on cans and other circular items. Then I picked what logo I was going to do. I decided to do a Fanta can but its the off-brand version and it just says soda. I sketched that logo and then decided to put it into photoshop. Photoshop I struggled really hard when it came to photoshop because I wanted to get the Fanta font but I could not find a similar font. So what I ended up doing was I found a layout of the font and screenshotted the individual letters and put them into my label one by one. After I got my letters in I outlined them with a white outliner and I tried to make the logo look similar to the anta logo. I had trouble making the leaves on the logo because I couldn't find a leaf that would work. I eventually just drew in the leaf and put text inside it like the Fanta logo. Maya After making my logo in photoshop I made a can looking object in Maya. That did...

Video and Math The first thing we did for this project was create videos to base our animations on. We went to the loading dock of the school and we brought a tennis ball, bowling ball, and a golfball with us. We chose three people to drop the balls and we filmed them dropping the balls. Then we came back to the room and uploaded them to our computers. Then we put the videos into photoshop and marked all the frames where the ball reached its height in the bounce. Once we figured out where the ball reached its maximum height per bounce we figured out the height of the ball in an excel sheet.  Maya First thing we did was create each of our spheres. I made three spheres all similar to the sizes of a tennis ball, bowling ball, and golf ball. I found a golfball bump map on the internet and I applied it to my golf ball to make it look like a golf ball. I then found a tennis ball texture via google and I put that on my tennis ball but not as a bump map because it looked too wei...

Highschool Trailer We chose to do The Duff as our high school trailer. We chose it because it is a really funny movie and we thought that it would be fun to recreate it. We incorporated many important aspects of filming for example we tried out best to match up the shots with how they were in the actual trailer by getting the right angle and making the scene itself look authentic. We did our best to incorporate good audio by using a boom mic but that did not go well because we had a boom mic for some scenes and we didn't have a mic at all for others. So our audio did sound really weird throughout the entire trailer because of the mic. Pre Production and Production Our pre production mainly consisted of casting actors. It was really difficult to find actors who looked similar to the people in the trailer and that were available. We originally casted someone else as the jock but he couldn't make it to the filming sessions so we had to change our jock halfway through fi...

What did I learn in this project I learned how to take one line and duplicate it and then turn it into a flat shape.I learned how duplicate things special and how to adjust the settings to make it duplicate the way you want it to be. Then I learned how to extrude that flat shape to make a snowflake. Then I learned how to create a wall in front view and extrude the wall so that it creates a window. I learned how to adjust the lighting with spotlights and where to put them within my scene. I then learned how to animate snowflakes falling within the scene. I would say this was the hardest art. I had to get the snowflakes fall all at different sides. Some of them did not even go off of the screen, but I tried my best. I think this project turned out pretty good I like it a lot.

What did I learn? During while making this I learned a lot about bump maps. I learned how to apply them to objects. I also learned that in order to  create a realistic bump map I need to adjust the shape of the object itself by moving the vertices. But I think I did apply my map wrong because when when the scene rotates the ice cream texture moves and it looks really strange. Other than that it was applied correctly. I learned also how to set key frames. I had no trouble setting the key frames. But I did have trouble rotating it I had to figure out how to move the center pivot to make the ice cream rotate in place. After that I set my beginning and end key frame and it was really simple and I enjoyed this project.

Creating my own pen Our most recent assignment was to create a pen of our own. I decided to create the pen body first and I did that by making a cylinder and then I used the extrude tool to make the other shapes on the pen. The hardest part for me was creating the curved grip. I had to create extra vertices and I had to size my vertices to fit a curve on my pen.  this is the pen I was trying to re create

The song my group chose was Telephone by Lady Gaga. We chose this song because she talks about how she's having fun without the guy being with her, and how she is doing fine without him. Our music video was supposed to portray the same thing. The video shows this girl crying over a break up and her friends are comforting her and making her feel better. We wanted to show that things get better after a break up and sometimes you just need your friends to find your happiness again. Pre-Production First we assigned roles, we each had a part to play when it came to the music video. Our original plan was to go to different stores and have her shop around, but none of the stores were going to let us film so we had to change the location of the film. I was the location scout so I was really happy when we figured out a place to film. Then we decided to get an actress, she was a friend of one of our group members so it was easy to find an actress. We also story boarded and we filmsca...

Revolving In order to revolve you must draw a line. So for our cup we drew the outline of half of the cup. The like had to look a certain way in order for it to revolve right. So it took a few tries to get the line right. Once you have a line that you want you click the revolve button. it creates a rounded 3D version. So I drew the outline of half of a cup ad then I revolved it to make a complete line. Lofting In order to loft you have to have multiple line shapes. For the salt shaker we took multiple different circles and shaped them to be how we wanted them. Then we duplicated the lines and stacked them on top of each other. We moved them up on the Y-Axis. There was space between each line on the Y-axis. Once it was the preferred height we selected all of the lines then we lofted it. Lofting is when it takes the edges of multiple line shapes and turns into one object.

Modeling Modeling was hardest part of the project. The first thing I did with modeling was I created a cube and then I extruded another cube to create a head for my hammer. The next thing I did was use the multi cut took to create my claws and I chased my claws and the I curved them. After I did that I made my hammer head. I made my hammer head by using the extrude and move tool. I also used the bevel to create a rounded hammer head. Then I moved my handle to look like it was made for a human hand. I did that by moving the vertices using the extrude tool. Then I attempted to bevel the edges and I could not so I just left the hammer as is. Then I made the Nail. I made the nail by creating a cylinder and then I used the extrude tool to create the head and the tip. Shading For shading I shaded the Hammer handle first. I took the brown color he used in his own model and I applied it to the hammer handle. I did not know how to make it look like wood so I also just left that as is...

