Term 1 – Photoshop

For term 1 in TAFE our first subject was on the photo manipulation program Photoshop. It was a great experience to learn the program as I’ve always used Photoshop to quickly edit together photos, so getting to learn it properly was great. We had 2 assignments for the term, but the overarching task was to create a logo for a company picked from a bunch of briefs, then a fake cover for the magazine Photoshop Creative.

We had to first draw out our concept designs then scan them to upload for our assignment. My ideas for logo stayed the same for the most part, but the magazine had many different designs.

In the end I settled for using a design with crystals on it for the magazine as I have lots of crystals so I could use photos of them for the final. The design for the logo is meant to be a factory building transitioning to a camera, as the company I chose for my brief was called ‘The Factory’. For the final magazine cover we had to do something special for it, which was include photos taken and photo scans of objects. It was a bit difficult for me to find objects to scan, and in the end I had to rush and scan two items I had on hand at the last day. Taking the photos wasn’t too bad though since I have a lot of crystals around my home.

Term 2 – Film and Video Editing

Term 2 is where things really started to step up a gear. Our topic for the term was filming and video editing. Our task was to create 2 short films based off of provided scripts and a recreation from a shot from the movie The Fast and the Furious 1 then submit the final edits for each three.

Over all term 2 was incredibly fun and exciting. I got to direct each project which was a unique experience. It was a lot of fun editing the videos together as well, if not a little annoying at times (ESPECIALLY when it came to doing green screen work) but in the end I am proud of my edits.

Term 3 – 3D Modelling and Animation

Term 3 was a really fun and engaging term. We had 2 assignments yet again, the first one being to create a model of a jeep and a stop sign, then incorporate them into our second assignment which was creating a short 3 shot animation.

for the 3D modelling we used a program called 3ds Max which was really exciting to use. I was a lot slower than in Blender though, which is to be expected. It was really good to get to learn the industry standard program for 3D modelling and will definitely come in handy if I ever get a professional job doing 3D modelling in the future. Due to the fact that I have made it my project to do 3D modelling I already knew all of the basic concepts of 3D and thus was ahead of my class. I don’t want to brag (lie), but I finished modelling the object very quickly and could have done so in a day if I did it all at once due to the process being video tutorials.

I’m very proud of the finished jeep model. It was really cool to experiment in 3ds Max, and seeing the process of rendering through a render farm, which is very common for the industry. The sign was pretty basic but cool to do too to learn the control of 3ds Max. It was pretty funny too as I actually missed the day where we finished the sign and made my own version using the knowledge I’ve gained through using Blender.

Our second assignment was to film a short animation using our jeep model and including our street sign. The theme was ‘the getaway’, which meant our animation had to follow the jeep model getting away, fleeing or escaping from something. We first had to sketch 2 story boards for potential ideas, one of which we would choose to develop further. For my first storyboard I wanted to recreate a scene from the show Neon Genesis Evangelion, where the jeep would be driving away from the angel Ramiel from the show. My second idea was for the car to be fleeing from a big evil giant.

I chose to do the giant story as it would be quicker and easier to do. Plus there might have been copyright issues if I decided to use characters from Evangelion even if it would have been cool. It was a very fun process and I know that the story boarding process will definitely come in handy in future. Recently Blender actually added in the option to make your own storyboards inside of the program too, which is another reason why I love using Blender so much.

In the finished animation I made the evil giant monster my classmate Zak (with his permission) to add some humour. Doing the actual animating was a bit tricky, since I don’t really know that much about 3D animation even now combined with the fact I was using a foreign program made it a little bit annoying.

Term 4 – WHS & Short Film

Term 4 was a little all over the place in all honesty. Our assignments were a wide range of reports, forms and observations and our topics were a split of workplace health and safety and continuing film studies but focused on the processes and roles behind the scenes more. For the filming side we were put into groups and tasked with coming up with and filming short films. My group from term 2 was reunited and I was back as director, coming up with the idea for the script. The story would be about a man who is rude to a homeless guy, who then curses him to walk up an infinite set of stairs. I wish I had a final product to show you, but since only one of us in the group had to hand in the final copy the editing wasn’t done by me, and my friend from TAFE doesn’t have a copy either. I haven’t even seen the final version unfortunately, but I have all of the footage and captured audio so if I wanted to I could edit my own version.