Hello Loyal Viewers! We have had some pretty interesting projects in Animation recently. We have delved into the realm of special effects, and one of our first projects was to digitally add an explosion into a clip we film in our school using After Effects. We'd already done some similar work on previous projects, so this project much was easier to animate. The best part of this project was certainly are day of filming. During it, I ended up jumping into the hallway a total of five times onto hard tile. However, even our best clip had Adam (The guy in the blue jacket) falling a good second or so after myself. This was the original clip.

This is the same clip after an explosion, debris, a glow, and fire were added. There was an intense debate on whether or not to set me on fire; but in the end, we decided against it... Enjoy!

Hello loyal viewers! For persevering so long in Web Design, our teacher awarded us all our own website off the e-Comm server. On it, I will usually post the full websites from past projects so that you, the loyal viewer, can finally view my full web design projects. Enjoy! Web Domain Link

Hello loyal viewers! Responsive Web Design is an approach to web design aimed at creating an optimal viewing experience. Things like a page adjusting to fit a phone size when looking it up on your phone. This approach has grown in recent years due to the exponential increase in smartphones and tablets, making it necessary to have responsive web design to fit the smaller screens. This is done using a media query, a CSS rule that adjusts the site given the screen size. Breakpoints are also used. These breakpoints are a means of acquiring knowledge about a program during execution.
I did a search for best responsive websites, the one I found was accroachcode.com. It was drastically different given certain width while still maintaining a charming look.

This is a screenshot of the website at desktop view. At the top it has a menu, banner, and a link to a project list. Below that is the main home page graphic. Below that is two text columns detailing the site's information.

Not much is different down on tablet size except the complete exclusion of the header area. The menu, banner, etc. have all vanished. All that remains of the header is the logo.

The mobile phone size is drastically different. The header has now completely disappeared, and the main home image has moved below the main text. The area below that is now down to only one column.

Hello loyal viewers! I have a question for you all. When you access the internet and visit a website, do you use a desktop or smartphone? The number of mobile users has been increasing almost exponentially over the past several years. In 2014, the number of mobile users overtook the number of desktop users. For my school's website alone, mobile viewings have more than doubled over the past two years. Desktop viewings of the school website have fallen by over 30% over those past two years. The interesting thing comes from the times that each spends on the school site. According to this year's statistics, desktop viewers spent an average of two minutes and nineteen seconds on the site, with a 41.53% Bounce Rate (Possibility of viewing only one page before exiting site). Mobile viewers, on the other hand, spent an average of one minute and twenty eight seconds on the site with a 56.68% Bounce Rate. This information points to the fact that mobile users most likely go to a site to retrieve only a little information, while desktop viewers actually take more time to view the site.


Sources: http://www.cnbc.com
http://www.smartinsights.com
http://www.onwravens.net

Hello loyal viewers! I've been very busy over the past week working on this blog. Among the new features and edits are the favicon, view counter, translation software, labels ,font, and new style overall. Each of these new additions is explained more in depth below.

 The first new addition is the creation of a new favicon for the search bar. This allows the blog to appear more professional, as well as provide a slight idea of the site's content.

I also made some big additions to the sidebar. First, I added a translate button for all those nonexistent international viewers. I then added a view counter, so all of my loyal viewers can see how many other loyal viewers have checked out the blog. A description of the blog was added below that. Finally, I added some labels to several posts, so that my projects can be sorted through, and viewed with relative ease.

I made some serious changes to the blog's look overall, most notably, a change in the background color from white to blue. I also changed the font color to better fit with the background. I added a new Quotation of Power (They change every once in a while, so stay tuned for occasional Josh knowledge). And finally, I added a new banner image to match the favicon. I hope you all enjoy the new additions and I keep you coming back.

Maya Projects

Hello loyal viewers! Lately in Animation, we have been working a lot in Maya, a 3D animation software. Over the past few weeks, I have learned many different tools to create and animate in Maya.
Our first project was something our teacher called the Polything. With it, our job was primarily to learn the basics of Maya Rendering: lights. We had to be sure to position the lights correctly, as well as make sure the shadows lined up.

The next lesson we learned was about building a detailed object from scratch. During the project, we primarily used the cut face tool, extrude face tool, and the bevel tool; each used mainly to extend the faces of one particular object, or edit them prior to extruding.

Our next lesson had us sculpting an ice cream parlor. We used bump mapping to give the ice cream a bumpy texture, and used edit material tools to give the other objects a shiny appearance. We later built it all into one looping video.

Our next project was pretty cool. We first had to create and texture three spheres so that they appeared as three different pieces of sporting equipment: a baseball, golf ball, and a bowling ball. After dropping the real thing on the floor of our flex theatre, we now had the times for when each ball needed to hit the ground, as well as reach its peak height. Using keyframes, we painstakingly animated the bouncing spheres.

We then began using NURBS, which act more like a rounded polygon. We used an interesting new tool which involved tracing an outline before rotating into a full NURB. From there, all it took was a change in transparency to make it look like glass. After the glass I also created a bowl with lid.

The final project was quite similar, and involved carefully placing outlines upward, before connecting them using a technique called lofting. I used this new tool to create a salt shaker, and fill it with salt. In the end, I lit the scene, added some shadows, and it was finished.

Hello loyal viewers! This is my newest project in Web Design. Over the last few days, I've been working on this "Real or Hoax" website. This was a difficult process overall. Even though our teacher provided the content for the site, we all still had the difficult project of coding the css for the page. This was made much easier by designing a general website template before we even started the project. From there, I proceeded to add my own color scheme, then fill the page with the provided content. The only thing I would likely do in a different way is dial down the color scheme a little. It's not exactly easy on the eyes... Overall, I enjoyed this project and am excited to possibly start building from scratch in the near future.