Maddie's Magnificent Movies!- My 3D House

Welcome to Chateau de Madeline!

Recently we learned how to create houses in SketchUp, a computer program in which you can create 3D animations. I created a white house using 3D shapes and models, and painted it using the textures provided. Then I chose to add some extras. The first thing I did was I included me (the woman with the paint) and my husband (Mettaton). Then I put a cherry tree (my favorite kind of tree) in front of our house. Afterwards I included a dog house, and I put a model of a puppy in there. Then, I started getting nerdy. I made a garden of Fire Flowers (from Super Mario Bros.) on my lawn and had Nepeta Lejion (my favorite character from the webcomic Homestuck) guarding the flowers, or perhaps simply frolicking in the garden. I put Kirby (from the Kirby series of video games) on the back porch, as there was not much there, and finally, I made a koi pond and put Eridan Ampora (also from Homestuck) in it, since in the comic he is a sea-dwelling troll. 

I learned how to use SketchUp 3D and how to make 3D models of things using it. I also learned that SketchUp has a vast model database for all your nerdy needs. And lastly, I learned that Eridan Ampora sitting alone in a koi pond is the most glorious thing I have ever created. 

What can I take away for next time? Well, I now know how to build structures in SketchUp, as well as how to inhabit them with Homestuck characters. This was a very fun project! 

My Elevator Pitch

I'm an e-Communications student at ONW with a creative spirit and a tendency to think outside the box. I am skilled at visual arts, writing, and using computers. People have told me that I am "very talented", "very creative", and "artistic", and my Confirmation group leader said I had a "deep connection with others and with the world". I'm an optimist who is always willing to have a good time. I am inspired by video games and animated movies, and how creatively they use graphics and animation. I now want to use my creativity to affect my school and make the world just that bit brighter.

Maddie's Magnificent Movies!- 10 Words Animation 

This week we made our 10-word animations. We were supposed to use timelines and keyframes to make our words fly in. I chose some of the words from my 10 words that you can see on the side, but some of the words were not included among those 10 (such as "imagination" and "gamer"). I also was supposed to choose a background photo, and I decided on a space background because I love outer space.

This was the first time we were supposed to use the timeline format instead of frames, and it worked well. I learned about keyframes and how to use them as well as how to make things fly in without doing every last frame.

Next time I will continue to use the skills that I learned here, and perhaps make them not fly in so quickly. All in all, I'm glad with how this turned out.

Maddie's Magnificent Movies!- Bouncing Ball II

The sequel, now with arcs and Lemmy Koopa.

After our previous animation involving bouncing balls, we were tasked to do another. We were supposed to use arcs and anticipation, as well as squash and stretch. First, we drew out the path. The path was erased in post. Then, I copied the ball 24 times (yes, I counted) to create the bouncing arc and the rolling offscreen. Along the way, I added squash and stretch to the ball. After that, I had the character Lemmy Koopa from the Super Mario Bros. games fall onto the ball and roll offscreen balancing on the ball (as Lemmy is typically portrayed doing). I made sure to add squash and stretch to him as he fell. Finally, I added the title and fadeout effects, and I was very tempted to put the title in Comic Sans. However, I decided not to put the title in Comic Sans, for obvious reasons. 

During this lesson, I learned how to use arcs and anticipation. I also learned how to add a title card, which will be helpful down the line. Also, with the addition of Lemmy and the repeated copying and pasting I had to do, it felt just like the "animations" I would make as a kid, except a lot more fluid than my old animations MS Paint slideshows. This further cements that I will use Photoshop for my future animations.

I think I did quite well. While it does have that little white-border glitch at the end, it DOES look better than what I tried to make on Adobe Flash a while ago, and looks MUCH better than my MS Paint slideshows.

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.