eMagine Is Coming

Hey guys, I haven' t been on in a while, but I am happy to report that I have been working hard on my various projects. As the title states, our schools multi-media festival "eMagine" is coming up. I decided to do another kinetic typography to the song, All of the Stars by Ed Sheeran. I want to come back this year and show the judges that I have really improved in my animation.

My schedule lately has been super hectic and busy, since I am a senior in high school and the college I want to attend will not let me in. I also play golf and act in my schools theatre program. I am currently working on the kinetic typography project for eMagine but I am also working on a huge client project. I have been hired by an international company to do an animation for their company. Unfortunately that is all of the information I can give you, since this company is very confidential with information and projects.

So, back to my animation, I started by looking back at my project from last year and going over the judges notes on what could have been improved in my animations. My mom and various other particularly liked my hand painted landscapes I would do throughout the project. I needed to find a song with a lot of imagery and when I heard it, I knew it was the right song to do.



I am know for storyboarding as I go, so below I have provided what I have so far for storyboards. Since I have a little over a month to work on the project, I am thinking of cutting the animation after the main refrain of the song.

Right now I am having trouble tying it all together, I did not know if all of the backgrounds being different would be a bad thing. I am also just having trouble managing my time, since there are around 45 days until the entries are due.

My goal is to win a pixel, I really just want to show others, the hard work that I put into everything that I do. I was not born an animator, artist, or golfer which is why I have to work so hard at these things. I don't want to fall flat on my face again; I want to prove to myself and others that I CAN do this and that I am not a huge mess up. To win a pixel award would be like a pat on the back for the end of my high school career, and prove that I am a talented young woman.

Here is what I have so far, I may be cutting the song is time is not available to finish. If you have any comments or suggestions, email them to the email below; it would be greatly appreciated!

krausportraits@gmail.com

The Decades Come All Together

Hey guys, it's been a while since I last blogged. If you saw my blog from this time last year, you would see I was working on my eMagine  project. eMagine is our states multi-media festival that is judged for Video, Animation, Graphic Design and Web. Last year I entered a project called Atlas. This year I am doing a more somewhat out of the box idea for my project.

I am personally into music, no I do not play a musical instrument,

but I listen to music all the time, even as I am typing this I am listening 

to music. I though one day, some people now a days don't even know who Elvis

The Beatles or even The Who. I thought it would be cool to make an animation  that

shows that yes the music from the early 1950's is different than our music today, but 

that it is actually similar. 

I started by making a list of songs that would go with each decades,

then narrowing it down to three songs per. decade. I then made what

I call a modern mixtape on my MacBook on Garage Band, with about

10 seconds per. song. This took me about a full week to get it exactly 

how I wanted it. 

I started with the song Rock Around the Clock By Bill Haley and His Comets.

My mom had said that the song reminded her of the old show, Happy Days

because one of their seasons opening titles were set to the song. So I made a 

record rotating with swing dancers on either side of it, with the words Happy Days

appearing above it  to mimic the original intro. I then have the record fly off screen

to transition to the next song.

The next song is Jail House by the king himself, Elvis Presley. 

I took the video made back in the 50's and separated it into its

separate frames so I could frame by frame drawing of his dance.

I then copied the finished danced and shrunk it down, so he could

have background dancers. They dance in sync until they fade out to

the next song.

The next song is Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. I watched several

videos of Mr. Berry's performances and noticed that instead of synchronized 

dancers, he had gogo dancers in the background. I then faded out Elvis and his dancers

then slowly faded in Mr. Berry and his gogo dancers. 

The difficulties I am facing with this project, is transitioning the songs 

that don't really go together from the different decades. I also need to know

if this project is actually award worthy, or if I need to be doing something

else completely different. I have worked really hard so far, and hope to win 

a pixel award this year. The test render is below of the 1950's decade finished.

I need to fix the blurry Elvis. I feel that I have worked extremely hard, and 

just want all the hard work to pay off.