Post 5: Conventions Of Digital Animation

Task 1

Explain the standards and conventions used to produce digital media outcomes.

I've used standards and conventions in my work. One of the standards that i used for my digital outcome is the properties editor. I used the properties editor to change the settings of my animation to acquire a high quality animation. I also used the render settings to change the quality of the animation to high standard. I also used 2 of the principles of animation which is the "straight ahead and pose to pose" and "appeal".

The "appeal" principle of animation is to make the character feel interesting in some way. Giving a character personality counts as having an appeal because it makes it unique from other characters. For my character i didn't use a face but i believe the model and colors of my character will appeal to my audience because it has a futuristic form.
The "straight ahead and pose to pose" principle of animation uses two techniques to create movement of a character. I used the pose to pose technique to produce my animation for my character which is to walk. This technique uses keyframes in which i used to produce 4 keyframes in my character animation to make it walk. In order to make key frames i have to be in pose mode and then move the arms and legs to acquire the keyframes i need to make the walking animation.

For the render presets i maintained the resolution to 1920x1080 100% to acquire a high definition animation but it requires a lot of space. I also changed the frame rate to 24 fps so that my animation would run smoothly instead of looking like it's pausing every second. In the file location settings i made a folder to place all the rendered images so that it'll be easier for me to collate all of the rendered images in Adobe After Effects. I also changed the file format of the rendered images to PNG instead of JPG so that the quality of the images are high to produce a high definition animation.


Task 2

Discuss the positive and negative implications of adhering to digital media standards and conventions when developing digital media outcomes.


When I was doing my character animation there were positive and negative implications that affected my work. The positive thing is that I made my character pose to pose and the animation will still look HD. But the negative thing is that the amount of keyframes I have is only 4. which means the animation won't be detailed. Another positive implication is that my character's animation duration was only seconds but then the file size would be huge just for more than 10 seconds. The file size went to 2 Gigabytes which is more than an actual movie.


Task 3

Evaluate how the application of standards and conventions affect the quality of digital media outcomes.

 By having applications of conventions and standards in my work I am able to achieve high quality renders and animations of my work. This enabled me to render my work to 1920x1080 and 24 fps which produces a high grade animation. Having applications and standards do really help with the quality and grade of the animation.


Task 4


Discuss the relationship between standards and conventions, in relation to the requirements of digital media outcomes.


In order to acquire a high grade animation I would have to use both conventions and standards because if one of the two is missing then the animation would have a lot of negative implications which can lower the grade of the work. If you want your work to be advanced then you would need really good standards and at the same time you want your work to appeal to other people which means you need a good convention.

Post 1: Questions/Research

Task 1: Key Questions

What/Who will be my character(s) be?
• Zed
• Cloud
• Vincent Valentine
• Itachi Uchiha
•
Who has done this before?

Who/What is my favourite Animated/Video-game character

How can i be original?

What new skills do i need to learn?

Movement

• Blender - Motion capture

-Camera tracking

• Digital Video Camera
• MPEG Stream Clip

Character
• Illustration-pen tool
• Scan
• Drawing
• Tracing
• Photshop

Task 2: Research: Existing Characters

Zed

Aesthetics- I can't really see his body because he has a full set of armor like shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Color palette- Black, Grey, Red Purple, And Metallic

Style- Asian/Oriental

Accessories- Full set of armor, Hidden Blade, Giant Shurikens, Cape

Personality- Dark, Evil, Power hungry

Motivation-  To have his revenge on his master who banished him for using the forbidden art.

Relationships- Zed is friends with Syndra who is the dark sovereign and enemies with Shen(Master's son), Akali and Kennen who were the ninjas that was trained by the same master who was killed by Zed


Back story- Zed was an orphan and was taken in and trained by the great ninja master. Zed always wanted to win the master's favour but Shen(Master's son) always draws with him. Zed became jealous and then sought out to find an advantage. He found a box which had all knowledge of the forbidden ways and used the techniques to beat Shen at a duel. His master found out that he used the forbidden ways and banished him. He then comes back with an army to seek revenge in which lead to the death of his master and claimed the temple as his training grounds.

