this has taken forever

bouncy ball

look look. i made this in class today. for some reason the render messed up at the end and i had to do some painting/stamp tool in after effects.

ummmmm also can we learn how to make complex characters. BEN TEACH ME. i want to make my own characters not use someone else's.

update

so, i got extra notes from becca during class on thursday and i am still having issues with opening my file out of mm into maya. blerg.

capital T

i'm having a lot of trouble even opening my exported mm file into maya. it won't open. it did once but then wouldn't let me select the camera viewport. guess who's coming to lab. will there be wings? or celery?

so pretty!

ahhh

woah i'm sick but woah i finished this awful scene. hey amelia, make something better sometime soon. ok.

a bad dreamworks movie from 1998

that's what this looks like. i miss 3ds max. i was good at that program. i'm bad at maya. very sad face.

i forgot my concept image

oopsies! here is the image i've been working off of.

minimalism?

i'm not really into the whole castle/fantasy game thing. sorry ben, that's sort of your forte. so, i made a frank lloyd wright inspired house. after drawing it out and then making most of it on the computer, i turned around and saw that other kids had created really cool castles. and that mine looked really simple in comparison.

but then i realized, isn't that sort of the point? frank lloyd wright rejected ornate and frivolous architecture, even though it was beautiful. he celebrated clean lines and functional construction. so really, i fulfilled the goal i began with. it actually took quite a bit of time to make the curves look right and for the balconies to curve and have parts dug out. i really like using the boolean tool. 10% for it's name.

i think i will truly be satisfied with this piece when it has materials. which is this week! i am going to be a great material artist. this i know.


i don't know how to use blogger or html for that matter. the rectangle is off. failing at life right now.

reference images

i want to build a modernist house. something a la frank lloyd wright. i collected some images to use as my reference point and i think today i'll work on combining them to make something awesome. here are the images i've found that i like. the only problem is that i would really like to include foliage with these images. i love how flw (oh yeah, abbreviated) uses natural surroundings to build his houses. it's not really the same in the limbo of 3d land. maybe i can continue building this through a few of our assignments.

lofts/extrusions/weird things i've made

this week i've been making some interesting things. how useful they are to my practical (as practical as animating can get) abilities, i'm not sure. however, THEY LOOK COOL.


poorly designed and executed "AG" logo. my initials. i can't get the dimensions right on this. it looks funnnnnny.


this is my favorite of the things i made. it's an extrusion that got sort of tangled up in itself. i really used this exercise to play with materials. this one is just a blinn. but it's nice and transparent.


look at this quality goblet i made with a revolution.


this is a loft. with a shitty material. but i thought it was fun to play and work with textures.


this one is cool but i need to learn lights.

ta da!

atmospheric painting

i made this little atmospheric painting partly in class. i'm sort of obsessed. i had the drawing from this summer, but it looks amazing colored.

skysphere

so, i'm not particularly one for convention. i enjoy most things if they have fifty years of rust and sweat on them. shiny, new plastic sort of weirds me out. this may seem irrelevant, but truthfully, i apply this love of vintage to my art as well. so, when making a sky sphere for this assignment, i knew i had only a few options.

first, i tried to make/take a panorama of my room. it sort of worked but considering i'm doing this at 2 am the night before it's due, i didn't have a lot of time to work with it. (i'm sorry ben, here is the reason why: http://vimeo.com/14790347 five months of hard work. it ended tonight).

so, first attempt failed miserably. BUT, i did use some found images and some lights (i know, i'm ahead of the game) to make this skysphere really work. i used two vintage images, one of las vegas and one of philadelphia. i also found an image online that made a really cool rendered picture. it looks real except the backwards text.

enjoy!

hello again

hi readers,

my name is amelia giller and this is the blog i've been keeping for ben bay's classes at the university of texas. i have a number of blogs which i find sort of embarrassing, but necessary. i have a fashion blog that chronicles street style here in lovely austin, texas. and, i have a newer blog where i post my daily drawings. i guess i truly understand how great blogs are for showing evolution within your portfolio. which is why i'm making this one strictly for visual effects.

i wanted to share some of my work with you, although a similar post can be found a few months back. i've done some great work since then. first, i'm sharing my favorite stop motion piece i've done called "rare bird".




i am also sharing a photo from my fashion blog. you can see more posts here: commonbirds.



here is a photo of some of something i drew recently. you can see my drawing blogs here: ameliorate.



and here is another photo i took of my cousin.


i hope these little snidbits give you a peak into my interests!

still working! i promise

Oops

I forgot to post! But I am working. I have changed my final project. I am doing some animated title sequences for a good friend Stephen. His movie is so cool, it's about a man who wants to straighten his curly mustache for a lady. All live action, all very goofy.

