Final Review of my e9 Experience

            Throughout e9, I learned many things. In the video strand, I learned how to get the best shots for my videos. While in the graphic design strand, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. In the animation strand, I learned how to make video frame and gif animations in Photoshop, and I also how to create an animation in Sketchup. And in fourth quarter, I collaborated with my team to create an awesome product and present about it.

         These skills I learned were first introduced to me through teacher guidance, and following the directions for each project. I also went further into learning these skills through tutorials that were online. Ultimately, I learned these skills by actually executing them as I learned them and by practicing it, I got to develop these skills further and further beyond the expectations.

         These basic skills that I learned all throughout e9 are very important for me to get to learn all the advanced skills I’ll need for the rest of high school and my career. Without a base to a structure, there is no way for the structure to be made. These basic, technical skills aren’t the only things I learned. With the multiple group projects throughout the year I learned all about project management and how to collaborate with groups. These group skills will be able to help me work with people all throughout my life, and there aren’t many careers where you do not work with others.

         I figured out, throughout e9, that one of my best strengths is getting work to be very precise. I think that I am very good at knowing when something can be improved and how to improve it, and also how to make something very efficient. I also figured that my main weakness is knowing what is popular and trendy. In order to fix that weakness I try to work with people that are up with the trends, so that as a group, we can make something that is very popular and works efficiently.

         With all the things I’ve learned through e9, I can apply them throughout the summer. I can help with my church’s website, and with the many videos and graphics my church needs, there is always room for my help. This class is really showing me how to work with others to make the best thing that we can.

         There are many things that are awesome with e9. However, there is one thing I would change. Instead of having a whole quarter on animation, I’d rather have a quarter on web design. I feel like e-Comm needs to focus more on web, because websites are where you have to present all of your other projects. And then animation could be combined with graphic design because it uses the same programs as well. Otherwise, there’s really nothing wrong with e-Comm and e9.

         Overall, e9 was really awesome and I believe e-Comm will be a big part of my life for the rest of high school. I came to Olathe Northwest for this program, and I am very satisfied for that decision. This was a very good class all year, and there was no time that I was really stressed about it. I feel the e9 teachers all did a great job and I could go to them for any problems I had, openly.

e9 Fourth Quarter Project

       For my fourth quarter project, I worked with a group of four people to design and product and make graphics, videos, an animation, and a website for this product. The first thing we had to do was make a company name. We decided on calling it BARM; an acronym of our names (Braden, Addison, Randon, and Mackenzie). Then we created a product and came up with a name for it. We had many ideas, but decided on an app that would monitor grocery store lines and tell someone which lines are the quickest. We decided to call this app Quick Line.

Our company's logo

      As a group, we were very collaborative. In the process of coming up with a product, we all had our own ideas and we picked the best one. We all made sure we agreed on that before we moved on to the next step. Then, we tried to come up with a logo, and everyone had their own designs, but we eventually all agreed on one. We all communicated very well, getting feedback on everything we did from our other group members.

     We struggled the most with being in class. Over half of the time, one of our group members wasn't at school. Only having two or three people work on a four person product was hard. And if we did something while someone in our group was gone, we would have to see if they liked it when we got back, even if we had no extra time to change it. Next time I have a group project, I'll try to make sure everyone's really committed to trying to be in class to do the work for our project.

The video I made

       If I had more time, I would definitely change some things about our project. Like the website, which I would change to be a single page, instead of the current multi-page website that it is now, because the current trends are having just one page for your whole site. And many other things I could've improved, but time is always a restriction when working on anything.

      Even if I could've done better with this product, I think it really helped me improve working with a team. I really got to learn how to work with people, and use their strengths to help our product's design be better.

The animation

      Everything you see above, all the pictures and videos, are things I helped out with. I created the logo and the video myself, and I helped create the web banner, the website, and I created the iPhone in our animation.

SketchUp

      
       I created these two 3-D Models Using SketchUp. The first one, I created a table and chair setup. The hardest part in that was creating the chair leg, and getting it to be in the right position on the chair. I created the leg by using the follow me tool, which was very useful in this project. The leg was really hard to line up with the rest of the chair at the beginning, because it kept on being off by less than a mm, and you know, it has to be prefect. After that business was taken cared of, I made components out of the leg and the whole chair, and then it was really easy to complete the model. For the dog house, I made it directly proportional to the dog house model we were given, and made sure all of the little edges were the exact size they needed to be.

Name Animation

       This is an animation of my name. It looks like it is being written out. At the beginning, it is blank, and then all of the letters are written and it pauses. Then, some cool effects are added at the end. The effects I added at the end are stroke, bevel, and color adjustment. In order to animate this, I erased a little part of a letter, then duplicated the frame. I did this over and over again until it was blank, and did it backwards so I can reverse it in the animation.

       The animation is a Frame animation. After all of the layers were finished, I used the animation menu  to create frames from layers. Then, with the same menu, I reversed the frames. I deleted some of the frames that were blank, and then I had part of the animation done. I duplicated the last frame, with all of my name on it, and added the effects I wanted to the text. Then, I tweened  the last two layers, making 15 layers in between those two, and it created the last part of that animation.

       My e9 class is going really well. I'm getting a lot of work done, and am learning a lot of new things. I can't wait for next year, but I don't know what two areas of e-Comm I want to go in. I don't really want to do animation. I want to do all of the other three strands of e-Comm though. I really like making professional videos, and I really like making web sites. At the same time I like making cool graphics. I believe all the strands of e-Comm would be very beneficial to me, so I can't really decide.

10 Words Animation

An animation of 10 words that describe me, with a Rubik's Cube in the background. With this animation, I learned how to make a video frame animation instead of the gif in PhotoShop. For the text, I used colors that were in the image, like red, yellow, green, and black. I also put a stroke on each of the words to make them stand out more. The background image has different saturation, hue, and shadow levels to make the cube stand out more than the original image. The video frame animation is different than the frame by frame animation because the computer does the animation for you. You input where you want something to start and end at, and then the computer figures out what it need to do for each frame of the animation, while in frame by frame animation you have to put each frame in yourself.

Arch Animation

This is my second animation. I learned about how arches work in animation. The object has to bounce after first hitting the ground, but can only bounce so high because of gravity. The curve of the arch can be different depending on how powerful the initial leap was, but it will eventually stop bouncing because of gravity. This animation shows a bouncing face that is happy while in the air, but is sad while it is squashed and on the ground (my name). My name also squashes because of the impact of the face.

Bounce Animation

This was my first animation. I learned how to animate in PhotoShop, and also the Squash and Stretch animation technique. As you can see, the ball stretches while speeding up in the air, and the ball squashes as it hits the ground. I probably used too many frames for the animation, because it looks really slow.