The Final Animation Post

       Well, here it is. Although I have had a lot of fun in this class and have done lots of cool things, this will be the last post for animation. I am moving on to bigger things and can no longer be held in this class.

       So for our Final project we had to team up with some friends and make a movie. But not just any movie, a blockbuster smash movie with all kinds of crazy effects. Just kidding, I mean this is high school, come on. Basically we had to make a movie using a green screen at least once and then use all of the types of effects we learned over the year. Which included using one 3D object made in Maya.

       What we first started off with was making an idea for the movie. Our original idea was making a robot fight, but later on it turned into super powers. Next we made this story board with such lovely pictures drawn by yours truly.  After that we went into the filming stage, where we began to film all of our shots. It took about a week to get all of our shots, and even then we still have one missing (we realized this after the movie was already made). The worst part about the filming was the Kansas weather where it was rainy when we started and then about 10 min. after we were done for the day it got nice again.

       Along the way I learned many things, for instance how to shoot mini blue spheres from my hand. Actually I learned that nothing will ever go the way you expect it to. We had to do certain scenes several times just to make sure we have the shot just right. I also learned that I now have more respect for movie makers because there job is stressful and hard to do. I learned that trying to make a fire beam is very hard work. It was also a learning experience when I was taught how to work a green screen.

       If I was to do this project differently I would definitely start with making sure the story is not so cheesy. I will admit that the story is not the greatest, but it's pretty good for high school. I would also make sure there are absolutely no shadows when doing the green screen. You can't really know how bad this is without actually experiencing it, but just trust me it's bad. We just covered it up with a dark image background. That is my friend Madison, the friend who is my sworn enemy in the movie is my other friend Tim. Click on his name to see his blog; Madison didn't want her blog on here.

       Something I would do the same would probably be the fact that it was fun while we were filming. Even though our scenes aren't the greatest, we still had a lot of fun doing it. I think that I will take a lot of the effects that I have learned how to do with me because they could work in a multitude of scenarios.

       All in all I would call this project done with and deserving a spot it all of the theaters of the world. But because i'm feeling nice, i'll let you watch it for free. (Click on watch)

Until I feel like typing again,

This is Jake Smith