Although there is something pure about doing your own work in college (Ben reminded me of this) it is always interesting to work in groups and have someone be in charge. I've had a few disagreements with the director of the film. He hasn't really liked my work that much, which surprised me. I really like what I have been doing and I have spent a good deal of time on it. Everything I have shown him, however, he has said is a "good start." I finally responded that spending four hours on something is not a start. It's a difficult balance, friendship and working under someone. He hasn't told me if he likes the stuff that I've redone. And, perhaps it is not that I'm doing things wrong but he needs to give me more direction. Anyway, I'm working very hard. Trying to get things done.

Here is about 1/5 of the work I'm doing for him.

inspirational images

Well well well. It seems that our favorite time of year is upon us: crunch time. I am working on a stop motion for Geoff's class that involves making a suit of women's clothing. I'm working on the costume, but with this awful physics test this week I haven't had too much time. However, I found some inspiration images to help me through the process. First of all, I googled "clothes monster" and got these images which are awesome and make me wish I had time to sew something so splendid. But also, when I found them they were on a blog post about a monster made up of clothing from a bedroom like the idea behind my stop motion. It made me feel quite unoriginal, that someone had even gone to the trouble enough to make a costume. I guess they didn't make a movie!


I'm also inspired by the title sequence from Monster's Inc. (the fact that it has Monster in the title is not really what inspires me but the fact that it is so dynamic and entertaining and yet, a title sequence). I am not sure how I want to make my title sequence work, it definitely will not be as fantastic as the one by Pixar. But maybe if I try hard enough...

I am posting these findings hoping to inspire myself this weekend into doing something. HOORAY physics is almost over. I might get my life back sometime soon.

Particles

Wow last little project for class. Scaryyy.

Anyways, for this project I thought I'd add some effects to an animation that I'd already made. The animation storyline itself was supposed to have rain, but I didn't know how to do rain with paper and stop motion, so I left it out. But, with After Effects and Particles I was able to add the effect I wanted.

The only thing I dislike about particles is how silly they can look. I think my snow looks pretty cool, and perhaps my rain, but the fire just looks terrible. Honestly, I wouldn't have added fire but I needed five particle systems to make. But, I really like that I could add a little debris from the birdhouse breaking that shoots towards the camera because I wasn't able to do that with my stop motion. I guess I have pretty mixed feelings about particles, they are useful in some situations, but in others they are really ugly.

I guess this post sort of sums up how I feel about CG effects in the first place. I really like organic, hand animated effects, they look more natural and are more impressive. I like to think of the fire that I made for this project (which is really bad, I'm not going to lie, particles are definitely not my forte) versus the PES video where they use candy corn to represent fire. It looks better, even though it's made of candy.That being said, sometimes it is really hard to do everything by hand, for example, rain effects out of paper. In that case, I would definitely want to use CG. I guess I compare CG particles to cooking with salt, use sparingly, but in some cases it is necessary.

Green Screen

Perhaps I am not the best at keying, but I thought I turned our idea into something sort of worthwhile. I also realize, I'm a terrible actress. But, I made our scene into a space scene. Complete with floating TV and huge shooting stars. Enjoy.

This Week

I'm not sure if we necessarily needed to post this week. I'm looking forward to learning how to key and do more with a green screen. I couldn't make it to class on Monday because of Passover. The one night Jews are allowed to get drunk instead of go to class. It's a good holiday. Anyway, I've been working on my stop motion for Geoff's class. I was originally going to use a green screen but realized I have no idea what I'm doing and that a week from now would be a better opportunity to shoot and key.

Here is the stopmotion.





I think it turned out pretty well.


Also, for my project in this class I'm going to do something with our magic carpet ride shoot. It should be really ugly and cheesy, but hey, I'm learning.