Cloud

Aesthetics- Tall and skinny, has a good proportion.

Color palette- Dark, Flat

Style- Realistic, Hand-drawn

Accessories- Buster sword, black outfit

Personality- Helpful, Determined

Motivation- To stop Sephiroth from coming back to life

Relationships- Cloud has a relationship with Tifa Lockhart and enemies with Sephiroth


Back story- Professor Hojo had found the bodies of Zack and Cloud and decided to use them for experimentation of the Jenova Project. For five years, Cloud and Zack were used as lab rats to Hojo in the Shin-Ra Mansion. The amount of Jenova and Mako injected into Cloud’s body brought him into a comatose. Zack had no reaction to the cells injected into his body and five years later he broke out of the Shin-Ra Mansion along with Cloud. Zack had escaped with Cloud who was still in a coma state, yet before they made it into Midgar, Zack was shut down. Cloud’s memories then joined with what Zack was, causing Cloud to believe he was Zack. Later on Cloud’s memories merged with Tifa’s thoughts, and Cloud believed he was the First Class soldier who grew up in the town of Nibelheim.

Vincent Valentine

Aesthetics- Tall and Skinny. His aesthetic reminds me of Itachi Uchiha from Naruto Shippuden.

Color Palette- Dark, Stained

Style- Destructed, Urban

Accessories- Headband, Cape, Gun, Pointy Gloves and Shoes

Personality- Vincent isn't much of a talker. He always keeps quiet and doesn't try to be friendly with anyone.

Motivation- To kill Sephiroth who was the antagonist
Relationships- Vincent fell in love with a support scientist Lucrecia Crest

Back story- About thirty years ago, Vincent was a member of the
Shin-Ra Electric Power Company's Administrative Research Division--the company's Black Ops unit, otherwise known as the Turks. At the age of twenty-seven he was assigned to supervise something called the JENOVA Project in a town called Nibelheim, and there he fell in love with one of the supporting scientists, Lucrecia Crescent. Though they were very attached to one another, an unpleasant secret in Lucrecia's past--related to the death of Vincent's father--caused her to withdraw from him and instead pursue a relationship with another scientist, Hojo. Soon after, Lucrecia was discovered to be pregnant, and the fetus was slated to be used as a subject in the project. Vincent seemed to operate under the impression that the child was his, although her relationship with both him and Hojo made the issue of fatherhood rather vague.

Nacho Libre

Aesthetics- Hes tall and fat which reminds me of luchadors from Mexico .Has a good proportion.

Color Palette- Light blue, bright

Style- Mexican

Accessories- Mask, Pants

Personality- He has a good sense of humour

Motivation- To get the woman of his dreams

Relationships- Crush on a Nun

Back story-  He was raised up in an orphanage and one day he came across a poor man who had wrestling skills which lead them to becoming a tag team

Batman

Aesthetics- Tall and muscular, has good proportion.

Color palette- Monochromatic black,

Style- Hand drawn, Urban, Cartoon comic surrealist.

Accessories- Mask, Cape, Arm gear, Belt

Personality- He is a calm, unfriendly person

Motivation- His motivation is to stop crime in Gotham city

Relationships- He lives by himself in a mansion with his loyal butler who took care of him since he was young

Back story- Both of his parents died when they went out one night. This motivated him to stop this from happening to other people by stop crime in Gotham city

Post 6&7: Advanced Tools And Techniques

Task 2

Explain how advanced tools and techniques have been used to create, edit and integrate digital media outcomes.

For my spatial design I've used a variety of advanced tools and techniques to produce my city. For the one of the principle of animations I picked rendering and compiling. One of  the advanced techniques I used to create my work is rendering and compiling. it uses a lot of tools such as mesh movement, bone rotation, key frames, and rendering. This helped me produce an animation that made my character move and look alive. In order to have an animation you would have to collate all the rendered images from Blender into Adobe After Effects so that the program would turn all the rendered images into a character animation. Another principle of animation that I picked is the Advanced modelling. One of the advanced techniques that I used is modelling. This uses a lot of tools such as the extrude tool, transform tool,  Loop cut and slide tool, and knife tool. Advanced modelling requires a lot of tools in order to achieve a high quality model because all of those tools help with the accuracy and detail of the model. This helped me produce a high quality model that appeals to my audience.


