Tuesday, September 8, 2015

INSTRUCTOR POST - Welcome to Fall 2015!

Welcome to the AAU Fall Semester of 2015

There are hidden instructions in this post to test if you read it entirely!

This is a persistent online site I use to allow students in my class to solicit and offer feedback on their animation. There are a few important notes;

1. This blog is as helpful as you make it. Be active with comments, post your work regularly and take advantage of this venue. Monitor this site at least once a week. I will use this as a forum to make general announcements and answer common questions, so you don't want to miss out. Any post from me will have "INSTRUCTOR POST - ..." in the title: make sure you read them carefully.

2. I use participation here as part of your class participation mark. Participation accounts for 20% of your total grade! If you're shy this is a great way to be involved in the classroom discussion. You get points for posting your work or for giving feedback on other people’s animation. Bonus question: ask me right now how to get 100% on your participation grade!

3. Title each post with your name, for example: “David Latour: Blocking Pass 1”. Your blogger ID may not be something I recognize. You don't want to miss out on participation marks when you post here.

4. Conduct yourself here as you would in the class. Play nice with others and be supportive and constructive with your comments. Limit the posting to information relevant to the class.

Even If you're new to blogging you'll find this a pretty painless and straightforward process. If you have something from class you'd like to show, use the following steps:

  • Playblast your work (16:9 ratio, 960x540, convert to .mov, with H264 compression) 
  • Click the 'insert a video' button and browse to your movie file.
  • Be sure to put your first name in the post title.
  • You're done! 
  • continue reading to see how you can adjust your video size to fit nicely on the page.
  • (additional instructions to share video from another site
  • Post the movie file on any video streaming site (YouTube, Vimeo) 
  • Copy the “embed HTML” from the streaming site 
  • In blogger click "new post" on the upper right corner of the screen and click on the "edit HTML" tab on the top right of the new post and paste the code in the window. (You can edit the html so that the video size is 600 x 337, to fit nicely within the blog interface.)

5. Blogger works best with Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome. If you have technical issues: try switching your browser. Make sure you login with the Google ID that you were invited with or you won’t be able to post or comment.

6. Check out SyncSketch: a great tool for posting your work and getting feedback. We're going to make use of this handy website occasionally through the term.

Every time someone adds a new post or comments on an existing one, I get a direct email. I try to look in here regularly and offer critique and guidance as well. This blog will be available to you as space allows, which means you will be able to continue posting here after the end of term. (You may even see former students offering feedback here.)

Welcome to the blog and have a great time.

*Your first assignment: Post your name in the comments of this welcome message with a sentence or two about what you hope to learn in this class.

12 comments:

joanna lee said...

Joanna Lee - I hope to enjoy the rest of this semester, learning and animating characters.

Unknown said...

Andrew prewett - I hope to learn better weight expression in my animation and further understand the follow through of movement/moment through an animation.

Unknown said...

Hi, everyone! My name is KangHao Fan, or can just call me Barry if it's easier. I hope to learn lots of cool animating skills to help my dancing routine in my thesis!

Unknown said...

Joseph Gallegos - I hope to learn better workflow, I would also like to get some awesome pieces for my demoreel!

Unknown said...

Allen C. Paul

I hope to learn more in layered animation, as well as polishing, and put that towards my thesis. I plan to use assignments that would help me move forward with my thesis.

rushingkar said...

Nihal Rashinkar - I hope to improve my facial animation skills as well as my general broad acting skills (channeled into my characters, not myself).

Unknown said...

Jinsun Son - Everyone can call me Jin. I hope to learn more animation skills.

Unknown said...

Yujin Kim _ hi guys :) I am happy to be in this class and I hope to improve my animation skill.

Unknown said...

Linius Gunardi hello everyone. I hope I can improve my animation skills into polishing level. I look forward to work together will all of you guys.

Unknown said...

Hi, My name is Fu Pei, everyone can call me Finky. I hope to learn more animating skill to help me how to make my project better.

Omar said...

Hi, my name is Omar Mugeem. I'm looking forward to animate some clips of a short story I am working on.

Unknown said...

hi guys, it's my first class today. I hope I can improve my technique and understanding in character animation.