PICKLE PARTY

During a conversation with my father about my art (we were looking at my sketchbook) I was told that all of my artwork seems to be drug induced. Although I am not on any sort of drugs, I think my father would have the same opinion about this piece. I had an idea to have a Spongebob Squarepants type intro scene for a tv show. I originally wanted some sort of hungry beaver or woodchuck to be eating the title, but since Angry Beavers seems to have already done something similar, the next thing that came to mind was a hungry pickle. Seriously, not on drugs.

I would have liked to include another little bit of the pickle eating the title, but this was all I had time to do. The voices are all mine, unedited. Also, I couldn't find a good song to put in the background, so I left it blank. But, it's missing a good song, you know? 

Enjoy.

3D Project

This project went pretty smoothly. Although still completely uninspired and perhaps running out of time for everything I care about in life, this project is at least PRETTY. I recorded a brief conversation between my friend Mia and I and then I made characters that spoke. From there, I made a little scene of a room with drawn images and images I found on the internet and made look graphicy in Photoshop.

I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to drag a Flash file into After Effects without pixelation. Turns out there is a button. Woo. Anyway check out my silly project.

Re-inspired...maybe

I don't know if I would consider myself once again inspired by After Effects but I seem to be on the right track. And, considering I have this ridiculous hatred of all things 3-D, I would say my outlook is quite positive. Perhaps what I mean when I say "I hate 3-D" is that I hate crappy looking animation done with inexperienced artists. I don't mean to sound so cynical, but there is a quality to 2-D animations that a lot of 3-D is lacking. That being said, I love love love this idea of "posters" or "billboards." I can take my 2-D designs and my doodles from my sketchbook and turn them into wonderful little scenes.

So, for this week, I'm doing just that. I've already started drawing and coloring with prismacolors (yayayaya) this little scene of a living room. And, for my other animation class I'm doing three animal walk cycles. I plan on combining these to make a scene like something out of Jumanji. An ostrich, a skunk and some sort of robot animal will all run through the scene. I will use After Effects to make the scene look 3-D. 

I don't have pictures of my illustrations scanned into the computer yet, but I do have my ostrich walk done. And almost my skunk. But my skunk is making me angry. So I won't be posting it. Here is my ostrich.

Adding Absolutely Nothing to My Owl Movie

I made this Monster Owl in Animation class a few days ago. I really liked him and since I have no project I'm working on with him, I thought I might use it for Visual Effects class. What I didn't realize is that I kind of liked the way the owl monster was. He was simple, there was no background and I liked him that way.

That being said, I thought I'd make the movie a little weirder. A little less explanatory. So, first I used a shape layer to make all of the stars. I made the movement of one star and then copied it and pasted a bunch all over the scene. That way they would all sort of rotate in unison. They hardly rotate, though, which was what I was going for.

The next part was trickier. I wanted to play with masks a little, but I just couldn't get it to work in my scene. I wanted a moon to rise and to suck up the little owl. But, the way I composited all of the leaves etc didn't work with my mask idea. So, I decided to go with what I knew: the paintbrush. I wanted his twirling, flying motion to seem unreal, and so why he's flying all of this lush garden grows. With purple flowers. And then, when he glides back down to his branch they disappear and he blinks. I think the only problem with my construction here was that the video is too short for this to really make sense. It looks dumb. Third week of dumb looking projects. Bleh.





Here is the original, compare and notice how when I didn't add effects it's cooler.

third project

so i'm continuing to build the bathroom scene but already i'm bored with it and probably will build something new for next week. this time, i took out the sound and shortened everything (unfortunately the video goes on for about five seconds after my two second clip...oopsies). i added a toilet and a character. i'm unhappy how "slidey" everything looks. we talked about this in class in regards to "a scanner darkly" and i've encountered it before when using interpolation software (3d studio max, for example). i am going to work on fixing this sort of appearance in my future projects because i believe it gives my work an amateur feel that i want to move past.

i tried to make the woman in the bathtub look angry by throwing her arms up. i used two different segments for her arm parts and parented the lower part of the arm to the upper part. i used nested compositions AND easy ease out on the key frames for the arms.

right now i'm not super inspired by after effects. i like learning the program but it's nothing like flash, which i took to quickly and began to love. i think i might start working with animations i make in flash in after effects. all hypothetical projects of course.

