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We analysis available facts, evidence, observation, and arguments to form a judgement. It helps us problem solve and work through complex subjects that could have several different answers. This generally includes the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis of evaluation of factual evidence.

The 5 critical thinking skills:

Observation - Observational skills are the starting point. Being observant can quickly identify a new problem. Observational skills help understand why something might not be a problem, even help us predict when a problem might occur depending on their experiences.

Analysis - Once a problem has been identified, analytical skills become essential. This helps us evaluate  the situation using factual knowledge, data or information. This often includes gathering unbiased research, asking relevant questions about data accuracy and assessing the question/objective in hand.

Inference - This involves drawing conclusions about the information you collect and may require you to posses technical or industry-specific knowledge or experience. Making an inference means you are developing answers based in limited information.

Communication - We are able to explain and discuss issues and their possible solutions with colleagues and other stakeholders. Disagreements result to broader conversations that could be backed up with factual evidence to compliment each other’s biases. A respective environment can lead to sensible conversations and quicker solutions.

Problem solving - Once you have identified, analyzed and chosen a solution for a problem, then you may execute a solution. Problem-solving often requires critical thinking to implement the best solution and understand whether or not the solution compliments the end goal.

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Animation resources:

https://www.skwigly.co.uk/

https://www.animationmagazine.net/

https://animationresources.org/

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This was developed by Graham Gibbs in 1988 to give a structure to learning from experiences. It offers a framework for examining experiences, and given its cyclic nature lends itself particularly well to repeated experiences, allowing people yo learn and plan from things that either went well or didn’t go so well.

Before Gibbs’ was popularized, David Kolb published his experimental learning styles model in 1984 from which he developed his learning style inventory. The Kold’s reflective cycle.

The theory is typically presented by a four stage learning cycle:

1.   Concrete Experience - A new experience or situation is encountered, or a reinterpretation of existing experience.

2. Reflective Observation of the New Experience - Of particular importance are any inconsistencies between experience and understanding.

3. Abstract Conceptualization - Reflection fives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing abstract concept (learning from the experience)

4.  Active Experimentation - The learner applies their idea(s) to the people around them to see what happens.

A much more recent reflective cycle was developed over the course of 1994, 2004 and 2007 was by John Driscoll. The Driscoll’s Model of Reflection was stemmed from questions which were initially asked by Terry Boston in 1970, which were:

1. What?

2. So what?

3. Now what?

Driscoll connected these three stem questions to type stages of an experience learning cycle, and then added trigger questions that must be answered to complete the reflection cycle.

The steps in Driscoll’s model of reflection:

Step 1: What?

Briefly describe the experience/situation you will be reflecting on

What exactly happened?

What exactly did you do?

Was others involved?

Was it a good experience, not, or both? Why?

Step 2: So what?

How did you feel in the moment?

How you react?

Why did you react this way?

Did you feel the same way now about the situation?

We’re you experiencing a conflict with your own morals?

Do you think previous events influenced your experience during this situation?

Who else was involved? How did they feel/react? Why did they react that way?

Step 3: Now what?

What did you learn from reflecting on this situation/experience?

Could you have prevented negative outcomes?

How would you have done so?

What would you do differently if something similar occurred later?

What would you do to better prepare yourself for this?

Where did it go wrong last time and what will you focus on now?

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MSR was originally developed form using in the context of nursing but it is relevant for use in other contexts. It can help assist with the reflection and analysis of more complex decision making, as well as being useful when learning how to reflect.

John’s model suggests that when you reflect, you need to make sure that you ‘look inwards’ (consider your own thoughts and feelings), and review the actual incident or situation including your actions. Consider whether your actions where ethical, and external factors that may have influenced you.

This cycle suggest that involving someone else to support you in your reflection can make your reflection more powerful them if you engage in reflection by yourself.

Describe the experience
• Describe the experience, and the significant factors that were involved

Reflection
• What was I trying to achieve?
• What were the consequences of my actions?
• How did I feel about this experience when it was happening? Why did I feel this way?
• If there was another person involved (e.g., a patient), how did they feel about the situation?

Influencing factors
• What things (e.g., internal factors, my own knowledge, external factors) affected my decision making and actions?

Could I have dealt with it better?
• What other choices did I have?
• Did I act for the best?
• What would the consequences of those other actions have been? For myself? For others?

Learning
• What will change because of this experience?
• How do I now feel about the experience?
• How has this experience changed my ways of knowing?
• Empirics (scientific)
• Ethics (moral knowledge)
• Personal (self-awareness, e.g., of my own beliefs and values) • Aesthetics (the art of what we do, our own experience

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How do I create a 2D background within a 3D space using blender’s 2d animation and grease pen to help my peers understand and try improving their background animation?

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Blender Guru’s tutorial playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjEaoINr3zgFX8ZsChQVQsuDSjEqdWMAD

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Learn the basics of Blender while making your very own donut! You’ll learn the UI, modelling, sculpting, texturing, shading, geometry nodes, lighting, render...

