Author: Todd Watson

My Animation: Happy

Title: The Happy Ball

Spring 2024

Software: Adobe After Effects

I chose to animate the emotion “Happy”. I tried to use some bright colors for the mood, and introduced the square as well. I wanted to work on timing and fading in the animation to make things go as smooth as possible. It was easy for me to go from thinking I understand Adobe After Effects to being completely lost. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of but overall I enjoyed working with the program.

Published
Categorized as Animation

Animation UPDATE

My initial storyboard is far from what I have to show today. But I am still working with a circle, and experimenting with multiple shapes and opacity. My goal is to have my animation be as smooth as can be.

Published
Categorized as Animation

Animation UPDATE

My first attempt at learning the controls of Adobe After Effects. I’m still choosing happy for my emotion but we will see how my final animation compares to my initial storyboard.

Published
Categorized as Animation

Animation Update

For my animation, the emotion I want to describe is happy. I started thinking about a bouncing ball. I would like to introduce more shapes in the background but this would be the overall story.

Published
Categorized as Animation

Animation

This is a quick doodle of my storyboard. It is about a HAPPY ball. Kind of like a meatball finding its way back to its plate.

Published
Categorized as Animation

Audio Portrait of a Place

Title: Dad by Day, Chef by Night

Spring 2024

Software: Audacity

For my audio project, I wanted the listener to to experience a day in the life of someone who takes care of his kids during the day and works in a restaurant at night and after it’s all over with, he finally gets some peace and quiet. I did so by combining six sounds using Audacity. I started off with a drumbeat and transitioned into street noise, kids playing, restaurant noise, and finally into some crickets. I liked working with effects like fading in and out to help with the progression of the story.

Credits for sounds used:

“marching_snare_with_reverb.wav,” by: waldschrat1510. Creative Commons 0. Freesound.org. March 6th, 2021. https://freesound.org/people/waldschrat1510/#sounds

“CANAL_STREET_NEW_YORK_A01,” by: G_M_D_THREE. Creative Commons 0. Freesound.org. April 7th, 2018. https://freesound.org/people/G_M_D_THREE/sounds/424404/

“schoolyard.wav,” by: cognito perceptu. Creative Commons 0. Freesound.org. April 14th, 2006. https://freesound.org/people/cognito%20perceptu/sounds/17973/

“Colombian_Restaurant_Busy_Stereo.wav,” by: USBMED_Ambiences_Sound_Library. Attribution 4.0. Freesound.org. May 24th, 2022. https://freesound.org/people/USBMED_Ambiences_Sound_Library/sounds/635132/

“FrogsAndCrickets_ExcerptA_JMA_24Bit_48k.wav,” by: greysound. Creative Commons 0. Freesound.org. March 25th, 2007. https://freesound.org/people/greysound/sounds/32654/

“Prague jazz end 2.wav,” by: ERH. Attribution NonCommercial 4.0. Freesound.org. August 24th, 2007. https://freesound.org/people/ERH/sounds/39658/

Published
Categorized as Audio

My Self Portrait

LIFE

Spring 2024

Photoshop

For this project I combined three images that represent me. One of a country scene, the second was an image of a city skyline, and the third is an image I drew. It’s about the country where I grew up and the city where I live today. The duck is a mallard who is known for adapting to its surroundings and I’ve always thought of myself like that. The most challenging part of the project was working to mask off the certain parts of the image and making it look seamless.

“Country road” by prague.czech. CC BY 2.0. Flickr. Uploaded August 15, 2018
https://openverse.org/image/d987164f-4483-4ae3-b3d2-0c1898c42a5d?q=country

“‘New York Skyline 2′” by thenails. CC BY 2.0. Creative Commons. Uploaded April 2, 2009
https://openverse.org/image/6d977cff-eedf-4fce-8d33-bc95be67f23b?q=skyline

Vector Portrait

Spring 2024

Illustrator

Here I used the rectangle and ellipse tools to create the entire image. I also added text with a Lower Arc using the warp tool. I noticed that while doing this project it was hard to try not to do something realistic.