Day 45 - Sony Vegas - English Project (13) - The Cellist's Depression

What I did:
Today, I started the Cellist's Story arc. I did a lot. I made two more sprites in Photoshop (a default male and female) and I also animated the animation. I started off my having the Cellist start off from the side because the explosion happens outside with the people. I put 4 sprites in the animation other than the cellist to symbolize the group. There were 22 people in the actual line to get the bread but of course, I'm not going to put 22 people in line so I put 4 but they symbolize 22. I also added a bomb in the composition. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any mortars so I used a cartoon style bomb. I also added a flash to the animation after the bomb hits the group of people to give the explosion effect. I will be adding the sound to it later on. 

What I learned:
Today, I learned more about animating. I learned that if you move the sprite or try to adjust it when you're in the "Even Pan/Crop" section, it will change animate and form the keyframe. What I mean is that you if you want to change the size of something, make sure you are out of the "Event Pan/Crop" section. It can mess your animation up if you decide to change it when the section is open. I also learned about maintaining aspect ratio which confused me when I opened up a picture and it had black bars on the sides. If you right-click on the image and go to properties, you can deselect maintain aspect ratio and it will enlarge it. 

What I learned tomorrow:
Tomorrow, I plan to finish the Cellist's chapter and move on to Arrow's chapter. I plan to finish the Cellist's story by recording the audio and fading away to Arrow's thing. Tomorrow, I plan to create a gunshot or maybe I will stick to the flash that I used today. I plan to learn how to use some new transitions as well tomorrow

Time: 1 1/2 hours.. 

Day 44 - Sony Vegas - English Project (12) - Starting it up!

What I did:
Today, I did a lot of things. I moved forward a lot with my English project. I did a lot of things to start up the whole thing which involved creating the first two minutes of the video which involved a lot of speaking because all of it is going to have commentary. I also had to redo a lot of speech to make it good because I am a perfectionist. I did not want a script for this because I don't want it to sound too formal or scripted. I kind of just went with the flow because I am used it since I make Youtube videos and do the exact same thing. I also added my blog url to the video because I want people to know who created it plus I would like people to see all my hard work on the blog if they choose to view it.

Adding the first bit of audio:

Adding the blog url to the composition:

2 minutes of recording audio is finally complete:

What I learned:
Today, I learned a few new things in Sony Vegas. I was mainly focusing on starting the composition so I didn't actually learn a whole lot today but I do make it my goal to learn something new every day and that's what we did. I learned that you can name your layer in Sony Vegas. I know it sounds so stupid that I didn't know before even though I've used it so many times before but there never was a need until now because this project is going to have a lot of layers. So, I learned that useful technique. I also learned that the time tracking thing that I learned yesterday affects the whole layer. I only wanted Arrow to be zoomed in but the time motion tool affects everything in the layer which makes sense since I used it by clicking the layer and not the actual image. This made remove the first image and place it in a new layer because it was zooming in for 40 seconds and it didn't look good so I moved it a higher layer and it is now a still image.

What I plan to learn tomorrow:

Tomorrow, I plan to start the cellist's story. Since he only has one chapter dedicated to himself, it will be easy to do. I already have the backdrop I want to use for this and tomorrow, I plan to learn how to create an explosion in Sony Vegas because that's what the chapter involves which kickstarts the cellist's story. It will have people dying in it and I hope to create that tomorrow.

Time: 1 1/4 hours.

Day 43 - Sony Vegas - English Project (11) - Getting everything organized

What I did:
Today, I moved forward with my Cellist of Sarajevo project. Today, I started with the Sony Vegas half of the project. I imported all the characters I made in Photoshop and now they are the sprites in the animation. I also made an intro frame in photoshop. I also looked up the music that the Cellist plays in the book so I could use it but unfortunately, I do not know for sure if I searched up the right one so I will not implement it yet.

1. I put all the characters that I made in the composition.

2. I also created the intro frame in Photoshop.

3. Then, I put the intro in. I also am choosing to show only the 4 main characters before the animation starts.

What I learned:
Today, I learned about the motion tracking tool. I have used this tool before but I do not believe I used the same settings before and before I was doing stop motion which is drastically different than what I planned to do this time around. I used the track motion to resize the sprite but I will most likely also use it to hide it and then bring it in from a certain direction. It can be used to hide characters which is really important for me because I will be using it for this animation which is basically a summary of the book.