Task 3



Discuss why advanced tools and techniques have been used to create, edit, and integrate digital media, and how their use has enhanced the outcome.

Advanced tools and techniques do help to achieve a high quality of work. One of the techniques I used is animation which is part of the rendering and compiling principle of animation. I chose this advanced technique because it helps you produce an animation. It helped me produce a high quality animation which appeals to my audience. If I haven't used this technique then my character would only be stationary which wouldn't appeal to my audience. This can affect the quality of my work which I luckily used for my character to produce a high quality animation. Another advanced technique that I used is modelling which is a part of the rendering and compiling principle of animation. This technique helped me greatly to produce a high quality model which is above the standard that I was aiming for. This also helped my model appeal to my audience because of the quality and detail of it. Without this technique I wouldn't have any good details on my model which can downgrade the quality of my work.






Task 4




Student can evaluate how the application of advanced tools, techniques affect the quality of digital media outcomes.

The advanced technique that I used is modelling which is a part of the advanced modelling principle of animation. When I was in the construction of my spatial design, I would use the loop cut and slide tool to mark out the roads and locations of the buildings. This gave me an accurate placement of my roads and buildings which helped me produce a high quality model. Another example which I used the technique on is the details of the buildings and roads. I used the loop cut and slide to achieve straight windows and doors for my building. I also used the loop cut and slide to mark the roads. This helped me achieve a high quality of detail for my model which appealed to my audience. Another advanced technique that I used is animation which is a part of the rendering and compiling principle of animation. Before I was compiling the rendered images I used the rotation tool to rotate the armature of my character in order for the model to move. Then I used the keyframes tool so that I capture the movement of my character. I repeated this process a lot of times and it produced a number of rendered images. These images are then collated to produce my animation. This technique helped me increase the quality of my work which appeals to my audience. This technique also helped make my character look very realistic because of the quality of the rendered images.

Post 4: File Management

Task one:
You will need to explain how asset management and file management are are applied in the development of digital media outcomes.

Assets

Blender has many assets that make it unique from other animation software. All the models are displayed on the top right which you can tweak or change. They are organised like folders which makes it easy to find models. You can toggle between models to either make them invisible if you're focusing on something like the bone infrastructure inside the model. You can also organize scenes which you can have different models like houses, trees, weather or etc. Other assets are objects that are used in blender like the lamp, camera, point lamp and etc. these are important for the creation of an animation.
The X, Y and Z axis is one of the helpful assets in Blender. It helps people determine where the model or object is in the scene. This can be used to manually move the object in an X, Y or Z axis. This is helpful for moving objects only in an axis ie. moving something to the right without increasing the elevation of the object. The colors determine which axis it is and the arrows point where the axis is.
The red arrow is the X axis which is the front and back , the green arrow is the Y axis which is right and left and the blue arrow is the Z axis which is the elevation of the model shown in the picture.
There are different options that can change the model using the X, Y and Z axis like the option which rotates the model or object using axis.




File Management

File management is important in the creation of a project. Without file management all the models and scenes will be scattered which will be hard to search for when needed. Setting up a file network is the first step to have a good file management. Naming the files specifically is the next step so you can determine which file is for something. File management plays an important role in achieving a really good animation because in order to have a clean and organised animation you first must have good file management.
Examples of having good file management is having specific files in one folder. This helps you find the file you want faster without searching other folders. The more specific the name of your folder is, the faster you find what you want especially if it's for school or work. Another example is naming the actual file which is the huge problem in searching for what you want. Typical people usually slams the keyboard when they're naming or saving something which is hard for them to look for the file when they want it. Pictures are the most common files that people make up random name when they're saving it. Naming files correctly will help a lot when trying to find a specific file especially documents. The hard thing about naming files is actually not being lazy to do it which is the reason people encourage you to always name your files correctly.

