Day one

Today I was shown around the office; there were many different rooms three of which were to work in. There were about five members of staff two of which were in my room. I was given my own computer to work on and given my brief. I had to create a ball and make it move realistically. I opened the programme XSI (softimage) and experimented with keyboard shortcuts.
S= Move
S-Left= Move
S-Right= Rotate
S-Middle= Zoom
V= direction to move
K= Keyframe

Exercise one- animate a ball rolling to a stop.
Before this task I was given a ball to roll. I experiemnted with roling the ball to observe the speed and how far it rolled. It was important to observe first to get a good idea of reality before creating it. I created a shape to act as a floor and a shere then placed it into the starting position. I then inserted a new key frame for the starting position and a new one around three seconds later for the end position. I then moved the ball to a new location and keyed it to the end frame. This meant the ball moved from the first to the last position in three seconds but in one solid movement. I went to the animation editor window and adjusted the pos y on the f curve to adjust the speed. A steeper slope meant a faster speed so I adjusted it to make the ball roll to a stop.

At 11.00 there was a team meeting. Here the staff discussed the jobs allocated and progress. It was an opportunity to show the work and get feedback and advice. I got to see some of the work they did and see how the company worked as a whole. There was a lot of planning and communication involved.

Exercise two- Bounce a ball.
For this I used three key frames and just used a loop to create the bouncing effect. To make it bounce effectively I adjusted the pos y to make it move faster at the bottom of the bounce and slower at the peak like a real ball would bounce.
I was also given the book 'The animators survival kit' by Richard Williams to look at. This was quite helpful and interesting to read.