Final Digital Media Report

ITEC 4110 Digital Media Project

Spring 2009

William Anderson

This paper is a description of what I spent time working on during my semester of Advanced Digital Media ITEC 4110. The paper will first cover the initial goal of my project and how I had planned to accomplish those goals. Secondly, I will describe the planning process of my project. The third section is classified. Fourth, I will describe my production phase and will go over the details of the tools and software I used. I will also cover any errors and difficulties I encountered. After the fourth section comes the fifth section, at least under a base ten numeric system which this paper assumes. In this section I will go over the final product of my efforts. After the descriptions of my final product I will conclude the paper which will highlight what I liked and disliked about the project ans how I would do it differently if I had some chance to do it again. Following the conclusion of this paper, I shall describe what future plans I intend to invoke with the information I learned during this class.

Introduction

The goal of the class outlined in the syllabus and summarized here was to individually create a project that used a variety of software tools to create digital media, demonstrate an understanding and refinement of skills required to produce digital media, be able to present competent presentation skills and collaborate as a collective team working towards a goal, and finally to serve as an educational resource for the community while demonstrating critical thinking and creativity skills. This primary directive of the class resulted in the creation of two projects. One project would result in the creation of digital media that would culminate in a final presentation near the end of the semester. The second project resulted in the creation of helpful(a relative term) tutorials that were aimed at helping the ITEC 2110 Digital Media class learn about the software used in that class and in ITEC 4110.

For my initial digital media project, I decided to create a 3d animation. I made this decision because out of all the software I used in ITEC 2110, Blender seemed to be the most interesting. As for the service to the 2110 class I created a series of tutorials. These tutorials cover different software that the 2110 class will use such as Audacity and Blender.

I intended on working on the Blender project throughout the entire semester. In the first few weeks of the class I laid out a planning page ( that covered the various issues I would have to deal with in the project.

For the tutorials I had initially planned on only doing one wiki formatted tutorial, but as I advanced in my Blender knowledge I decided to produce more tutorials to help anyone interested in Blender.

Software

The software I used for my digital media project was Blender. Blender is am open source 3d animation program. I choose Blender for 3 reasons. The first reason is, is that Blender is opens source and free. The second reason I used Blender is because I used the program in the 2110 class and had some experience with the program. The last reason I decided to choose Blender, is that the program is widely supported online, meaning that many websites and forums exist to provide dedicated help to Blender users.

I had also planned on using audacity and iMovie\Windows movie maker in this project. I ended up not using audacity because I did not really have the time to do sound effects. A movie editing program was also not needed after I learned I could edit the video clips from within Blender.

Challenges and Surprises

Ultimately the biggest challenge was learning how to use the advanced features of Blender. While there were many helpful websites available, many of the online Blender tutorials had the habit of describing Blender features in hard to follow technical terms with few visual guides for Blender novices. While there were tutorials for Blender beginners, there weren't many guides for the intermediary level that bridged the gap between starters and advanced Blender animation. So ultimately the biggest challenge was learning all of the Blender features while working on the project.

One of the bigger surprises of the project was the amount of time needed to accomplish the project. I knew going into the project that rendering was going to be time consuming, however I was not really expecting the amount of time I would spend editing every detail of my animations. Ultimately this was again the result of a lack of experience with the advanced features of the program.

Results

By the end of the semester I had created a short animation. The animation was under 2 minutes in length but it took the entire semester to produce. Everything from modeling, texturing, rendering, and sequencing took a lot of time and effort. Because I was still learning the program, I had to test a lot of those features while trying to implement them. This would usually result in me testing a feature one week, and then finding a way to effectively use that feature the next week. Also I created many test animations and renders.

Conclusion

Ultimately I came out of this project with a greater appreciation for CGI animations. The work needed to create even a short animation is immense for a one person project. However I did learn a lot of the Blender features while I was working on the project, so this attributed to the massive work load generated by the project. I did end up learning a lot of neat and interesting features. I feel that if I were to do another animation project I would be able to create something more complex and in less time because of the things I learned during this project.

Future Work

Currently I do not plan on pursuing 3d animation as a career choice. However I do see myself in the near future using the Digital Media skills I learned as the basis for an interesting hobby. I might create several small animations for fun, and I am interested in creating games using the Blender engine.