Animation Station Fall 2018

For our final project, we were tasked to make a 10 second dialogue. It could have been about anything as long as we focused on the mouth movements and made it as realistic as possible. I think mine turned out great!! I loved watching it come together and after I got the hang of which sounds create which shapes in the mouth, it was all just about putting them together. I really liked the style of this animation I did and have an interest with continuing in dialogue in the future.

For this project, we were back in After Effects, working with typography and motion graphics. I've always had a big interest in motion graphics so this was a pretty cool project to be assigned. For this, I discovered the 3D camera in AE and used this as my animation tool, to try something new. I struggled with it and thought that if I had more time to redo this project that it would have turned out much better, more artistic. I did really like trying something new though, and I love the lion king :)

This was the first project we had done in Adobe After Affects. We were tasked to make a bouncing ball interact with an object. I was fairly frustrated with this project because I was not used to AE at all and it took me quite some time to get used to it. Once I got the hang of it, however, I really liked how smooth the animation was. I didn't really like how everything had to be on a new layer but it made the organization of it pretty easy. I'd say I still really liked harmony over AE for animation, but they are each good in their own ways for their own specific things.

For this project, we were tasked with making a character interact with a weight. The whole purpose of this assignment and the challenge at hand was to show some type of strain or struggle, some type of push or pull when interacting with a weight. I chose to do a fish because I thought that it was something different and not just an average human with a weight. I thought it turned out pretty good, but I should have taken the water more into consideration and had the fish look as if it was being pulled by the water after it interacted with the weight. I was still proud of it though, especially because I had been getting used to harmony at that point.

This project really opened a love for animation that I never thought I had. I discovered that I could use my Ipad Pro to create smooth, digital stop motion animations! This was the first time in so long that I genuinely enjoyed doing school work. This project helped me push my creative boundaries, which is something that I hadn't done in so long. I focused on appeal for this project. Appeal is the gradual feeling of getting to know and like a character. In this case, the appeal was on the clock, who kept getting more and more annoyed with getting hit that he eventually strikes back. Being able to illustrate this entire project off my own brain was so much fun for me, and seeing the final result after putting it through DragonFrame was so rewarding. I think this might become one of my favorite art forms. 

The first project assigned was a stop motion bouncing ball project. We used a software called DragonFrame, which i really loved. It was a very simple stop motion program that worked very well with the stop motion room that UT offers. I think this was a great opening project because it was great to put my foot in the door of the animation world and gave me a first glimpse as to how these animations are made. Going forward, I would have rather really taken my time and paid attention to details like the bounce of the diving board and the splash in the water. For my first project, though, I was really happy with the outcome.

My name is Micheal Wheeler and I am a senior Digital Arts Major at the University of Tampa. I am originally from Chicago, Illinois and desperately left that place due to the snow...Palm trees definitely treat me a lot nicer. In the art artworld, I love digital illustration and interior design, as well as a little creative coding. I used to do most of my work on Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver, but have now started doing most of my work on my 13" iPad Pro. I am a full-time student whenever I'm not serving tables at Roccos's Tacos and Tequila Bar and actively participate on my campus. I am the Risk Prevention and Wellness Director for my fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, and also serve as the Director of Philanthropy for Order of Omega, the National Greek Honors Society at UT.  In regards to this class, I really hope to learn a solid foundation in animation. I have always had an interest in 2D Animation considering I love cartoons and illustration and have alw