I'm Back!!!

       Yes that's right I am back for another whole year of blog posts! Summer is over and i'm now back to the place of torture known as school, but I don't think it will be all that bad (yeah right). We have already been assigned a project which is basically what i'm showing right now. But enough about me, how about I tell you about the project.

       We had to take a subject and find a photo of it on four different free stock photo websites. The subject I chose (if you didn't already look at the pictures) was the horrible and creepy octopus of the land. It can make a silk web to ensnare it's victims. That's right the haunter of nightmares, the Spider!

       The four sites used were morguefile.com, pexels.com, gratisography.com, and unsplash.com. These all had amazing photos but it was a competition and i have cast the votes and chosen winners for the categories.

       The winner for the best photo goes on over to the website of PEXELS!!!! I mean come on, this is a pretty cool picture of a spider. That thing is downright frightening, and not to mention it must be huge. So yeah, here is the winning picture. Although it has some pretty cool pictures; unfortunately it didn't have that many photos so it was kind of sad to know it only offered six pictures and then a link to another website for more pictures.



       And now, the winner for the website with the most photos. A name that automatically makes you think of zombies... MORGUE FILE!!!! This website was pretty good and had variety of photos to choose from. It made it quite fun to see all of them and I would probably choose this site as a go-to site in the future. Plus the pictures there were really cool too.





       The easiest website to download from would have to be (Drums please) GRATISOGRAPHY!!!! This website unfortunately only had one spider photo and the search bar is confusingly on the bottom of the website and it takes you to a search engine. But it was an amazingly quick download which was pretty cool.

Finally the easiest website to search, and last but not least, the only one left... UNSPLASH!!!! Ok ok I know it isn't actually a spider. But it was the only one it had so therefore it is the best! Leave me alone! This website was actually the easiest to use because it had all of it's pictures in a line on the page and the search was actually for the website. Unfortunately it didn't have the pictures I was looking for.




Well there we go, four incredible websites for free photos and now you know my opinions of them.

Until next post,

Jake Smith

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

The Final Web Post (at least for the year)

It is finally the end of the school year, i'm sure we are all very excited. As a final project we had to update our index page (Which you can see at www.eravensonline.net/students/674jrs22). Throughout all of this we put up some of the highlights of the year including a photo composition website, our own animated GIF's and so much more.











My favorite project would have to be the Real or Hoax site we did somewhere in the middle of the year. I have always loved the stories of myths and legends and read just about every available book there is on them. In this site we had to make pages for several stories and then show them all in a single website.

This summer I plan on going to a retreat called Stubenville. It is a great religious retreat where several churches come together to meet and deepen our faith for God. I also plan to hit the pool if it ever stops raining. Even though I will be doing that stuff I also plan to help out a little bit as well. There is a thing going on at my old elementary school where people can volunteer to make and then serve food for the kids who are unable to afford it during the summer.

Next year I plan to delve farther into Web Design. After taking it for a year i have found it to be very fun and would like to continue to do it. I also see as a small part of it, graphic design, so this way I can kind of learn two things in one class. Sure it isn't the main focus of the class but it is definitely needed when making a website. All in all this has been a pretty great year.

Until I feel like typing again,

This is Jake Smith

Responsive Web Design

       So, I'm sure your first question is 'what is responsive web design?' Well I'm glad you asked; responsive web design is a change in a website so it can change depending on the device being used. Say for instance you use your phone instead of your computer. On some websites there will be a significant difference in how the website looks. It's still the same website but with a different format to make it easier to navigate and find stuff.

       It may not sound like much but responsive web design can make a huge difference for a company or organization. If you were in charge you would want to reach as many people as possible without something as silly as the website being too big to stop you from showing off your products and ideas. With the growth or more mobile technology it is pretty much impossible to ignore. Not to mention the fact that it saves more money than having to make three different websites (one for desktop computers, one for tablets, and one for phones).

desktop computer

       At this point I'm sure you're dying to see what I'm talking about so here are some visual aids to aid your visuals. This is a screenshot of One, an organization formed to help stop the poverty and spread of disease around the world (mainly in Africa). This website is definitely a responsive website in the fact that you can change the dimensions of the site and it will adjust accordingly.

tablet

mobile phone

First off, there is a notable difference in the computer screenshot and the tablet screenshot. The computer shot has an obviously different layout than the tablet. Instead of the pictures being next to each other the pictures change and are now on top of one another and the same goes for the phone screenshot. The pictures are right on top of each other. In the tablet shot the pictures become bigger than the computer but in the phone size the pictures get smaller to adjust. 

       The text size also changes, in the computer you can see a line below the pictures saying to join the fight against poverty, but can't see it in the tablet and phone. That is because it became smaller until it couldn't get smaller then moved to the bottom of the screen. 

       The menu also changes in the phone as you can see all of the links are on top of one another instead of side to side.

       The content changes as well, if you look closely at the pictures you notice that the stories organize themselves in order of importance. The main story stays near the top where it is clearly visible and the other stories just kind of fall in line.

       All of this overwhelming information is done through media queries which look at the capabilities of the device and is used to check things like dimensions of the window and device, the orientation, and resolution.

       But don't worry there are things called breakpoints which help to gather info on a program during it's run. It helps to debug and get more information on what is happening at that time.

