After Effectz

This turned out to be probably my favorite Tuesday of the course so far, I couldn't really say why, I've never really been interested in after effects and the things that we created weren't anything that I'd looked forward to creating, but I just felt as if the course was moving in a very positive direction and had a very pleasant day.

We started off with some warm-ups in Photoshop, which led up to some simple After Effects tasks which, whilst being quite simple to perform, gave me the sense that I was learning things which would be really valuable to me and all without having to labour over it too much. It seems like everyone is now a little more attuned to how we are meant to be working in these sessions on the computers, which I think helps with the overall attitude of the class, or maybe it was just the fact that we were given documents with the tutorials on them, rather than being talked through every step (Something which I was really grateful for after the Maya sessions). This was all topped off with the tutor being very cheery and helpful, completing a very light and pleasant day's work.

Flash Workshop #1

I've always been aware of Flash and it's uses in animating as i'm online 79.3% of the time and Flash seems to be very popular with the online community as a quick and easy way to create animations in your home, but I've never really been a fan of it. Apart from a very small percentage of Flash animations, i've never really enjoyed the style. Mainly because of the overuse of the pen (i think?) tool, and the way in which it seemingly ignores the stroke that you've just drawn and decides to make it look however it pleases. Due to this I never really bothered to use it at all, and didn't really look forward to the session. However, to my surprise I found the session to be much more enjoyable than i'd previously expected.

After a reasonably short and sweet introduction to the program by Andy, we were pretty much left to our own devices. At this stage with my previous mindset towards flash I may have just nipped off home, but I found myself getting caught up in the program and made a little animation of a winged man falling off a cliff, which I don't think I saved or I would've uploaded it. The session's changed my outlook on Flash as a program, and I'll happily use it in the future for my animating needs.