Task two:
For this task you will need to discuss the importance effective and appropriate asset management and file management in the development of a digital outcome

While I was working on my animation in Blender, the mirroring of the model was a really helpful asset to me because it saved me a lot of time. If I didn't the mirror trick I would have taken longer trying to make the right side equal to the left. The transform menu was a effective asset for me as it helped me manipulate the model easier than I thought. I chose the option where I could use the X,Y and Z axis to rotate my model so that I can have a clean, straight rotation like for example the rotation of my model's arm and legs when I was doing my walk cycle. This was an effective decision because my model was moving smoothly on my animation. Blender hot keys are really east to learn which makes everything faster which is effective for quick animations. The bone structure in Blender is a really good asset for making the model because all you have to do is move the bones as you would do with yours. This helps me a lot due to the fact that is basic and simple to move. Overall Blender has really good assets especially when it's a free software that people use more due to the fact that it's free. I think Blender would actually beat other animation software in most categories.
File management is important in the creation of an animation because it keeps files and folders clean and organised. This is effective not only on an animation but for other things like school work, personal documents, and etc. File management helped me with my animation by keeping my files organised even though I didn't have lots of models or scene. I made a decision where I could just not make folders for the animation because Blender might not find or detect it which I will have to change the file path of the animation file. It was effective on when I rendered my animation and I had to make a file which was filled up with the different pictures that we're the movement of my model. Reminding myself to name my files correctly is hard especially when I'm rushing because I don't think about it. Without file management it would be harder for me to find the pictures or the model which will consume most of my time trying to find the file I want.
This is a bad example of asset management because all the models aren't organised in different sections. This example has all the assets in just a scene, there are no folders to determine which asset is for. One other problem is that there are no appropriate names for different kinds of objects like the character, camera and lighting. This will cause confusion in the future when you have a really large project that requires a lot of models and lighting. Best way to avoid confusion is to name every single asset to their purpose. For example armature could be named as your main character which will separate it from other characters.

Post 2: Ethics of Digital Technology

Task 1: Define and describe Copyright, Creative Commons and Piracy.

Copyright

What is copyright? Copyright is license that protects your work from being used privately or commercially. This means that the can't use or edit your work for redistribution or ownership nonetheless they as for permission from you. For example, you make a soundtrack which attracts a lot of people in the internet. If you don't want anyone to take your work and claim it as their own (plagiarist) you must put a copyright license on the soundtrack and make sure that no one copies or manipulates your work. If someone does breach the copyright law then you can report them and the owner of the site will have to take it down and ban the plagiarist from the website. If you want to use someone's work either for work or a school project then you must ask the copyright holder (owner) for permission. The Copyright act was made in 1994 and was reprinted in 1st January 2014. Basically the Copyright act gives copyright owners protection of their work.

What rights do owner's have?
The Copyright Act 1994 gives copyright owners protection of their work.

What rights do user's have?
The Copyright Act seeks to provide a balance between the interests of authors, owners and users of copyright material.

There are educational, library, research, and review exceptions in the Copyright Act.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons are set of licenses that protect the copyright holder's of original content. These licences show everyone how they can use/manipulate their work. You can apply for a license on your work to protect it from people who might redistribute it. You can apply for different licenses which are different from each other

 There are 6 Creative Commons license. 

     These are:

Attribution

This licence lets other people to distribute, remix tweak and build upon your work, even commercially as long as they credit you for the original work.

Attribution-Non Commercial 

This licence lets other people remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially with credit to you(new works must also be non-commercial). Attribution-Sharealike 

This licence lets other people remix, tweak and build upon your work even commercially. As long as they credit you for the work and licence  their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-Non Commercial-Sharealike 

This licence lets other people remix, tweak and build upon your work non commercially, as long as they credit your for your work and licence their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-No Derivatives 

This licence allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 

This license only allows other people to download your works and share  them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially.