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https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/grease_pencil/materials/introduction.html

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https://youtu.be/saIFT8_j0LQ
https://youtu.be/c57qq2nE3B0 (pt 1)
https://youtu.be/mhcNPYxPqhw (pt 2)
https://youtu.be/YY0gjIttZRw
https://youtu.be/7qZWW0k41WA (pt 1)
https://youtu.be/VKhcow00iJU (pt 2)
https://youtu.be/v9IMmr4PzIg (Pt 3)

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How this 2D/3D animation was made - Introduction to Blender greasepencil and tips for beginners

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https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgqS1j/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgkVCC/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgmjEJ/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgh9We/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgPBWc/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDg4EEN/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgSpaF/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgUHJw/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLDgBb7j/

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https://www.devinellekurtz.com/

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Click to expand and use right and left arrow keys to browse.

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https://twitter.com/ameizhao/status/940394162746044416?s=21

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2017年自分が選ぶ今年の4枚

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#2017年自分が選ぶ今年の4枚 pic.twitter.com/srihvthmX0
— Amei Zhao (@ameizhao) December 12, 2017

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2017年自分が選ぶ今年の4枚

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2017年自分が選ぶ今年の4枚

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https://m.zcool.com.cn/work/ZMzEyOTY0MjQ=.html

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•     The camera on blender moves around a 3D space and can point at any direction you would like to view your object from. A 2D shape will obviously look different in different angles because it is flat, hence the shape will have no depth or form.

•     The idea is more clear when you use a 3D shape such a s a cube because you know what a cube looks like from any angle.

•     The first image on the top is an example that I drew of what a 2D picture would look like in a 3D space.

The second image describes how The Camera view can be used to virtually compose shots and preview how the scene will look when rendered. The rendered image will contain everything within the dashed line.

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18/2 - 11am -12:30pm
21/2 - 3pm - 4pm
24/2 - 4am - 6:45pm
3/3 - 7pm - 9pm
6/3 - 1am - 2am
7/3 - 2pm - 3:30pm
8/3 - 7pm - 8pm
12/3 - 4pm - 6pm
13/3 - 6pm - 8pm
16/3 - 6pm - 7pm
17/3 - 6pm - 7pm
20/3 - 6:45pm - 8:00pm
25/3 - 6pm - 11pm
26/3 - 4pm - 7pm
1/4 - 10am - 12pm
4/4 - 8pm - 12pm
10/4 - 7pm - 9pm
13/4 - 10pm - 11pm
17/4 - 8pm - 10pm
19/4 - 8:30pm - 11pm
26/4 - 6pm - 1am
27/4 - 8pm- 11pm
1/5 - 9pm - 12pm
2/5 - 6pm - 8pm
3/5 - 8pm - 9pm
5/5 - 3pm - 7pm
6/5 - 10am - 1pm
7/5 - 11am - 12pm
9/5 - 6pm - 11pm
10/5 - 8pm - 2am
11/5 - 10am -

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TANGLED: BEFORE EVER AFTER - BLACK ROCKS 

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TANGLED: BEFORE EVER AFTER - BLACK ROCKS 

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During class we wrote a colour, object, place and emotion on four separate pieces of paper. This was later put into four piles depending on the subject. Afterwards, we picked up four pieces of paper back at random and was told to create a character using it. Each of the subjects had to be visually represented in the character an it’s story.

Personally, I don’t think I put too much thought into my character because it lacked a convincing backstory and a lot of it was based on the appearance. My character was supposed to be an arcade machine gun that was part of a shooting game. Initially, the gun character was a mafia boss who owned an arcade. I wanted the gun head and suit to be a symbol of the power he holds (ironically uses a separate hand gun) but later described that it would be interesting to have the two gun designs to be part of the same arcade machine. A lot of shooting games are multiplayer so having both of the characters play as “brothers” seems more reasonable. The hand gun would be the first brother to release from the cord whilst the more toy gun would still be attached. It would seem like the hand gun is the first born and bare an intense pressure to live up to his name. Whereas, toy gun is childlike and immature by nature.

After getting critic and suggestions from the class, I’ve come to understand how easy it is to miss out on important details when working in a limited time frame. Within in an hour, I focused more on the character’s design rather than the significance of it’s key elements and how it can correspond with the characters’ role and story.

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CREATING MOTION IN DYNAMIC POSES FOR ANIMATION

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CREATING MOTION IN DYNAMIC POSES FOR ANIMATION

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Today we tried out different ways to show a pose in action through animation and still drawings. I specifically used the sway and motion lines to portray the direction of the movement.

To create convincing and simple motion, it is important to simplify the character’s form. This allows us to make more anticipation and exaggeration. Squash and stretch is one off the main fundaments of animation that helps create fluidity in your movements.