What I plan to learn tomorrow:
Tomorrow, I plan to continue with Sony Vegas. I would like to get the audio for the beginning done and I would also like to learn some other effects like a gunshot because that happens a lot in the book. I would also like to be putting in backdrops and hopefully starting Arrow's part of the book. I don't have a whole lot of time left but I will try to do a lot in the next coming weeks. Grad is also coming up so I need to hurry it up as well.

Time: 40 minutes

Day 42 - Photoshop - English Project (10) - The Cellist Character Creation

What I did:
Today, I finished using photoshop on my blog. I will most likely not use Photoshop in a blog post again because there is nothing else that is new that I need to focus on.  I will do all the  Photoshop stuff off this blog. However, Today, I finished the final major character in "The Cellist of Sarajevo" which was the cellist himself. In the book, the cellist only has one chapter dedicated to himself from his point of view and that's the prologue so most of the info is given to us by the characters about the cellist when they see him. He was the character  I wanted to create last because the whole story is based on him so it just made sense.

The Cellist  Creation:

What I learned:
Today, In photoshop,  I tried finishing up learning about distorting. Distorting is an option with many other options in the panel to help you decide what you want to do with the picture. Today, I learned what I wanted to finish learning which includes the wave and the zigzag options.

1. The zigzag tool had multiple options when selected. It had the "amount" which was used to show the amount you wanted to zigzag the image and the "ridges" which was used to zigzag-ize the edges of the image.

2. I also learned about the wave tool and this one is really neat. It gives you a bunch of options on what to do.  If you've every taken precalc or any high-level math course, you've  learned about waves and amplitude. This tool allows you to change the wave amount and all that including the amplitude and it really gives you a lot of options to customize to your liking.

What I plan to learn tomorrow:
Tomorrow, I plan to start with the Sony Vegas portion of this project. I'd say we are about 40% done with this project on this blog. I still have to create a script for the animation and  I still want to make the basics in sony vegas like the intro and end. My goal for tomorrow is to start with that. I will be working on my script alone and off blog. I also have to find backdrops that match what I want the places to look like when the get the characters moving.

Day 41 - Photoshop - English Project (9) - Side Character Creation (3)

What I did:
Today, I created some more side characters from "The Cellist of Sarajevo." I created the man in the hat from Dragan's story arc and I also created the young man also from his story arc.These characters were pretty simple to create since I've been creating them for a while now. I believe I am done all the important minor characters and I just need to create the Cellist himself.

I created these to characters today from  Dragan's story arc in Photoshop:

What I learned:
Today,  In photoshop,  I learned about shearing and spherizing in photoshop. They are both in the "distort" option and they can help you distort things, obviously. So the shear tool allows one to move the image to one side if you want to. The spherizing tool does exactly as it sounds. It spherizes the image. It brings up a bar and you can adjust the bar to your liking and it will sphere it.

Shear tool:

Spherizing:

What  I plan to learn tomorrow:

Tomorrow, I will finish up creating the characters on this blog. There are still some very very minor characters left which  I will create on my own time but tomorrow is when I create the Cellist himself.  I will plan to finish up learning things in Photoshop because tomorrow might be the day I stop using photoshop for this blog. I plan to learn more about distorting and some other things. I will go in-depth and it will work out well, hopefully. I plan to see you all tomorrow. 

Day 40 - April Analysis and May Plans

What I did and learned this past month:
So, this month I did a lot of different things. I didn't just focus on a single area of interest like I did in February and March but I just focused on different things. I used Sony Vegas and Photoshop. Early on this month, I was planning to learn about cinemagraphs and I attempted to make one in Photoshop but it didn't turn out well. I also realized there is no point in me making cinemagraphs because it doesn't help me in the endeavor to becoming a youtuber. You can learn about what happened with the cinemagraphs here.

After that disaster, I went on to start my final, final project which is going to a montage. I only made one on it this month, however, because I want to take my time with it plus I needed to start on my English Project. The thing I did in the montage post is just choose the music and set markers there so whenever there is a pop or something intense happening, I can make the gameplay match it. You can check that out here.

