It's quite hard to believe we are already near the end of the year! It has been pretty rough. I am not a fan of online school, however I am finishing out the year virtually. Next year in person will probably be much much better for me in terms of learning and actually absorbing information, and on my mental health. I think we are starting animation soon, which I am very terrified for as I barely have a grasp on anything else we have been learning. 3DS Max also takes up so much space on my computer, which is definitely not meant to handle software like that. I have had to delete so much stuff this year. Luckily I got an external hard drive now so I have more storage, but the software is still extremely slow. I actually had to uninstall Photoshop a long time ago because my computer is always running out of space and it ran extremely slow on my computer, so I have been using Photopea instead for a while. In fact, I discovered Photopea before we were told to use it in this class and I think it is one of the best Photoshop alternatives out there and I quite enjoy using it. I just need to get my work done well for fourth quarter, then I will be okay. I hope I do better this next quarter than I have so far this year.
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We are at the end of the first semester. I am getting better with 3d modeling I think, but I still do not enjoy it all that much. Class is pretty hard especially online, and I have a lot of technical difficulties like my 3ds max locking me out of my account and my computer being slow. I hope as the year progresses the assignments will get easier and i will get a better grasp on 3d modeling, so by advanced game design the 3d modeling process will go much smoother and simpler for me. I have been catching up on my work and grades and just generally doing a lot better I think. The quizzes and matching assignments tend to be pretty hard for me, and the 3d modeling assignments take me a while to do, so I think I am doing pretty alright right now, Hopefully in third quarter and second semester I will do better in terms of grades and actual learning and completing assignments and projects.
We are now about halfway through the second quarter. I feel like time is movie so weirdly. It feels like its been so long but at the same time its crazy that we are already this far in. As awful as it sounds, I'm really just trying to get this year over. School has been really difficult for me this year and I'm trying my best but I'm still not doing great.
I am excited for next year because I want to work in Photoshop again. I'm insanely sick of 3d modeling and really don't enjoy it and don't understand how to do it at all. Next year we don't have to do any, thankfully. 3DS max also takes up SO much room on my computer and I am excited to uninstall it whenever I can. Our current project is the be my neighbor one and I have no idea whatsoever how I am going to do it. This year is so difficult. At least I've figured out that 3D modeling is NOT something I enjoy doing. I liked making the six sided dice. Those were kinda fun. The other dice were not though. I've found so far this year that, like traditional physical art, I much prefer 2D media over 3D media when it comes to digital art. I miss working in Photoshop as that was so much easier and better for me personally as opposed to software like 3DS Max. I've gotten the hang of 3D modeling a little bit better, I think im slightly more proficient in the software, but I am not very good at all yet. 3DS Max definitely is not my favorite. It is frustrating to use and frustrating to navigate and an overall frustrating software.
I am proud of how some of my projects have turned out. Others, not so much. For example, my western scene model was not very great, and i am honestly really surprised i got such a decent grade on it. I expected to do awfully. My dice project, while I didn't do everything correctly, turned out pretty well though in my opinion! The eight and twelve sided dice were really hard and frustrating to make and I really hated the experience of working on them, but I think the six sided dice look really good! They were a bit frustrating to make as well, but when I finished them I was pretty proud of the way they looked. I am honestly quite nervous for the rest of this year. I really don't enjoy 3D modeling at all, but I'm going to power through. I believe in myself and i think I can do this. In class, we have been working on many different animation projects using different types and styles of animation, as well as many different programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Animate, and even Illustrator. First, we had the frame by frame traditional animation of the bouncing ball. That one took a while and was extremely tedious, and in the end, it didn't even look very good, I don't think. Second, we made motion graphics in Adobe After Effects. These included our Illustrator self portraits we did previously in another project. Third, we made animated GIFs in Photoshop. This one was my favorite of all of them so far. For the first GIF, we drew over pictures, and the second we had to do ourselves without an image to trace. Finally, we made an animation of an apple skateboarding using Adobe Animate. It was frustrating that most people in class including myself could not get part of the animation to save in the final version. I think animation can be a very tedious process, depending mostly on the type of animation. Overall, i'm kinda neutral on it.
In our most recent project, we made frame by frame traditional animations. This was my first time making a complete animation, and I don't think it turned out the best, but I still think it's pretty good. In this project, we animated a ball bouncing. I started by making a hand-drawn story board, showing the ball bouncing down a staircase. The individual images were made in Adobe Illustrator. Saving all 120 images was extremely tedious, but nothing really went wrong during that. Where I did start running into much more problems was when I started putting the frames together in Adobe After Effects. The program would not play back my video. The next day, it did play back the video, but I had several other issues, although a lot of them were due to my own stupidity. When I finished putting the frames together, I had trouble saving the animation. It would only save and export a single frame. Later, I did sort through the issues and why they were happening. The finished animation was pretty good for my first time making one, and I am proud of it.
So far in this class I have learned a lot of new digital art skills and such. Specifically, I've learned about digital art that is more related to editing photos. Before, I really only knew digital drawing/painting, which I hope we also get to do at some point soon. I have learned how to use a new program- Adobe Photoshop. It's been kind of tricky but it's a good program, more complex and professional than anything I have used previously. Outside of school, I have had less time to do digital art and haven't done as much recently, which is kind of sad but it's alright. Digital art is something that I enjoy and I am glad to learn more about it and its different forms.
Photoshop seems to hate me. When I desperately attempt to use it, something always goes wrong. That's probably an exaggeration, but still, stuff tends to god badly. For example: sometimes Photoshop will put a white border around my canvas out of nowhere. When I try to fill a layer with a solid color, it will put a white border around two sides and I can't get rid of it. Then, when I saved some of my projects that this happened to as JPEG files, the border would expand and appear in the file with a much bigger border. This is pretty annoying as I have no idea what it is or why it is happening. On the other hand, Photoshop is pretty nice and can do a lot of really cool things, even if it acts really weird towards me at times. At the same time, however, I feel like a lot of the things it can do are things I can do even easier in other digital art programs. Overall, I have pretty mixed feelings on Photoshop.
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AuthorHey, welcome to my blog. This is where I will be updating you on my digital art journey. Archives
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The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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