The other basic fundaments of animation are:

Anticipation

Staging

Straight ahead action and pose to pose

Follow through and overlapping action

Slow in and slow out

Arcs

Secondary action

Timing

Exaggeration

Solid drawing

Appeal

The 12 concepts are used to create a more lifelike and convincing animation. Possibly the greatest book in animation that explores this concept is called “The Illusion Of Life”.[1]

Anyways, back to creating motion effects. Some of the most commonly used motion graphics techniques are motion blur, timing, composition and, plugin and expressions. [2]

Using these techniques I can now use this to make more compelling animations with impact and realistic features

Reference:
1. https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cartoon-fundamentals-how-to-create-movement-and-action--vector-19904
2. https://youtu.be/kv_4oxIXzgk

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https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation-1/art-of-steven-universe

https://www.stevensugar.art/backgrounds

https://characterdesignreferences.com/artist-of-the-week-12/steven-sugar

https://www.stevensugar.art/

https://www.emilywalus.com/#/professional/

https://animationtidbits.tumblr.com/post/80375345795/stevencrewniverse-a-selection-of-backgrounds

https://troffie.tumblr.com/post/137255992078/i-got-to-reunite-with-steven-universe-last-year-to

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I wanted to try different stylistic approaches to create my “crystal realm” set. The Tangled: Before Ever After series features these black stones that are luminescent under moonlight. Using this concept, I can try to recreate some interesting lighting on my piece. Although, I initially wanted the  luminescence to reflect from the bottom of the rocks, I could have a nice variety of rocks that change depending on environment, such as a cave area and mountains. Light in caves me be a reflection from the luminescence that radiates from within the rock, whilst light reflecting on the rock on cliffs and mountains are reflections of light from the moon/sun. Certain rocks have fluorescent minerals which causes it to glow under UV light within the right conditions. This could be used to create the shine effect in caves if UV lights bounce within the cave.

REFERENCE -

1.https://youtu.be/HeE_EK67phg
2. https://youtu.be/WsMfQGI_FGA

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Lighting can also be achieved through organisms that live in caves. In an article by Smithsonian Magazine, New Zealand’s Glowworm Caves are full of these carnivorous fungus gnats that sparkle on the limestone within the cave. They are thousands of blue-green light produced by the larvae of the Arachnocampa Luminosa. The light emits from the organs in its tail. The blue light is created by a chemical called Luciferase which is left on sticky “fishing lines”. This is a mucus that traps the prey before being sucked up and devoured.

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These new shots show the otherworldly magic created by a carnivorous fungus gnat

smithsonian.com

It's one of the world's most spellbinding sights: million-year-old limestone caves sparkling with thousands of blue-green lights, like the giant jewelry chest of some ancient sea princess. Photographer Joseph Michael recently spent several months exploring these caves, located on New Zealand's North Island, to create long-exposure images that capture their sculptural interiors in all their luminous glory.

While the caves might appear to be dangling with precious gems, the truth is a little more down-to-earth. The cerulean glow is produced by the larvae stage of a carnivorous fungus gnat, Arachnocampa luminosa, which emits light from organs in its tail. The gnats also create sticky "fishing lines" covered in drops of mucus, which they use to ensnare prey. The bioluminescent blue light-created in part thanks to a chemical the gnats produce called luciferase-attracts the prey, which gets stuck in the mucus before being sucked up and devoured.

Arachnocampa luminosa is found only in New Zealand and thrives in the caves, which offer dark, protected spaces for their bewitching light as well as the horizontal surfaces necessary for dropping their sticky lines of death. The gnats spend about nine months as larvae before turning into pupa in a cocoon. They then emerge as flying insects that look like big mosquitoes. The adult insect lives only a few days-without a digestive system it can't eat, so its only purpose is to mate and die.

Michael, who is from New Zealand, says photographing insects was a new experience-his work usually focuses on landscapes. That informed this project's focus, he told Smithsonian.com: "[I looked] at it like a landscape, rather than individual insects. It's interesting when you view the images upside down, for example. They give the viewer a whole different perspective." The glowworm series, which Michael calls " Luminosity," is part of a larger multi-media installation planned around the theme of bioluminescence.

The photos were created in four caves on New Zealand's North Island: Nikau Cave, Waipu Cave, Ruakuri Cave and Spellbound. Some of the exposures took only five minutes, Michael says, while others required hours of standing in cold water. The prolonged time in the caves was a memorable experience for the photographer: "The moving water echoes through the cave system which creates quite a loud ambient noise level. After a while the sound of the water becomes a constant hum ... When you come out of the cave after a long night of photographing, the songs of insects and birds outside felt sharpened and intensified."

The project also gave Michael a new appreciation for the wonders of New Zealand. "Growing up here, like most things in this spectacular country I thought [the glowworm] was just a regular thing to see," he says. "As I've traveled to many interesting places around the world, I've begun to realize more and more how amazing and unique this little island in the South Pacific is."

