My Animation Projects

This animation of the Solar System features an accurate scale of the eight planets and Pluto. The orbits get longer the further out from the sun the planets are. Each moon rotates around its corresponding planet while also rotating around the Sun. All planets have a set color while the moons and the Sun do not.

This animation of the solar system features three critical changes from the original.

The planets are colored to represent a kind of Konami Code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a).

The planets have been arranged by size in the order of smallest -> largest. Now, the Sun is the size of pluto and pluto is the size of the Sun.

The planets have had their rotations reversed as well to create a spiral effect. The innermost planets now rotate as slowly as the outermost did in the original animation. Conversely, the outermost planets rotate as quickly as the innermost planets did.

I chose a little chest I found on the internet sold on eBay for inspiration. I liked the color of the wood and the lock shape.

The front of the wireframe

The right side of the wireframe

A normal render photo open from the front

A normal render photo open from the side

A normal render photo closed from the front

A normal render photo closed froom the side

This playblast of the wireframe.

The full render of the treasure chest animated. I used the Kings's Treasure scene for the space I used to stage the shot and the treasure. I recolored and retextured the bricks, tapestries, and all the treasure (save the gold).

The animation I made depicts a pirate cannon firing a ruby cannon ball at a obelisk in the desert. The cannon ball is fired from the cannon after the wick burns. The cannon flies backward from the force required to hurl the cannon ball. When the cannon ball hits the obelisk it makes a slight indentation and then bounes down until it stops. Cannon Model Found at Free3d.com

The first principle was the Anticipation. I used a wick that briefly burns to build anticipation for the cannon firing.

The second principle used was Follow Through. When the cannon ball is fired it causes the cannon to roll backwards. You can see the change in position

of the cannon in the before and after pictures of the shot.

The final principle used was Secondary Action. I put some smoke to come out of the barrel of the cannon to show the heat from the combustion.

This is the full video showing the cannon shot. I played around with the time in the editing process to focus more on different parts of the process and enhance the overall animation.

The animation I made is the pov of a ride on a rollarcoaster. I set the rollar coaster to have two large humps and a pair of extreme loops. My attempt was to make this a slightly surreal and confusing ride. I had many issues with the making of this animation and rendering which I have outlined below. Stair Model Found at Free3d.com

I had signficant problems making this. For one, my maya started crashing when I began rendering anything more than 10 frames at a time. I also found that my textures on the track itself were causing crashes and so I had to remove all the textures and make it a uniform red color. When I was rendering the dais that supported my traffic light and coaster start was disappearing in some of the renders. The constant crashes and buggy rendering led to a product that is significantly less polished than I had wanted. At the end there are some weird twists in the track that were not there on higher increments but that kept crashing. I tried to adjust the track to be more straight but any duplication of the track pieces to fit would crash my maya. Also the nose of the cart was originally a picture of davis that did not render properly either. My maya just fell apart doing this and ultimately made 90% of my work to just make it semi-coherent.

The first principle was the Anticipation. I used a traffic light countdown before the rollar coaster starts. At the top of each hill I also allowed the rollar coaster to stop for a brief second.

The second principle used was Exaggeration. When the rollar coaster gets to the top of the hills I have it stop and tilt into the air in an egaggerated way to hightlight these moments of change in the course. (NOTE: the coaster is above the track here because I reoriented the whole track between the render of the video and the renders of the images)

The final principle used was SlowIn/SlowOut. When the coaster is going up the hills it goes very slowly and then when it reaches the top it takes a brief pause and slow movement before it plunges down the opposite slope. This image just shows the slow climb to the top.

This is the full video showing the rollar coaster. I added sounds I found on youtube to make it more interesting. I also readded in the lights to the traffic lights so that they blinked. Not the black space in the middle is when the rider blacks out. The last part was extremely but I wanted to show the rider is seeing and hearing things which is why I added the freeze frame of 'terrific' and the voice.

This is a rube goldberg machine that is used to kill a big ant. It has two pendulums which knock out a board holding up four die.These fall through a childrens toy with hinges that direct them to fall to one side of the bottom of a box. Then, the weight of these die push the bottom shelf to open slightly on one side releasing a ball. The ball then hit some progressively larger dominos that kill the bug. Ant Model Found at Free3d.com

I had some issues with this project. Particularly, when I would render many objects would not show up. This was an issue with the last project as well. I playblasted it because it was not going to work otherwise.

This is just a top-down overview of the whole contraption/

Here is a close up of the toy box that holds the ball in place. The different paddles have varying hinges to direct the falling die to the right location.

This is the top part where the die are held until the pendulums hit.

This is a simple American Flag dominos script. A cylinder falls and knocks over dominos to reveal an American Flag. Significant amounts of script were given by Dr. Davis

A top down view ofthe dominos before they are knocked over (will be playing with spacing the next two days)

This is the final american flag after it has been knocked over.