Next, I worked on some Sony Vegas things like colour correcting and colour splashing. I did this so not every post I made was repetitive. I wanted to space out my projects that I'm doing so I decided to learn things in Sony Vegas as well. These things will actually be helpful in the future for my Youtube and my montage so I'm not wasting my time while doing this. I also learned other things in Sony Vegas like freeze framing and colour fading and masking. I spread these things out so I wouldn't get bored of Photoshop.

After that, I decided to start my English Project which involves "The cellist of Sarajevo" which is a book based on the real siege of Sarajevo which happened between 1992-1995. This book shows the struggles of survival for all the people living in Sarajevo. There is a final project for English which involves creating something for "The Cellist of Sarajevo" which shows your understanding for the book. I think this is a good idea because I will get double credit for it. I plan to create a sony vegas animation which involves me creating sprites and using them in sony vegas which is something that I have been learning new things about in the past few months. So for atleast 8 days this month, I've been creating sprites for the characters in the book. It all began here where I made the templates for the sprites.

That is everything I did this past month in Independent Studies. I really liked using two different programs so I wouldn't get burned out on them.

What I plan to learn in May:
So this next month I plan to work on my English project and hopefully finish it. For the next few classes, I plan to finish up the sprite creation and hopefully find some backdrops for the video. Then, I plan to create a script for the video and then finally make the sprites move in Sony Vegas. I can't animate everything in Sony Vegas like the arms or the legs because Sony Vegas isn't made for that, but flash is. I can't use Flash though because that's not what this blog is about and it would take much much longer than one month to create an amazing animation in there especially when you're working solo. If somehow, I manage to finish this earlier than expected, I will start working on my montage again which is my final project this year. However, I doubt I will get to that this month because I want to perfect my English project.

One last thing. I know for the past few months, I've only done the minimum amount of posts for the month and hopefully this month will change that. I am taking AP Calculus right now so it's really hard for me to make a post every single day so I've been confined to doing multiple posts over the weekend and posting them throughout the week. However, all the Tuesday and Saturday classes for AP are going to stop on  May 9 and I will have so much more time to focus on Independent Studies.
I am also playing badminton on Mondays and Tuesdays for 3 hours so it really does suck but I have managed my time so well that I've been keeping up with all my classes and I'm proud of that. See you next month.

Day 39 - Photoshop - English Project (8) - Side Character Creation (2)

What I did:
So, Today, I created Edin Karaman and Nermin from "The Cellist of Sarajevo." They are the last two side characters that I think I needed to make. There are still a few minor characters left and that's what I'll be doing next month but today I finished creating the two characters from Arrow's story arc. I went back to the book and looked at their descriptions and  I think I did a pretty good job at creating them.

1. First, I created Nermin, Arrow's original commander. In the book, at a certain point, he starts having bloodshot eyes and ends up getting really creepy so I gave him a creepy look. I tried to follow the description as closely as possible and since he's a part of the army, I gave him an insignia as well.

2. I also created Edin Karaman who is Arrow's next commanding officer. He's old and has gray hair so I applied that. He's also a part of the army so I also gave him an insignia. The description states that he has brown eyes so I gave him those too. 

What I learned:

Today, I learned about pixelation. To be honest, it was boring. Like really boring. I'm probably not going to use this again but I thought there would be more options for pixelation but I guess there's not. I didn't go through everything though because I got bored but I did learn some new things.

1. First, I learned about about halftone colour and to use it. You can decide how big you want it and it changes the picture heavily like this: Notice the badge:

2. Then I learned about crystallization. After you open the option, it gives you another window and you can decide how much you want to crystallize it by moving the bar. 

3. Finally, I learned about pointilizing. It works just like the crystallization option but it changes it differently in that the colour is different and the pixelation is also different.

What I plan to do tomorrow:
Tomorrow, I plan to do my April Analysis post. It's going to be the post in which I explain what I did and what I plan to do next month in Independent studies. I will explain everything that is going to happening in the next month which is basically just me doing the english project. However after tomorrow, I plan to continue creating side characers in Photoshop. I am done most of the characters and I only need to do a few more so I'm nearing the end of the photoshop phase.

Time: 40 minutes