Bioluminescence isn't the only natural wonder Michael's been documenting-he's also been taking photographs of icebergs, which will be projection-mapped onto major buildings in a 2016 project. Michael calls it a " cinematic collision of nature and architecture." "The bioluminescence work was a nice chance to take my mind off the icebergs for a little while," he says.

Several of New Zealand's glowworm caves are open for visitors, who can explore them by foot or by boat. And while a trip to New Zealand is necessary to see Arachnocampa luminosa, they're far from the world's only species of glowworm. A similar species, the North American Orfelia fultoni, known more commonly as Dismalites, is found in Alabama's Dismal Canyon, among other places in Appalachia. Both species offer the chance to see just how beautiful a gnat can be.

(H/T This is Colossal)

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Captivating Long-Exposure Photos of New Zealand's Glowworm Caves

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smithsonian.com It's one of the world's most spellbinding sights: million-year-old limestone caves sparkling with thousands of blue-green lights, like the giant jewelry chest of some ancient sea princess. Photographer Joseph Michael recently spent several months exploring these caves, located on New Zealand's North Island, to create long-exposure images that capture their sculptural interiors in all their luminous glory.

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I’m majorly inspired by the glintstones in Elden ring because of its complex shape and multiple surfaces. The stones really compliment the Steven Universe aesthetic used in their background art. I love the gradient they use to show the light source is from the bottom rather than it hitting the top. It creates this luminescent lighting which reflects on darker environments. Rather than the sky being the main light source.

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ELDEN RING GLINTSTONE AND ENVIRONMENT STUDY 

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ELDEN RING GLINTSTONE AND ENVIRONMENT STUDY 

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In today’s practical, we were asked to use shape language to create a set of character using the briefs listed below:

A utopian world of human animal hybrids living in the clouds

A dystopian world of human machine hybrids living in tunnels and caves

A raggle taggle group of adventurous thieves living in the woods

An underwater circus

Shape Language is a concept used in art and animation to communicate meaning based on shapes we are familiar with. When used in character, object, and background design, shapes can tell a story, show personality, and illicit an emotional response in the viewer without using any words.[1]

Circles:

Soft, squishy

Harmless

Approachable

Changeable

Squares:

Solid, study strong

Supportive

Reliable

Inflexible

Triangle:

Sharp, directional

Dynamic

Dangerous

Unpredictable

When I was designing my characters, I wasn’t necessarily thinking too deep into the importance of their assigned shapes but once I was finished, I could see how each shape correlated with their roles. For example, the clown has a much sharper form and is made of triangles. Since the clown could seem unpredictable it fit his role as a jokester. Other examples like the circle played into the role of the magician who was an elderly fish with a much comforting and playful presence. This idea could play into all the characters but some of the character had slightly different shapes, like the dancer. She was based off a betta fish and since those fish look more elegant in style, I choose to make her look soft and sharp like how a dancer would be. In this case, I used semi circles to create her form. Much like the betta fish, the canon is a rectangle to show its irregularity and incredible strength as it is much longer than a square.
The only fish circus member that doesn’t particularly fit into the shape mood would be the strong fish that plays as a weight lifter. This fish has much more round oval features. I guess I was aiming towards making his shape more ironic compared to the others. The circular form still supports the idea of this character being harmless and approachable but they are very strong and should not be underestimated by his kind face.
Creating characters solely on shape theory and not adding too much complexity to it was definitely different from how I would usually approach shape theory as I stay within my comfort zone and use quite realistic proportions and features to make my characters but overall, I enjoyed the experience and want to focus on these aspects more to portray a character’s personality in a more simple way.

A great movie that uses amazing shape theory to portray character’s emotions and personalities is inside out. All the characters are based on certain shapes. Such as anger, who is a hot headed dominating character. Whereas, sadness is circular in shape who is very harmless and soft in nature.

REFERENCE
https://www.waltdisney.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/T%26T_ShapeLang_v9.pdf

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Some perspective and colour planning inspired by Steven Universe gems and Elden Ring

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I quite like using selection tool to create shadows of various colours and shapes for my backgrounds. I got this inspiration from the way the background artists colours the gems and windows from “Steven Universe”. There is always fragments of different saturations over the flat colours that adds detail and depth.

Since there is a limited range of colours being used in my blender backgrounds, I could use the “fill” grease pencil material to create selection and fragments of those limited colours overlapping on each other. Having different saturations and hues of colours can replace “shadow-like” or “dark” colours because different colours have different light absorptions making it look brighter or duller, despite being the same value as another colour. (Such as orange and indigo — indigo would be considered the “darker” whilst orange would be “lighter”)

Steven Universe background colourist: http://efrainfarias.com/
https://steven-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Efrain_Farias

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Experimenting with different backgrounds to see how they would play out if it was in layers within a 3D space. I like the idea of having different layers that zoom in from space, to a galaxy, solar system and then a planet. However, I think it would be quite difficult to execute since there would have to be many layers of detail and colours to make it look galaxy like

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FAILURE

Failure helps accept feedback and learn from mistakes. Here is why failure is good:

1. Failure is a redirection. It shows you where you shouldn’t be.

2. Failure is an opportunity. Its a chance to reevaluate and come back stronger with better reasoning.

3. Failure is not fatal. No matter how hard it may be know that failure simply ,exams you get another to try it all again. [1]

Failing is something that happens throughout life. Things aren’t always going to go your way regardless of how hard or perfect you try to be.

