John's Learning Journal

My Four faces.

There are four sides to me. Creatively at least.

The Artist. The Man who would tell you how much he loves the poems of Colleredge, the music of Bach and the Films of Terrence Malick.

The Nerd. The Boy who still thinks 90’s Top Cow and Marvel comics were the coolest things ever. Loves watching the death animations in Monolith’s Blood, and is proud to own all three seasons of Beast Wars on DVD.

The Child. The One who will always prize his hardback Thomas the Tank Engine books. Likes watching Marble Run videos, will always forgive the flaws in things like GI Joe and Superted and never stops dreaming of exploring distant lands or ties of stories with fairy tale endings.

The Deviant. The cenobite who’s lightest dreams and desires would make the censorious faint and who’s dreams of lust and cruelty have haunted me all life.

I cannot indulge one path without the others feeling left out. But they all agreed on their love for animation. So here I am. I would like to make art four all four of them. But perhaps I would be better served trying to find unity between them? Making art that comes from all of the four facets of my creative side.

My bouncing balls project

When I was given the brief to make four bouncing balls and upload them onto the internet it sounded simple enough. Famous last words.

We had to choose from Stop-motion, Digital 2D, and Hand Drawn 2D. I like hand drawn the most, so I went for that.

I decided to do a generic bouncing ball first. This was both a good idea and a mistake. It took up lots time I could have spent on other things but helped get me into get to grips with my limitations.

I did my animation mostly on ‘ones’. Partly out of vanity. And partly because I felt scared of trying to do all the maths to do twos properly.

That done I made my bowling ball animation. I think this was the best one out of the four “normal” balls I made. It had the correct weight and feel to it.

My Ping pong ball just seems to appear from nowhere and has a random-ish arc.

My Tennis Ball did not go well. Its bounces were too hard and its arc didn’t have enough spring in I now see the spongy nature of the ball would have given it a smooth final landing.

For my ball with a mind of its own. I wanted to do something special. I wanted to convey not just will but also thinking. I planned a series of motions that would show the ball bouncing around with increasing energy. I really liked this one. The animation was smooth and well timed, and it felt as alive as I hoped.

But it took too long time to do. I underestimated how hard I would find uploading this onto the Internet. So I went over time by 30 minutes. It was very distressing.

I regret not being able to do the optional exercises thanks to not having any spare time.

Even if I didn’t pull this off completely, I can at least be sure I gave this my all.

Bouncing Balls

My first Ever Bouncing Ball

My Ping Pong Ball

My Tennis Ball

Bowling Ball

My Ball with a mind of it’s own

There you go.

My First Learning Journal.

Today I had a talk with Rachel. A tutor who is helping me understand the web and technology side of my course here in Cardiff Met. She helped me set up a new Youtube account and helped me figure out how to download Ebooks from the university library. I hope this information will come in handy in the future.

For now. I have borrowed out a short book by Immanuel Kant. I hope someday to be able to understand his writings.

I also did a little more work on my ball with a mind of it’s own. But I wish I could work faster. I seem to be lagging behind.

God Bless.