Holli Rausch

UPDATE: I won 1st place in the 2D competition for my picture of Marissa…! Good thing I left that 2% chance!

I again submitted two pieces into Beadlemania. It’s called Beadlemania because 1) Beatlemania is the term used to describe the era where The Beatles rocked (it still hasn’t ended!) and 2) the College of Arts and Sciences is in Beadle Hall. Beadlemania is to 1) showcase student work over the past year and 2) award those pieces that are most outstanding.

Last year, one of my pieces won 1st place for the 2D category. I’m 98% positive I won’t be winning anything this year for my entries. (I left 2%; just in case it’s a Cinderella story). It’s not that the things I submitted weren’t good…I just know they aren’t as good as others’ work. They judge tonight or tomorrow, but I’m not hopeful. One award is good enough, right? I mean, it’d be selfish to win another. Anyway, I submitted that picture of Marissa and my Ping-Pong animation from last semester.

I submitted my Ping-Pong animation, as opposed to my exterior environment (see below) for many reasons. 1) For some reason, the DVD decided to stop working right when it needed to most. So, I didn’t have time or $ to try to reburn it on a new DVD. 2) Since I lost so much time from the remaking of corrupted files, I had to sacrifice many artistic endeavors I was going to try. Here are a few of them:

• Every frame would have been black and white, except the flower would be in color
• This would require bringing in over 2000 “pictures” and outlining the flower by hand — at least one more week’s work
• I would have fixed the glitch in the animation of the flower, right after it floats in the air
• I would have made the trees sway in the direction of the flower’s movement, to show it’s a windy day and the flower just isn’t a magical flying flower
• I would have done this to the yellow ribbons, too
• I would have focused more on the “back story”
• More focus on the yellow ribbons, support our troops signs, words on gravestone
• Confetti on ground — suggestion a parade the day before
• Not even done this exterior and done the island from Lost instead
• Would have needed at least another 2 weeks, just for rendering time
• There are a lot of trees on the Lost island
• Trees take for friggin’ ever to render

The thing I do like about it, is that I animated the camera as if it didn’t know where the flower was going. Kind of like if a human saw it start floating away and wanted to film it…one just can’t anticipate where the wind will blow. So I am happy with that. Anyway, watch it. If you don’t have anything nice to say about it…that’s OK. Apparently, neither do I!

Well, I went in to the 3D lab on Wednesday and basically spent about 4 hours making up 10 hours of work. But I did it. The reason why it went so much faster is because I’d been through it all and basically needed to be in a rhythm to finish, it was just going through the motions. It wasn’t so bad — it was more of the mind game of thinking “I already did this and could be getting AHEAD instead of playing catch-up”. But I’m now at the point I should have been on Monday, which isn’t so bad. The project is due a week from this Monday…which is unfortunate because there’s a lot I want to do. I really want to spend a lot of time on the animation part of the project. I’m on duty next weekend, so that’s to my advantage that I’m stuck on campus anyway, so I might as well go in to work on the project, rather than sit and watch TBS (which isn’t all bad!). The upcoming deadline is not advantageous, but it’s doable.

Also on the plus side, I won two eSIP awards, which is surprising and exciting! (Click the pictures to take you to the winning posts!)

More bad news, though…I’m in Big Stone this weekend. Just kidding! Well, I am in Big Stone. But that’s not bad news. Just thought I’d trick ya’ll! GOTCHYA!

And it’s not even April Fools’ Day! GENIUS!

Please enjoy this very short animation I made for Christmas. If I had more time, I would have added audio. However, I didn’t have more time. Merry Christmas!

Here’s my first custom 3D animation. It’s my final project for 3D. Make sure you have your sound on. I would say I spent around 15 hours on it total. I’ve watched it a lot and now see things I would fix, but I’m pretty proud of it and am really liking 3D and animating…Enjoy.

Our assignment in Graphic Effects: Create a 15 second animated “commercial” for DSU using Director; use cut-out pictures and place a white border around them.

Holly Smith and I joined our creative efforts together to create a commercial for DSU, featuring the Theater Department. We kind of made it look like a puppet show, where the people rock back-and-forth when they talk. It ended up being a little over 90 seconds and seemed to take forever, but we think it looks awesome and are very excited about the way it turned out. Enjoy!

Note: This is not the commercial Noah Sanderson and I are in that will air on KSFY soon. That commercial can be found here.