Failing forward:
Knowledge is a fluid construct and not a finite commodity. The reason you fail is that there is something you haven't learned so you keep failing. What are you going to do now and in the future to prevent yourself from back stepping. After learning from your mistakes through new knowledge and technique, you try again and move onto another point in life where failure might occur again.

~Failure is the key to success~

SUCCESS

The accomplishment of an aim or purpose. Success can be measured in various different ways. Did you successfully make it to class on time? Did you succeed the grades you were expecting on a piece of work. How would you measure these two success and how rewarding are they.

Some people value success differently depending on how much importance they put into each subject and matter.

REFERENCE

1. https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/wisdom-why-failing-is-good

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Failure won't kill you but your fear to fail just may keep you from success

Success is good but failure is better.

You must not let successes get to your head but also must not let failure consume your heart. Know that, sometimes, actually most times, things don't go as planned and that is perfectly fine.

For many young people, it's easy to simply give up when things don't work out. But if there is one thing you shouldn't do it is just that: Do NOT give up ...because the reality is you're going to fail...a lot.

But failure doesn't mean your idea wasn't valid or that your dream isn't good enough. Failure simply means there is something to be learned or another direction to be taken.

Here's why failure is GOOD:

1. Failure is a redirection. It shows you where you shouldn't be.

2. Failure is an opportunity. It's a chance to reevaluate and come back stronger with better reasoning

3. Failure is not fatal. No matter how hard it may be know that failure simply means you get another shot to try it all again.

However, this time around it'll be a lot easier to attain what you were aiming for. Having failed abundantly, there is one thing I've learned: Failure only makes your next shot quicker, easier and surer.

Take these failures you will face with grace because you'll learn more in a single failure than in a lifetime of success. There are lessons in all our faults that are attempting to take us to our ultimate vision. Get the idea going and trust the process.

It won't be perfect but getting it out slowly will help begin the cultivation process. Start by writing your thoughts and ideas. Talk them out with friends and do one thing a day that will help your overall vision. It won't be perfect, but if you're persistent, the easier it will be to deal with failures along the way.

Each failure is simply feedback of how to perfect your craft. Know that nothing works unless you do and know that what you envisioned will not happen exactly how you thought it would, but that is what makes the distance between where we are and where we want to go so exciting.

This fearful, grey, undefined space makes life the crazy beautiful awesome journey it is.

So fail and fail often.

Failure won't kill you but your fear to fail just may keep you from success.

Monster Wants to Know: How has fear or failure driven your success? Share with us in the comment section.

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Lessons on Success: 3 Reasons Why Failing is Good

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Failure won't kill you but your fear to fail just may keep you from success Success is good but failure is better. You must not let successes get to your head but also must not let failure consume your heart. Know that, sometimes, actually most times, things don't go as planned and that is perfectly fine.

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For today’s lesson we designed a bipedal animal characters that we used to draw some poses. The prompt was ”Your character sniffing a flower which later goes into a sneeze due to allergies”. I tried exaggerating the features and expressions for each pose to emulate the character’s emotions. After some criticism, I redid the expressions to exaggerate certain features more, such as the cheeks, eyes and eyebrows. This especially came in handy when I was drawing the more cheerful expressions. It made me think about how important it is to exaggerate the shapes on your face, like your cheeks would simply be broken down into circles. The eyebrows and eyes are broken down into triangles and trapezoids that can stretch to create irregularity and perspective.

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I spent a good 4 hours revising all the keyboard shortcuts because of how shortcut depended blender is. It is absolutely impossible to manually press keys and functions on this program. Truly a painful experience but once you get the gist of it, everything starts to fall in place! Here is a very helpful PDF of shortcuts that will put any blender beginners’ life at peace.

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Donut 3D view video — https://liveteesac-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/a0298988_live_tees_ac_uk/ERQ04IszyPBGtiOrgGsCyscBz3n8mnpA895VOTnQ2JINXg?e=Iieni4

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I present you, blender donut 1.0

An extremely tedious process but very informative and definitely worth the few hours of stressing. Now I have a good idea of how to use the shortcuts, at least for the 3D part. Well they all have similar functions so now I just need to learn the grease pencil’s features.

The Blender Guru helped me through 98% of this with his tutorial videos on YouTube. Since blender has very limited information on websites and books, many of the things I learnt to use came purely through tutorials on YouTube or other streaming platforms.

