Project #4: Walk Cycle

For the walk cycle project, I used the character Samus from the video game trilogy "Metroid Prime". Her suit has many different parts and joints, thus I had to create many different symbols to create the puppet rig.

I began with some rough sketches of the character; once I made the sketches, I was able to color it in and start rigging the puppet.

Samus is on a mission in this walk; her fist is tense and despite the wintry cold surrounding her, she is keeping a consistent and focused pace to show her determination.

I created the Samus puppet rig in Adobe Animate, along with the backdrop. I added the snow in Adobe After Effects to add to the frosty planet setting. I then did some compositing in After Effects; I imported the backdrop as an image and added key frames to change the position to make the background move instead of Samus, but creating the allusion that Samus is walking across the bridge. I had to add the snow, too, since I just love the look of snow and winter on screen; it is also my favorite environment from the video game Metroid Prime, so I was very glad I got to add the particles in After Effects.

What was most interesting about this project was how daunting the task of creating a walk seemed in my head at first, but once I created the Classic Tweens on the rig, it felt so good seeing how everything came together and I really enjoyed the pupating process. The walk itself was actually a lot of fun to create; I loved working with pupating!

While the project had its fair share of challenges, it was rewarding to see Samus's character come to life piece by piece, and this project helped me feel comfortable with pupating, rigging, and creating a walk cycle!

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Project #3: Kinetic Typography

For the kinetic typography project, I knew right away I was going to choose a song from my favorite band: Mastodon. Their unique progressive metal sound inspires images and themes into my head every time I listen to them, so I knew I would have a blast animating lyrics to coincide with one of their songs. For this project I also got to create an Animatic Story Board, something I had never done before which was actually very helpful for focusing my vision for the project. Here are both the animatic and final product! Animating the first 30 seconds of the 13 minute long epic "The Last Baron" was very interesting; the further I got along with the project, the more comfortable I became with After Effects, and the more I decided to challenge myself with the program. Making the lyric "ablaze" spin after a musical tension release was among the most enjoyable moments of the project, and I also had a lot of fun playing with the blur effect on the repeated and m

Project #1: Rotoscope

First project: rotoscope animation. The clip I traced over for the project was a deleted scene from a short film my girlfriend and I made. Here is the original footage: This was a really fun project to work on; while the frame by frame took a long time, it was a really great process and it almost reminded me of stop motion. I really liked working on drawing the characters, and something else cool was being able to draw a new background; since I am from Massachusetts, my western did not really look like I western since I didn't have the landscape. However, in Adobe Animate I was able to draw a western landscape and add a cactus in place of a tree; this was a lot of fun. I had a great time working on the rotoscope project; not only did I get to learn and appreciate the techniques behind creating a rotoscope, but it was also a great way to get comfortable with adobe animate, and it offered some exciting challenges which were great to work through and solve. I look

Final Project: Dialogue

For the final project for Animation Class, I decided to do what I have been dreaming of doing for seven years now: create a film based off of the video game Metroid Prime. While making a film with the universe of Metroid and the character of Samus has been something I have wanted to do since I was a kid, it was not until recently when I had the thought that the structure of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" would be perfect for a Metroid movie. So when it came to choosing my dialogue, it was my first thought to pull inspiration from that film. I titled it "Once Upon a Time on Tallon IV" which is the name of the planet from Metroid Prime. Where I was mostly focused on the animation, sound, timing, acting and drawing for the project, I decided to take the story element from something I was very familiar with. Thus, I tweaked the dialogue from the opening scene of "Once Upon a Time in the West" to fit the Metroid Science Fiction Uni

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