Salts mill update 1

a quick update ive been struggling with the windows on the salts building but my tutor helped me by copying one window and then moving it to the correct position but that was not all i had to delete some polygons and then move the window to its place where then i had to create faces which is a difficult process

Music Studio Induction

Today we had an introduction to the music studio (well the one in college anyway) we where shown two dynamic microphones one was a rm57 model and the other was a rm58 both were industry standard, one was used to record vocals whereas the other one sounds ie. drums, footsteps etc.
We where shown something called a mixer which you plug the microphones into it acts as a control station for the output of the sound coming from the microphone. On the mixer there are tons of buttons but we were only taught the basics for now they included volume and several effects.
We also used a program called audacity 1.3 beta which I had some experience with from my previous school, on it we were asked to have a go at recording and playing with different effects that were pre-installed on audacity. We were also given a quick 101 on safety of the equipment making sure no food or drink was in the studio as water an electronic is a fire hazard and food could get stuck in the instruments and buttons.

For our 3D project me and my second in charge Steven had a quick talk of how we where going to implement sounds in our 3D trailer. We decided we needed footsteps and general sounds of outside ie. people talking, wind, cars etc. we also talked about voice overs which at the moment we don't where we are going to include it the rest we are still brainstorming.

quick update

today ive been concentrating on my 3d model and have completed 40% of my first building

landscape texture

Today we learnt how to create a landscape on 3ds max and to add texture.
First we open photoshop and set the file to 512x512 pixels at 72 resolution then we make sure the colour pallet is set to black and white. We then select filter from the top a go to the render option where we chose clouds we the saved the file as a jpeg. Then we open 3ds max and create a plain which then we set the length and width 512x512 to mirror the jpeg file. We the select the modifier panel (rainbow)

Team logo ideas

Steven (2nd in charge) and ciaron (lacky) discussed the teams logo ideas as I and Sadique were not present due to medical appointments. They chose different aspects from each of our logos and started on a final idea

Project team

Today we were given our teams for the main project of the year, there was a lot of moans and groans but we had to man up.
My team consist of four members
Waqar(me)
Steven
Cieron
Sadique
I was elected as team leader for my organisation, communicating and more skills but due to sometimes of my ill health Steven was made 2nd in command as he has perfect attendance and is good at taking notes. Our team name after a lot of searching and debating agreed in a democratic vote on robot larma.
We all have different strengths
I posses organisation skills and am average at 3d basic modelling and photoshop however I am not keen on flash. Steven is good at the research and is also average at 3d modelling and flash and although he disliked it has some ability in flash his weakness is his over excitement. Ciaron has good flash skills but has poor timing and is absent a lot. Sadique has basic flash skill but tends to give up too easily.
Our group will be focusing on the blue route.

Final Stop Motion PG Version

This is my final version of our stop motion (PG) this was a forced edit due the damn law

EVALUATION

I think our animation went well considering the faulty camera we had (kept zooming in and out). overall the story did differ from our original planning as we added numerous universes. when we were shooting the animation we ran into a few problems, one being that the props would sometime fall over so we used blu tack. the animation took us 2 fridays (6hours) to take the images. the video editing was done at home on iMovie, there were several versions before the final one, i also shared editing with my team mate Steven but he was using Movie Maker so in the end he added a opening scene to my version and uploaded it to his blog (www.sirmastersteven.blogger.com).

the easiest part of the whole process for me would have to be the editing as iMovie is very linear and simple and offers great tools.

Compared to proffesionals i think our animation is not far off, if we had a better camera and more resources we could have done a lot more.

Our class enjoyed the animation as they found it humerus and thought there was good use of sound. 

if there was anything i could improve on it would have to be to get props that had more flexibility as some of the ones we used were to stiff and unbalanced and maybe a bit too big.

if our team did it again i would get better props, camera and spend less time arguing and falling out with team mates.