Here are the links to his straight to the point tutorials:

Pt 1- https://youtu.be/nIoXOplUvAw
Pt 2- https://youtu.be/imdYIdv8F4w
Pt 3- https://youtu.be/7wKnPclzYY8
Pt 4- https://youtu.be/R1isb0x4zYw
Pt 5- https://youtu.be/G_OrMDOK-Og

I didn’t use the tutorials that explained how to add textures and colour to your sculpture because we will not be needing it for the grease pencil features. However, here are the rendering tutorials:

Pt 6- https://youtu.be/_WRUW_fs1g8
Pt 7- https://youtu.be/CmrAv8TSAao
Pt 8- https://youtu.be/_LeTDpNrdbg
Pt 9- https://youtu.be/4WAxMI1QJMQ
Pt 10- https://youtu.be/bLw0HwphXO0
Pt 11- https://youtu.be/LMA3S2EGM6U
Pt 12- https://youtu.be/oA4maNXlIf0
Pt 12- https://youtu.be/Bruu7-OREos
Pt 14- https://youtu.be/wlmq6EXzzzw
Pt 15- https://youtu.be/JCLSJg9sdNI
Pt 16- https://youtu.be/OqMLfMXVhhI

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USING BLENDER’S MODELLING AND SCULPTING 

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USING BLENDER’S MODELLING AND SCULPTING 

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During this practical, I tried learning blender’s basic features and how to use each tab using my laptop keyboard instead of a numpad. When you go into preferences, you have an option to imitate the numpad using a regular keyboard. The same can be done with your mouse pad. If you are a laptop user, you can configure your mouse pad to imitate a mouse with a scroller. This will help you pan/zoom and right click with ease. Of course there are many other keyboard shortcuts that I could explain but they are all listed in shortcut pdf.

Moving on from the keyboard and mouse functions, blender allows you to use a wide range of assets. The unfortunate thing is that many of them are hidden within windows and tabs but learning the shortcuts will make it easier for you to access them.

With concentration I was able to create some moderately satisfactory results when making the blender donut. After all the steps that I followed using the tutorials, my understanding of the modelling process is much better. Honestly, it is quite easy once you’ve managed to place your basic shape. A lot of the modelling relies on moving around the mesh (image 1) of the object.

You might be asking what a mesh is, more specifically, polygon mesh. This is an object that is composed of squares (or triangles) and vertices that define the shape of the polyhedral object. A vertex is a position along the edge. It is the corner that can be morphed (image 2) [1]

The mesh can be more complex by creating more divisions. This makes it harder to model because there are multiple vertexes and less area (face) to more around at once (unless you select multiple points but that can create an unpredictable transformation). This is why we always start with a much more basic mesh.
Moving on, once you’ve moulded out the shape you want you can add additional objects on top. This would usually act as another layer rather than be part of the original shape (unless you decide to merge both objects). In my case, I selected half the donut and duplicated it to create the “icing” layer. Now I can freely adjust the shape to replicate the look of real icing.

Once I’m done doing this, I can now go move on from the modelling area to the sculpting area. I should take this time to explain what each workspace does in blender. Our main ones are:

Layout

Modelling

Sculpting

UV Editing

Texture Paint

Shading

Animation

Rendering

Compositing

Workspaces are essentially predefined window layouts. Blender’s flexibility with Areas lets you create customized workspaces for different tasks such as modeling, animating, and scripting. It is often useful to quickly switch between different workspaces within the same file.[2]

When you are done with one task, you can move to another workspace and add to your 3D model, such as shading and  texture painting your model.

REFERENCE

1. http://www.chai3d.org/download/doc/html/chapter9-mesh.html
2. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/window_system/workspaces.htmlhttps://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/window_system/workspaces.html

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Image 2 - Mesh face of a polygon object (ref: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/structure.html)

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Was the outcome of my 3D donut good? Well I’d say it was a good first attempt. There are many things that I could improve on, especially the shape of the icing and the sculpting. I particularly dislike how bumpy the icing turned out. I made mistake of trying to fix it in the sculpting workspace instead of properly finishing the shape in the modelling area. It made it much more difficult for me to work with the mesh because a lot of the icing layer went through the donut layer. As I continued sculpting, I could see a lot of my mistakes being pushed into the donut layer to avoid a displeasing look. However, this just caused more problems as I smoothened the shape. What made things even worse was that I could not undo after 10-15 undos because the program takes a long time to apply the changes. Regardless of this, I somewhat managed to replicate the donut shape with a slightly cartoonish style. As you can see, there are some folds and dents on the icing making it look quite unrealistic, so I took this to my advantage to go down a more stylistic approach.

Taking all these mishaps into consideration, next time I will try to work more efficiently and make sure one task is completely finished before moving onto another workspace. The shape should be completely moulded before flattened and smoothened in the sculpting tab. Otherwise I’ll end up hiding more mistakes and create a dissatisfying model.

