Bonus Points: Lighting a Scene in Maya

Here is the image of my initials with default lighting.

Here are my initials lit with one-point lighting.

Here are my initials lit with two-point lighting.

And finally, here are my initials lit with three-point lighting.

Opting Out of Third Term Paper

My first two term paper scores were both above 80; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Fireballs

1.     Introduction

a.      Fire is often used as a dazzle element in storytelling. It’s dangerous it’s unpredictable. Reflects those who can control it

b.     Characters who can control fire in Avatar the Last Airbender and X Men the Last Stand

                                                    i.     Avatar – 2D hand drawn animated TV series

                                                  ii.     X Men 2 – Live action film

2.     Avatar the Last Airbender - Animated TV series

a.      Season 1 Episode 8: rock coated with flammable liquid is set on fire

                                                    i.     Fire effect was painted over finished rock animation

                                                  ii.     The fire is not very believable in this shot. It looks like the fire is on its own flat layer and not wrapping around the rock

b.     Season 1 Episode 17: Fireballs shot from tanks

                                                    i.     Hand drawn animated and painted

                                                  ii.     The fire is pretty believable in this scene

3.     X Men the Last Stand

a.      Pyro “holds” a fireball in hand

                                                    i.     done entirely using computer graphics

                                                  ii.     Not very realistic – the flame looks like a large fire that was shrunk to palm size, the timing is off

b.     Cars on fire thrown at heroes

                                                    i.     Cars on wires were used in filming. The fire was added later using computer graphics

                                                  ii.     This fire is pretty believable in this shot

4.     Conclusion

a.      Fire is an often used effect for dramatic purposes, especially when a character is controlling it

b.      Fire effects, even when fantastical, can be believable when laws of physics are abide by.

Character Animation

For this animation, I used paper to animated my characters. The bird seed is uncooked quinoa stuck to tape. I planned out my animatic in flash and then I cut out each non-repeated pose that I needed for the animation. I had my camera mounted on a tripod shooting down at my scene, where I moved and placed the poses I needed for each shot. I then used Photoshop to clean up any images that needed it. Finally, I assembled all the images together in Flash, timed them out accordingly, and exported.

Here are some example of a few poses laid out together.

This is my workstation.