Final

     I have finished my final animation project recently.  My original proposal/abstract was that I would use my Kirby model to jump on his star that I modeled and fly it some where.  This is were I started from and as time went on I developed more ideas.  I started planning it in my head and then made a short storyboard for pre-production.  I boarded out the basics for my project with a few written notes.  The story board is uploaded below.  The story was Kirby being interrupted from eating his apple to fight Zero(another character from the Kirby franchise).  I boarded the fight and an after credits scene were Kirby would finally eat his apple.  My animation was based off of the Kirby franchise by HAL Laboratory and Nintendo.  I chose this because not only do I enjoy the Kirby games but a lot of Kirby characters and items were more simple to model which is good for someone who isn't yet great at modeling.  It still took some time to model the characters and items as I wanted them to look good but I was able to model pretty much all the things I wanted to.  Rigging was a little difficult but not too bad since I only had to rig one model and it was Kirby who is a very simple model.  It took some trial and error but I was able to rig Kirby and make a short test animation.  I actually talked about this rig in a previous blog entry.  I eventually put all my models together in one file and created a world for Kirby to be animated in.  I made the floor green to represent grassy areas while also adding some hills.  For the background I made it light blue to represent the sky although the sky would get darker during certain points in the animation and look more dark blue.  The world looked simple but that kind of matched the aesthetic so it worked well.  After this was all done I started animation.  

    

    The animation was a little tricky as I wanted to animate a fight scene but I was able to get through it.  I also animated a lot of things in a similar way to the games as little references.  I focused mainly on animation first and then focused on the cameras.  I created four cameras and had them each in specific positions at different points in the animation.  I actually rendered this in parts as I first rendered one camera and then the next and so on.  Sometimes I'd render the same camera but at a different point in the animation.  Before rendering though I worked on the lighting.  The lighting was a little annoying but I was able to get it to look decent.  I mainly used spotlights which were more of a light yellow.  One of the spotlights was more orange then yellow though.  I also used a point light which was more yellow.  Some of these lights I had move for specific parts of the animation.  After I finished with the animation it was time to add some editing.  I didn't have Adobe Premiere so I used Windows Movie Maker which was enough to get the job down.  At first I had trouble getting all the rendered frames in Movie Maker as there were a lot of them and it kept crashing Movie Maker.  I fixed this issue by doing it in parts.  I saved each part and then combined them after they were turned into videos.  For sound effects and music I used the Kirby franchise's sounds and music.  I already had a decent idea of what sounds and music I wanted to use so I was happy to finally add them.  Movie Maker only lets you use so many sounds so I had to add some sound effects, save it, and then add it back to Movie Maker to add more sounds.  This was a little annoying but it was a worth it work around to add in enough sounds and music to make the video feel alive.  I also added in some credits at the end.  After the credits I added in one more short scene that I animated and planned to have play after the credits.  

    Overall I'm happy with how my project turned out.  I think for the level I'm at the animation was done well and looked good.  I especially liked my running animation I did for Kirby.  I feel like the running animation looked good.  I tried to animate Kirby moving a lot but it's hard to tell at times because of the rig.  In the future I would want to have a more advanced rig so I could do more with Kirby or any other character.  I also want to try to make my future animations a little slower as this one was kind of fast moving.  Either way I enjoyed animating this and was happy to see the results.  The cameras were a little annoying because I wanted them to show what was happening without showing too much.  They were also a little annoying because it made rendering take a bit longer as I had to do it in parts but I'm happy I did it this way because it looks much better with more than one camera.  The lighting I thought looked fine.  I wasn't blown away by my lighting but I though I did alright.  In the future I might work more on my lighting so I can get better at it.  Video editing is were I probably had the most fun as I've always enjoyed video editing.  I enjoy adding stuff in and seeing the project become more alive.  In the future I might want to use a better editing program but I think I did a pretty good job at editing the video.  In conclusion I'm happy with how my animation turned out but hope I can continue to improve.

In case there are any issues playing my final animation here is a link to the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/cNPW0Z3cGoY