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Let’s just say I have spent way too much time learning this program than actually making things. Either way, it was all worth it at the end.

This practical was much more time consuming because the functions are not “straight to the point” and the materials aren’t exactly ready to use the minute you open the program. However, once you have set down your materials and understood the concept of “multiple canvases”, you’re set for life! Kinda.

Blender is extremely well documented so all the features, tools, windows, etc, have descriptions in the help menu and on the official blender website. You can just find out what they are by hover over the icons.
The most important tool you will need to focus on is the 3D cursor. The 3D cursor is a point in 3D space which can be used for a number of purposes, such as placement and point of rotation & transformation.[1] Using the 3D viewports, you can view the 3D cursor from any angle. These are either controlled manually or by using the numpad that is dedicated to rotating and viewing the 3D object (polygonal area) from different angels (top, left, bottom, etc).[2]
Like any object that you add to your workspace, grease pencil works exactly the same way. It can be manipulated in various different ways to form shapes that are much more linear in form. Grease pencil doesn’t have multiple vertexes but rather has points that can be transformed in “edit mode”. Usually you would draw your shapes out in “draw mode” before manipulating it to your desires.

REFERENCES

1.https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/3d_cursor.html
2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Viewport

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HOW TO KNOW IF A WEBSITE OR ARTICLE IS LEGITIMATE 

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HOW TO KNOW IF A WEBSITE OR ARTICLE IS LEGITIMATE 

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Do you recognize the publication name?

There are publication names you may recognize, and that you can trust — they may be the major news organizations, such as the New York Times, Forbes or The Wall Street Journal, or even familiar household brands that you know.

Is the information from a secure domain?

Most websites should be secure these days. Look in the address bar of your browser, and you’ll see a padlock. This means that the connection to the intego.com website is secure, using HTTPS. The intego.com domain has an SSL certificate, which ensures that when you type intego.com, your browser connects to the correct site.

Did you fact-check the story?

You can generally trust the more authoritative websites to be honest and accurate, especially if they routinely offer corrections to address errors when they find them. The established newspapers, the well-known magazines, and the TV networks that have been around for a long time are all generally trustworthy. That said, don’t assume everything you read, even from known sites, is truthful information: Fact-check it first.

Fact checking a story isn’t always easy, but some topics can be checked on sites like Snopes. This independent fact-checking website roots out bogus ideas and gives clear evidence for its findings.

REFERENCE

1. https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/how-to-tell-if-an-online-article-is-real-fake-or-a-scam/

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Posted on September 7th, 2018 by Kirk McElhearn and Derek Erwin

Fake news, scams, and phishing are the plague of our times. It's getting increasingly difficult to determine which websites are presenting truthful information. I'm not just talking about political views; people can disagree about those, and while you may not like what you read on certain sites, that doesn't mean, as some like to say, "it's fake news."

A Stanford University study of 7,804 students from middle school through college found that some 82 percent of them cannot distinguish between an ad labeled "sponsored content" and a real news story on a website. These findings present a real risk when visiting websites you're not familiar with; and, not just for students, for everyone. How can you know if what you're reading online is telling the truth or trying to scam you either directly-such as by trying to sell you something, or get your personal information-or indirectly, by spreading lies, or by sowing doubt?

In this article, we offer a few tips to help you sort the wheat from the chaff on the Internet. These tips will help you determine if an online article is real, fake or a scam.

Do you recognize the publication name?

There are publication names you may recognize, and that you can trust - they may be the major news organizations, such as the New York Times, Forbes or The Wall Street Journal, or even familiar household brands that you know.

However, there may be some websites that try to suggest that they belong to a brand. For example, apple-hot-deals.com (this site does not exist, right now) might try to pretend that it's an Apple website, but it's most likely not. Most brands don't use compound domain names in this way, which anyone can register; instead, they use URLs such as apple.com/hotdeals (this also doesn't exist).

Here at The Mac Security Blog, we use the intego.com domain, and the blog is hosted at www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/, proving that it belongs to Intego's domain.

You can check a domain using a command called whois. If you go to the top level of your Mac's disk, then /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications, you'll find a tool called Network Utility. Launch that, then, in the Whois tab, enter a domain, such as intego.com:

You'll see that the domain has been registered since 1997, which is proof that the company has been around for a long time. This isn't a guarantee that a site hasn't been hacked, but it is a first step.

Is the information from a secure domain?

Most websites should be secure these days. Look in the address bar of your browser, and you'll see a padlock. This means that the connection to the intego.com website is secure, using HTTPS. The intego.com domain has an SSL certificate, which ensures that when you type intego.com, your browser connects to the correct site.

This said, anyone can purchase an SSL certificate, but the lack of one is something to be wary of. (RELATED: 6 Cyber Security Tips to Ensure a Website is Secure.)

