Keystone AM Course

[Chrury Sanson]

Hello peoples!

 

I have just finished Keystones (Keystone Online Highschool Home Page) AM course. I am just waiting for my last grade. So I thought I would show you what sort of stuff this course has you go through. No videos though. Most are AVI and too big for the forum and my comp won't render MOVs.

 

Most images are frame captures from the animation. The course has all animations on VGA format.

Onward!

 

Assignment 1: Introduction and spheres

The course assumes that the student has never touched AM. I had some experience so these first couple of projects were a breeze. This one introduces the splines, texturing, scaling, and the chor window. The models you make are a planet, a glowing sphere and an eye. All textured spheres, of course. And finally, moving this towards the camera.

 

After doing what was required, I threw them together for this: Spheres

 

Assignment 2: Pyramids

Same as #1 just with pyramids and a (jerky) flyby.

 

Assignment 3: The vase and the lamp

Yep, model and animate a vase (does a dance) and a Pixar-esk lamp. (gets startled at your presence)

 

Assign. 4: Spaceship

 

Extrusion, more texturing, sprites (flame effect), constrain to path. No image for this one.

 

Assign. 5: Segmented Guy (think stick figure with a sphere at each joint)

Bone hierachies and walk cycles after modeling this guy

 

Assign. 6: Dolphin

Advanced extrusion and texturing, make some sort of jumping/diving animation. The resulting model in the tutorial looks nothing like a dolphin. I did some research to get a more realistic one.

 

Midterm!

Make 3 animations/projects reflecting what you have learned so far.

I redid the spacecraft from Assignment #4 and made it to more of my liking: a Pic

Got a recolored segmented guy to dance.

and made a piano play music. (Fur Elise, to be exact) The Piano

 

Assign. 7: Squash and Stretch

Sound familiar? Model/texture and bone a ball for bouncing.

 

Assign 8: The robot

Model said robot and make a short animation with him. I had him yawn. Honestly! Does that look like a robot to you?

 

Assign. 9: The Hovercraft

Intro to the five point patch. Model and animate. A pic. The bucket is from the AM:Extras I believe. Any ideas as to why the top half didn't render?

 

Assign. 10: The butterfly

Photoshoping a decal, decaling, repetitive motion.

 

Assign. 11: Ants

More extrusion/ texturing. The tutorial/lessons have you make some sort of beetle/ant/toy hybrid. BLA! More research for a better ant. What I came up with: My ant. (the lessons ant is squished, see? :-D)

 

Assign. 12: Landmark

Specifically, a Space Needle type building. Required a flyby.

 

Assign. 13: Emotional Furry It

Right {shakes head} This one introduced the hair feature to a limited extent. Finished product: a fuzzy potato thing. The assignment requires that it show 3 distinct emotions. I couldn't have him emote at noting at all, so I threw a ball at him. {shrug}

 

Assign. 14: Mr. Eggplant

Same as the furry it. 3 emotions using poses. Wanting to try my hand at lip poses, I parodied a well known commercial.

 

Extra credit: Photoshop Mr. Eggplant into an image. He likes my computer, apparently.

 

Assign. 15: Chess I

Create a chess set and animate! Lots of lathing in this one. I fiddled with solid bodies and went bowling.

 

Assign. 16: ChessII

Three point lighting system and accurate positioning. This one required an image as well as an animation. I sharpened my anthropomophism skills for this one.

 

Extra credit: Change the lighting for a different mood. The result.

A funny note on the chess sections; the king and queen are on the wrong square in every picture. That bugged me to no end.

 

Final!

Same as midterm. I decided to:

- edit the robot so he can complain.

(camera pans past this in the first second or so )

- fold a paper crane

- Some strange ancient artifact.

 

And THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

The student is given a good deal of leeway as long as s/he accomplishes a few key points. Texturing, extras (the walls in squash, a backgroud) and animation are usually left up to the learner. The course lets you set your own pace and I got through it in about 10 1/2 months. I tried to add my own touch to all of them.

 

Of course, this being a forum, comments and critiques are encouraged. You should know, however, that all images are being shown off "as is" and will not be edited by the author.

 

I'm rearing to go! Keep an eye out for a WIP I will put up soon.

 

Thanks for looking!

Chrury

[Rodney]

Looks like great fun Chrury. Congrats on completing the course!

[Chrury Sanson]

Just got my grade in. 100% with the final and 99.7% overall!