Wrapping up WordPlay

I was working on animating the cameras today. I'd like to use more than one cameras to capture different scene when the word "FAST" traveling down the path.

The problem that I have during this phase is that I couldn't switch between the cameras in order to make it capture different part of the animation.

I'm going try to get it done in class after I figure out the solution to this so that I can actually work on my typographic animation.

Creating Sound Effect

I've just realized that I forgot to blog about when we learned to create our own sound effects in class. It was during the beginning of my WordPlay project that we had a chance to play with the program Soundtrack Pro in class. I'm glad that you introduced us to this program although we don't have enough time to go through the program in depth.

I was trying to make swooshing sound for my WordPlay piece but I didn't use it since it sounded more like whistling wind than swooshing sound effect. Most of the swoosh sound effects that I found didn't fit my WordPlay animation because they were all too short and very fast. Finally, I came across this site audiomicro and got a couple car sound effects that work better with the animation. ^-^

New Idea for Typographic Animation/ Factory Project

As I was working on finishing up my WordPlay project, I came up with an idea for my factory project that I want to create a factory that turns Arabic numerals into Thai numerals. This idea came from my research on the typographic animation. The idea of my factory is to make it function like a converter.

I want to start the factory process by having a receiver taking information from the outside world in to the factory. The information will be passed to different sections inside the factory (supposedly the machine will represent the idea of mechanism of our brain). Once the information is processed and converted to different language, the output will be ready to be delivered out.

My plan for next week is to work on my typographic animation in flash. I'm thinking of using the kid's drawing in this project because I want to present his thoughts on Thai numerals the way he really sees them and relates to them.

WordPlay Technical Issues

In class today, I was working on the WordPlay project on the road section again. With your help, I learned a couple simple ways to create a path by using spline and loft and sweep NURBS. Although I could create the path from those methods, the path was not clean. I failed to model just a simple road because once I applied texture to the road, the texture was broken into sections according to the polygons created in the path.

Another issue that I had today was when I tried to animate the word "SLOW". My intention to animate "SLOW" was to make it wiggle out from the ground and I want it to imitate how a worm moves. This was very tricky for me to do. So, here's what I did.

I attached the deformer "bend" to the object (the word) so that I can make the word wiggle while it moves. The problem was that I couldn't animate the deformer at the same time that I animated the object from one point to another. I tried to animate both the position and the deformer strength on a simpler object like a cube in a new document, still it didn't work!

I think I have to bring this issue to class next time and ask you look at it later.

Meanwhile, I decided to make it easier by just creating another spline, then attach the word to the new spline and make it move very slowly for now.

Spring Break

I have to be honest that I didn't get to do much on my project during the break. Although, I watched some tutorials on Cinema 4D but most of them are just for how to model stuffs not animating objects. I'm very anxious about this semester because I'm not in a good shape in class I have never been far behind in class like this ever in my entire school life.

It feels like there's so little time for me to get everything done and I know that I just have to get it done now. At this point, I'm suffering from being a bit of a perfectionist. The idea of sacrificing quality of my work in order to just get it done in time sounds easy to do so but I don't seem to be able to do it. I usually spend a long time on each project that I have done although I know that it's also crucial to make the deadline. The more I think about the deadline, the more tense I become and eventually, I can't be productive.

I spent most of the days during the break packing up, clearing things and preparing the documentation that I have to bring back to Thailand since I'm going back home right after finishing this semester. I figure that I won't have time to do all those things after the break, so I just had to do it now.

I will try to get the WordPlay done right after the break so that I can catch up with everyone on the next assignment.

Oh God! I've just realized that we have to make a plan for the factory project before starting to work on it. (=_=; I've never felt so worried like this before. Everyday feels so tense and I'm starting to wonder if I made the wrong decision to attend the art school at this point. But I don't want to just quit now, so I'll do what I can to get through this semester.

Problem with flipped object attached to the spline

During the class today, with your help, we managed to fix the problem with the flipped object attached to the spline! Hooray!

I worked on the word "SLOW" and looked up for some tutorials of how to model a path or a road today at school. My idea was to create a road by making a path and then add the road texture to it later. First, I create 2 splines that define the edges of the path or the road but I couldn't join find the tool that join the 2 splines together in order to make a path. It took me really long to play around and try to figure out how I could achieve the result I wanted. I kept searching for more tutorials on how to create a simple road but I found a lot of pre-made 3D roads which I don't want to use for my project.

I became more and more frustrated during this project because I know that I want to create but I couldn't make it happen.

Update on Typographic Animation

I have an update on my typographic animation project today. Finally, I collected the drawings from Jesse (my subject from the experiment) and here's the result.

This is the illustration made by an 8-year-old boy. Each individual drawing created from the given Thai numerals reflects his thought on Indian and Thai cultures. For example, an elephant and a buddha image developed from number 1 and 6 strongly represent Thailand. A king cobra from number 9, surly relates to India because that where king cobras mainly live.

This drawing of the upside down king cobra actually reminds me of a Naga which is a serpent being from ancient Indian mythology. I really like the drawing that he made of Taj Mahal for number 5. It's really amazing to me how a little boy can be so creative that he could just create any drawing out of a specific given character.

Interestingly, when he was asked to rewrite those Thai numerals without looking at the example that I gave him earlier, he wrote down most of the numbers with very subtle mistake. It was surprising to me that he got most of them correct even though he only had a chance to look at those numbers once as a reference for his drawings.