Piracy

What is piracy? Piracy is the illegal reproduction and/or distribution of any copyrighted material through the internet. A good example of Piracy is making copies of a movie that is protected with copyright. The most common incident of Piracy was the raid of the Kim Dotcom mansion. Kim Dotcom was the owner of the famous fileshare website called "Megaupload" which was shutdown by the FBI in January 19 2012 because of copyright infringement. Getting caught doing piracy will lead to fines that may cost thousands of dollars.

Most people have downloaded illegal files on the internet mostly music, movies or games. What they don't know is that they can get a strike for downloading pirated files. Once they have reached 3 strikes, they will get a fine by their internet provider.

Task 2: Next you need to discuss how each of these legal, ethical and moral considerations are related

These 3 things are common because Copyright protects your work from being used privately or commercially. In order to allow other people to change or use your work you must apply for a Creative Commons licence that fits your requirements. If someone does use or change your work illegally then they are breaking the copyright laws which is Piracy

Task 3: Next you need to write a brief case study on the controversy surrounding the online file sharing/storage service Megaupload and the new file service mega.co.nz

Kim Dotcom breached the copyright laws by allowing his users to upload anything including copyright protected files. Kim Dotcom failed to check what each individual user has uploaded which lead to the copyright law breach. After a year Kim Dotcom launched a new filesharing website called "Mega" which is similar to Megaupload but different. Mega is different because your data is encrypted and decrypted  during transfer by your devices only which means Mega can't access your files. When Megaupload was shutdown seven people were charged with online piracy crimes including Kim Dotcom and his brothers. Both Megaupload and Mega had a main purpose of storing files. They both store your personal files without letting anyone but you to access them. Other sites like Mediafire, Rapidshare 4shared and etc. works pretty much the same as Megaupload but they haven't been charged with copyright breaches which questions the FBI of their main purpose of only targeting Megaupload instead of other filesharing websites

Post 1: Ethical Dilemmas

Virtual Currency

We are going to write about virtual currency and the ethics that are related to the right and wrongs of Bit-Coin.

Bit-Coins is a virtual currency that is used by thousands of people and has just recently been popular due to the rise in its value. The people who would have power in this scenario would be individuals who have access to fast computers and know how to use special software designed to mine bit-coins. The people who don’t have access to fast computers would be losing out as they don’t have the computer knowledge to do this on their own. Investors are making a lot of money from Bit-Coins as recently the price has risen, but as it is a high risk investment it is also possible to lose a lot of money.  

Bit-Coins is a virtual currency that is recognized as a real form of currency. And can be transferred and used at banks and shops etc. At the moment it is not getting taxed, but legislations are being made so that Bit-Coins should be taxed as they have a high value. As Bit-Coins are virtual they are harder to lose as their value is stored online in a Bit-Coin wallet, which you can use to make free transactions online rather than getting taxed by banks. As Bit-Coins is an online currency people are able to take advantage of this and mine it. The process in mining Bit-Coins is downloading a program for your computer that’s uses up your CPU (Central Processing Unit) and your GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to work out mathematic equations. In exchange for using your CPU and GPU power usage people receive a certain amount of Bit-Coin shares. The more equations that are solved the more shares of Bit-Coins you receive. At the moment that this report is being written one Bit-Coin has a value of $595.74.

As Bit-coins are a high risk investment they don’t have a stable price. An example of this is the price of a single Bit-coin dropped 27%. People can manipulate the virtual currency system and illegally mine for bit-coins. It is difficult to track how many Bit-coins there are and bit-coins can also be used to purchase illegal goods. The value of real life currency is represented by gold which a commodity however bit-coins are not represented by any commodity.

Bit-coins could worsen the state of our economy because we would have all these bit-coins and no way to track what they are spend on and who purchased it. Bit-coins could also put banks out of customers as everyone would be using online money.

By:  Team Solo Joseph (Joseph, Mashuk, Arden, Ranish, Grayson). 

=)

BEST HOMEPAGE EVER!!! :D

Post 3: Ethics

All the work i have submitted is my own or has been provided by my teacher.

References

A place where I will post the references of pictures or videos of the website

• www.blender.org

• www.blendswap.com   

• legislation.govt.nz

• creativecommons.org.nz