Until the next post,

This is Jake Smith

Desktop VS. Mobile

The mobile phone: an amazing device that allows you to literally carry a computer in your pocket. This device quickly became a sensation and now wants to achieve something much bigger. The phone plans to replace ... the desktop computer. Slowly at first, but now in a close match, both devices are trying to claim the number one search device. Coming soon, the tie will be even closer and the mobile phone may pass the age old computer.

 So now the question is, why? Besides just easier access what is really gained from the the mobile phone to the computer? Surely it's not for easier use? we have all tried to use our phone as a computer and... well... it just runs into the same problem. It takes forever to find the one small thing that you are looking for on a huge website that can fit maybe five words on the screen!

The bounce rate for Amazon is much higher on
phones than it is on a desktop computer.
to see more go to
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2388915/
why-mobile-web-still-matters-in-2015

In a survey taken, the session time for a certain website was significantly less than the session time for a regular computer. Plus the bounce rate was seriously higher than a computer. A bounce rate is the percent of people that click away after looking at only one page (it usually means the website is boring or difficult). This shows that even though phones have risen there aren't a lot of websites out there that are device responsive. This makes it difficult for someone on the go who maybe just wants to look up how much a sandwich costs from a sandwich shop.

http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/

Not only that, but what would happen if the mobile phone took over the internet completely? We would all be stuck using small devices to search huge websites. It would be almost impossible to find anything we needed without some difficulty. Actually it is already happening in some parts of the world already. In India the phone pretty much dominates the internet usage there with second place desktop coming in at a measly twenty-seven percent and tablets filling in the last one percent.

For example, in Australia they use their phones a lot during the day.
to see more go to
http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/
mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/

All in all it is pretty much inevitable that the phone will take over. So it might as well be as smooth a transition as possible.

Until the next post,

this is Jake Smith

The MAYA Tools

Hello dear readers,

       In this post I am going to go over all of the tools we have learned about in MAYA. During the first project, the Polything we learned about how to light an object  in order to show the most of it. Usually it doesn't just take one light, most of the time at a minimum you need to use two or three. In this particular project I used three lights. Two of them were directional lights that simply work just like a flashlight, just point it in the direction you want and behold, you have light pointing in that direction. The other light was an ambient light which I placed in the center of the Polything. The ambient light is just a ball of light wherever you put it.

       The next project we did was make the hammer. During that we learned how to extrude certain parts of an object and make another shape come out of the original. That was used to make the claw and the blunt part of the hammer. We also used the cut face tool to make the certain polygon shapes that we needed. The bevel tool was also used on the blunt part in order to make it look round after shaping it from a square.

       After that we did the ice cream project where we learned the bump map tool in order to make an object look 3D using a 2D texture. Another thing was to make a looping animation so it looked like the ice-cream was spinning around and around. In this particular project I decided to have a little fun with it and made a snowman on top of the ice-cream cone. Later when we were actually animating it I made him wave when he came near the screen.





       After that we made couple of bouncing spheres to sharpen our animation skills and get timing on keyframes correct. We also used a graph editor which is basically just a timeline of the animation itself. We used that to make things more accurate and we could place the keyframes exactly where we wanted them.

  

Next was the cups that we made, during that we learned about NURBS. NURBS stands for Non-uniform rational basis spline. Instead of using a polygonal surface on the 3D objects we used the NURBS instead. We had to use them in order to use the revolve tool. The revolve tool lets you take a line that you have shaped and revolves it around a center point until it makes a complete 3D shape.










Finally in the latest project we made salt shakers and in that we used a circle and simply shifted some of the points to get a basic shape for a salt shaker. Next we used lofting where we took a couple of the same shapes with different sizes and then put a skin around it. This is called lofting, where you make the curved part of the inside of a shape. The idea of it is basically just like a skeleton.

Until next time readers,

This is Jake Smith

Ice Cream

       Who doesn't love ice cream? Except for those who are lactose intolerant, everybody does! For those of you reading my blog, here is some ice cream that I made. This was actually a simple project to do in Maya. All that you really need is a few simple shapes and some color.

       For starters you need the basis of the project. In this case it was an ice cream parlor, with a bowl and a cone. Next you have to make all of the basic shapes, which includes several spheres, a cone, 2 tori (otherwise known as the ring), a background, floor, and a table. The floor, background and table are all made of stretched cubes. In order to make the bowl you first need to take a sphere and cut it in half using a thing called difference. This means that you cover about half of the sphere with a cube and then go to Boleans then difference. That basically just cuts the sphere and gives a basic bowl. If you want a bit of an edge to the bowl You need to extrude the top a bit inward to make it look like a rim. For the ice cream scoop do the same exact thing but then add a cylinder to the middle. For it to actually look like a scoop you may need to use another sphere that fits in the scoop and then  use difference again and get rid of the part of the handle that sticks into the scoop.

       For the actual ice cream you just need to make spheres of different sizes and then use the 3D texture cloud to give it that texture. You can also add other things to make your favorite, for instance I made cookie dough. We also had to make a cone with ice cream in it too. I decided to have a little bit of fun and turned it into a neapolitan snowman. For the record, yes, I did want to build a snowman (Frozen, the movie). It was actually pretty fun making this project and I had a lot of fun doing it. When making the cone all you need is the cone shape and simply add a yellow color to it and add a bump map which gives it the pushed in look. I guess that is all I have for this project.

Until next time, this is Jake Smith.