Maddie's Magnificent Movies!- Bouncing Ball Animation

Up and down it goes....

The Process

Over the past few days we have created our bouncing ball animations in Photoshop. I did not know you could animate in Photoshop, so it was a new experience for me. We had to create a ball, use gradients to make it appear 3-dimensional, and use squash and stretch and layers to make it bounce. Then we made them into animation frames and created a GIF out of it.

What I Learned

First of all, I learned how to use Photoshop. I have never used Photoshop before, so it was fun learning to use it. I also learned the principle of "squash and stretch", which is used often in animation for falling objects: objects are stretched before hitting the ground to show speed, and squashed when hitting the ground to show impact. 

What I Would Do Next Time

Next time, I'd probably do everything in the same way, and from now on I'm probably going to animate in Photoshop for my web animations on YouTube, as it's less infuriating than Flash. I had a lot of fun with this project and can't wait to see what else we do in Animation!

Social Media and College

Yesterday, we received a grim reminder: never post regrettable things on a social media account that has your name attached to it. These days, more and more colleges are looking up their students on the internet, and will see any embarrassing or offensive blog posts that you post online. This is most common in smaller colleges that don't have as many people applying.

This was not news to me, as I had heard this before. I have never revealed my full name online, and while I have stated my real name is Madeline/Maddie, let's be real: there are a ton of women and girls named Madeline in the world, and even more people are named Maddie due to it also being short for Madison. Most of the time online, I refer to myself as Mercury or Merc, and while I have shown my face, you can't exactly Google a face. However, I did realize that this was a big deal. There are people that get denied from colleges, fired from work, etc. because of social media, and while all that's on my Twitter is memes about Nintendo and, let's face it, no one is going to check my Wattpad, it's still something that keeps me in line and causes me to think twice before posting.

Maddie's Amazing Art!- Handwriting

Would you smooch these ghosts?

This week we learned about handwriting and typography. We were supposed to make a postcard with our name on it.  The name logo was supposed to be Halloween-themed, so I made mine black with a full moon in the background and ghosts floating above my name. I then used the rectangle tool to create my name. My one pet peeve was the "D"s. D is a very curved letter, so trying to make a D out of rectangular shapes was very hard. And to make matters worse, I have two D's in my name. Lucky me, ha ha ha! While it was hard to make the letters exactly how I wanted them, I am very pleased with the finished product.

That's a lot of Maddie Lodge.

The next thing we did was another sketchbook design, but this time involving our name. First, we were supposed to sign our name and notice any characteristics. For me, my signature is always very large, has big loops, and almost never is the dot on an "i" a dot (instead it's a star, a heart, a planet, a flower, etc.). Then we had to write 10 adjectives that describe us. I chose quirky, enthusiastic, goofy, punny (loves puns), clever, artistic, talented, dramatic, gamer, and, of course, weird. I then had to do my name in 3 fonts that describe these personality traits. I chose Press Start, Star Jedi, and Funstuff. Press Start is by far one of my favorite fonts, designed after old-school video game text. As a gamer, I find myself using Press Start a lot as a font for headings and such on my personal computer back at home. Star Jedi is based on the Star Wars logo, and I have been a fan of Star Wars for many years. It's also very large, symbolizing my exuberant, goofy, and sometimes even obnoxious personality. And Funstuff is a very quirky and artistic font, and I love how it is designed. Then I was supposed to design my name in a special way, retaining the quirks that are "me". So I wrote very large with lots of big loops, which is something I tend to do. Also, because I love Nintendo, I snuck my fandom into my signature- the dot on the "i" in "Madeline" is Kirby on a Warp Star, the dot on the "i" in "Marie" is a Super Mario mushroom, and the "o" in "Lodge" is a Pokéball! And of course, since there was a lot of space left, I finished it off with a self-portrait.