Week #11

Advanced, Experimental VFX Animation and Techniques
Blog WK#11 (Apr 14), Apocalypse Startup

This week was notable for orientation to the reformatted (covid) UAL schooling which will characterize Term #3.
The revised requirements for this term are as below. Because UAL Summer 2020 Term 3 has been reformatted due to covid, some of the continuity for the Adv, Exp VFX Animation and Techniques course is partially disrupted, but since we still have meetings w Aldo, the 2 term structure of the original course still basically exists.
During Term 2, I had already allocated substantial time to preparing entries for the blog component of Advanced, Experimental VFX Animation and Techniques, as started in Term 2, that effort is (correctly) included here and merely labeled week 1-10 (correctly). In other words, as briefly reviewed w Christos in Term 2, it seemed apparent that most students did not realize that Adv, Exp VFX is a two term class (i.e. it spans terms 2 and 3).

Online Schooling

The first wk included a group conference by means of Outlook Teams. The agenda for this meeting, as lead by Christos and Aldo, was to update the MA VFX students about changes to the structure of our term, i.e. because of covid. Some students expressed concern about perhaps trying to defer the course for a yr, in the event that things would presumably return to normal in 2021.

I posed a question re the possibility of receiving further training in Z brush, and possibly Houdini. Christos referred me to the Zbrush free trial, as per the Zbrush website. My intent for this semester will be to revisit Z brush and get myself past the next hurdle in terms of general competency. In other words, while the introduction in term 1 was helpful, we didnt really pursue any genuine modelling efforts, which is something I would like to start to tackle. Over the break, I realized that I have missed using After Effects, which is probably a more powerful program than it receives credit for. During this term, I will also briefly revisit AE.

With intent to further develop proficiency in these 4 software programs defined as the primary agenda for the term, I created a 4 frame logo image to serve as the Blog backdrop for the semester. The full IMG is presented below and is the backdrop for specifically just the "Research Blog" tab in the main menu of this website. A simplified version will also serve as the backdrop for many of this term's weekly blog entries (but w no central UAL bullseye).