This Semester In Video This semester we learned about Convergence Journalism. Within convergence journalism we learned how to compose a news story, feature story, and how to write a news story. We were taught how to create a thorough interview with twenty one interview questions. We learned a lot about how the camera itself works and hoe to recored, put in batteries, adjust white balance, and much more regarding the cameras. We learned how to set up the tripod by extending the legs and hoe to slide the plate on and off (which my group struggled with for a really long time). We also had to apply the six shot system and the rule of thirds to make our videos more visually appealing and interesting.During all of our projects we  had to use our five skills. I used leadership in order make sure everyone got everything done, we all used our technical skills to work the camera and edit the videos me and my team created. We used time management to get everything done, and we use communic...

My Story Animation Project In this project I learned how to compose a story and apply all of the skills I have learned over the course of the semester. I learned all of the skills in the video that were taught to me by Mr.Olson, and I got a lot of help from my friends. I picked this project because I put a lot of time into it. I spent many power 50's and many hours after school to create it. I also think its one of my most appealing project that I have done. I think my greatest strength is creativity, I used had to think really hard about this though because I was struggling to come up with an idea. I think my weakness is the puppet pin tool because it took me so many tries to get it right. I understand it more thoroughly than I did before and I know how to set key frames with the puppet pin tool now. If I could change something then I would change the part where transports from area to another really fast. Overall I liked this project and it was really fun to do. Wal...

Pre-Production The First thing I had to do when it came to making my animation was coming up with a story and drawing the idea on a storyboard. I used the storyboard to visually see what I had to put into my animation to make sense. I think he hardest part about that process was figuring out what my plot was going to be. I had not very many ideas but after thinking for a very long time I decided that I would animate a story about a ghost that cannot walk through walls. Production The production was the most difficult part after all. I animated each scene individually and I out it onto Adobe Premier in order to put all of my clips together. I decided to first draw all of my scenes and characters in photoshop which took about two days. Then I out the photoshop files into After effect. Animating all of the things took the rest of the time. I found it very difficult to work with the puppet pin tool when I was editing the part where the ghosts hit the wall. Other than that it wen...

Young Author Publishes their Third Book Before the Start of Sophomore Year Olathe Northwest sophomore Lylena Estabine published her third book ever this past July. LyLena has been writing since fifth grade. In fifth grade she was a part of a special program that pushed students to read and write LyLena said,“ I believe that's where I got my start in writing.” LyLena first book was called Lose Cursed Secrets of the School. After that LyLena has published On the Bridge and A Special Kind of Magic. LyLenas most recent book is a dystopian novel about a boy named Colt and the struggles he faces in his world. LyLena said she got her inspiration for the book from hr everyday life“ I was really inspired by the two sides of the american conflict and turmoil,”,Estabine said. LyLena published this book by herself which means she has to do all of the marketing for it and all of the selling on her own. LyLena is currently working on her new book, but she does not necessarily want to...

Pre Production The first thing did as a group was decide who we wanted to interview. We decided to interview LyLena Estabine since she is our age and has already written three different books. After we figured that out we thought we would interview her freshman English teacher as well to add to the story. We created one storyboard which planned out where we were going to shoot. Then we came up with our twenty-one interview questions which were fairly easy to come up with since she has done a lot in life. We also planned out which days we were going to film and edit. Production I was the director and was in charge of the camera. It was really difficult to film because we did not have audio for awhile and we could not figure out how to get audio. So he had to enlist the help of Mr.Cooper and we just did not have the mic plugged into the right place. So we were a day behind because it took us an entire class period to figure out our technical issues. When we filmed the whole th...

Creating My Animation The first thing we did when creating this animation was create a very long template in photoshop. Then we divided it into four sections. Each section was a different layer and each layer had to be different than the others. This was really difficult for me. The trees were very hard to make and they took a lot of time to copy and paste then and then merge then all onto one layer. I didn't like how the trees turned out. Animating the plane Before we animated we watched videos on how multi plane animation works. We watched videos on how they used to do it back in the day. I think it was really cool but it also took really long. Anyways after I created the base in photoshop I began to animate it in After effects. I did not really learn anything new. But it was really easy to animate. Overall  I think this was not my best project. I do not like the color scheme I think its too dark and gloomy. I also do not like the style. I also messed up the anim...

Sketching The very first thing I did was sketch my character. I decided to sketch a bear and it took many tries to get it right. It took about a day to do that. After I had sketched my rough outline I had to trace over it with marker. I decided to trace over it with a blue marker since he is a polar bear and it just kinda went with his character. After I traced it I rubbed the marker and smeared the outline of me bear and it made editing it more difficult in the future. After I was done with that I took a picture of it and put it in photoshop. Photoshop Once my photo was in photoshop I had to edit it. I turned up the exposure and made it so the background was completely white. I had to mask the edges so all that was left was the bear itself. Once all I had was the bear I had to separate the body pieces. I did that by making new layers for each body piece and then selecting and deleting them from the original copy. I separated every single thing including the head. I als...