so i was playing with vimeo's badge page. this isn't an update for this week's project. i'm frustrated because i uploaded older videos later on vimeo and so they show up most often. i didn't make that 3-D dog last year, I made it in highschool but it's my only 3-D work. bleh. but mostly i was trying to play around with some html from vimeo to here.

bathroom or something

so, due to some awful failures on the part of cs4 that are going to cause me to reinstall this weekend, this project isn't as tight as i would like it to be. the audio wasn't importing in after effects and so i threw the project into premiere, my only editing software. wouldn't you know it, premiere decided that it would not let me preview what i'm working on. so everytime i wanted to watch my movie in full, i would have to export. anyway, this is as tight as i could get my bathroom scene, which i will build upon each week. notice that there is no toilet. also, there is no one who is actually opening the door, i didn't do any character design for this piece.

besides for problems, let me explain to you the things i'm really happy about. i started this project with the intention of creating a dollhouse that animates. i was going to build one out of real fabric and wall paper samples, etc. but then i started watercoloring and got really into it. i love the way my bathtub and curtain turned out, they look stylistically like what i envisioned in my head. i was more concerned with the look than the animation, mostly because i knew i could build upon it each week. at this point i want to start building a huge dollhouse thing by the end of the semester, culminating with a gigantic set to use for future animations.

here is the video.

photoshop

as of recently, i've taken much pleasure in making tilt-shift photographs in photoshop. for those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of tilt-shift photos, let me explain. originally, it was a process used while actually taking a photo to make your composition seem as if it was taken from a miniature set. i'll be honest and say i have no idea how to do it on my camera. but, since i am skilled in the ways of photoshop (meaning about five months ago i read a tutorial explaining how to make tilt-shift images) i've been able to create these interesting scenes in post-production.

so as i said, i've been doing this sort of photography lately. i've used a few of my own photographs and also those i find on the internet. for this project, i wanted to used something i found because the scenes i could think of were all impossible around austin. so i found an image of a highway. but i was bored with my usual experiments in tilt-shift. i thought i might add something magical, an element i've not seen before in such photographs. i decided to play with the idea that this scene really is a miniature and that someone is continuing to build the set. with the help of my roommate's hand and a toy house i had laying around my house, i was able to put together the image i wanted.

i'll talk the production process step by step.
1. found suitable photograph on the internet.
2. after duplicating the image (see ben, i listen), i created a mask on the new layer.
3. before i chose which parts to select and hide in the mask, i lens blurred the whole layer.
4. once the layer was blurred, i used the mask to select the part i wanted to be in focus, or the middle ground. in other words, i used the black brush to hide the middleground, allowing the original in-focus first layer to show through.
5. so, at this point i had my tilt-shift photograph finished. but that was too easy, and who doesn't want a challenge?
6. i then photographed my roommates hand holding a small cardboard house. after importing it into photoshop, i dragged it as a new layer onto my scene, sized it and created a mask so that i wouldn't have to erase.
7. after tweaking the mask for hours, i finally finished and noticed that the cars in the scene have very soft shadows. on another layer, i painted a small square and then made the layer opaque. i then blurred the edges of the shadow and trimmed it down to size.
8. my image is not perfect but i believe it was done to the best of my abilities. i think there seems to be some other message here, possibly relating to god and god's hands or something, but i didn't really start off with that message.



this post is very long.

until next time,
amelia

introductape

hello.

this is my new blog, although i have several others around the internet. i have my own photo and inspiration blog (ameliagiller.tumblr.com) and a street fashion blog (commonbirds.wordpress.com).

i cannot remember a time when i did not draw cartoons. as a nine year old, i wanted to be jim henson and became heavily involved in ventriloquism. i made my own puppets and for my birthday i received the creepiest dummy that i could find online. her name was dolly and my siblings tell me they still have nightmares about her.

this is jim henson, in case you were wondering.

as an eleven year old, i'd changed my hero from henson to disney, and wanted to draw princess movies for a living. thank god, that summer i attended a claymation camp for kids my age and soon dropped the princess fever, replacing it with a new found obsession for all things stop motion.

i won't bore you with the many stages of my artistic development. nowadays, i'm very interested in graphic design and animation. here is my final project for geoff marslett's intro class.


i write and draw comics for the daily texan. check out mipsterz and my most recent creation, craigslist!

more to come in the future!

amelia