Are you able to contact the site owner or company?

All websites should have a Contact section or link with an email address or a form to get in touch with the company. Most business sites should also have one or more addresses of offices, and a phone number. Again, this isn't hard and fast proof, but if you try to contact the company and find real people who reply, this helps you confirm its existence.

Businesses in the United States may show up on the Better Business Bureau website. You won't find every business there, but you will find reviews for some businesses.

Did you run a search on it?

You can check most search engines to find information on just about anything, and you might want to try searching for a company or publication that runs the site you're curious about. You should see their domain at the top of the list, but one way to see how much of a footprint a company has is to search for links to a company from other sites.

For example, if you search for link:intego.com on Google, you'll get more than 400,000 results of links to pages on the Intego website. This shows that not only does the Intego website have a lot of pages, but that plenty of other sites link to the Intego website. Go through the results and you'll see, for instance, reviews of Intego software on other sites, articles about Intego products, and more. This shows that Intego is a real, authoritative company with a long history.

Have you checked the spelling within the article?

Yes, anyone can make miskates and end up with tyops on a wesbite, and anyone can run a spell checker, but scam sites are often set up by people whose native language is not English (or the language of the site you're visiting), and poor language can be a clue that something is amiss.

Did you fact-check the story?

You can generally trust the more authoritative websites to be honest and accurate, especially if they routinely offer corrections to address errors when they find them. The established newspapers, the well-known magazines, and the TV networks that have been around for a long time are all generally trustworthy. That said, don't assume everything you read, even from known sites, is truthful information: Fact-check it first.

Fact checking a story isn't always easy, but some topics can be checked on sites like Snopes. This independent fact-checking website roots out bogus ideas and gives clear evidence for its findings. These days, Snopes covers a lot of politics and policy, but one recent article asks, Is This a Picture of a Snake Found in a Milk Jug? (Spoiler: it's Photoshopped.) This is a good way to find out if those memes that spread on social media are true or not.

While fact-checking a story sounds simple enough, a Rasmussen poll found that an astonishing 62 percent of American voters believe fact checkers are biased. James Taranto, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, actually tweeted that fact-checking "is opinion journalism pretending to be some sort of heightened objectivity."

"Fact checking" is opinion journalism pretending to some sort of heightened objectivity. Very bad for journalism. https://t.co/LqojbRrN8Z

- James Taranto (@jamestaranto) September 25, 2016

So how do you know who to trust? Can you believe everything you read from just one site? Few publications are wholly balanced, and bear in mind that the opinion and editorial sections of websites and publications are not meant to be such; instead, they are meant to present the individual opinions of columnists and authors.

The best way to spot fake news is to read widely, and not just in a silo of websites or publications that echo your beliefs. Of course, it's important to find the right sources for your reading. If you're a liberal, find conservative websites that aren't virulent or sensationalist, and if you're a conservative, do the same for liberal-leaning publications.

A few sites related to the whole "fact checking" genre include:

TWS Fact Check: A fact-checker associated with The Weekly Standard, owned by the Clarity Media Group. In 2017, TWS Fact Check joined Facebook's network of fact-checkers and is signatory of the International Fact Checking Network, which Media Bias Fact Check uses to determine factual reporting for outsource reviews.

Fact Check Review: RealClearPolitics (RCP) is a Chicago-based media group of experienced journalists who aim to deliver better, more insightful analysis of the most important news and policy issues of the day. Each week in its Fact Check Review, RCP "watches the watchdog" and offers a review of fact-checking outlets that Facebook uses for guidance. This project reviews only those fact checks bearing on civic and public concern.

AP Fact Check: The Associated Press (AP) is a nonprofit news cooperative headquartered in New York City, and owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States. "Getting the facts right" has been a core mission of the AP since its founding in 1846.

Check Your Fact: A very well sourced fact-checking news site produced by the journalists of the Daily Caller, with a non-partisan mission to fact check statements by influencers, as well as reporting by other news outlets.

FactCheck.org: A nonprofit website, funded by the Annenberg Foundation, that identifies as a non-partisan "consumer advocate for voters." Its mission is to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.

PolitiFact: Acquired by the Poynter Institute in 2018, PolitiFact utilizes reporters and editors from the Tampa Bay Times and affiliated media outlets to "fact check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups." They publish original statements and their evaluations on its website, and assign each a "Truth-O-Meter" rating.

WaPo Fact Checker: The Washington Post is a news media organization headquartered in Washington DC, purchased by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2013. Its editorial team publishes a "weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics, from The Post's famous fact-checking team." Its goal is to present the truth behind the rhetoric.

Media Research Center: A research and education organization, and product of NewsBusters, that identifies as a premier media watchdog with a mission to "expose bias in the news media and popular culture." It recently launched a project to fact check the myriad of fact-checking organizations that are relied on by news organizations and social media companies to verify factual claims in news stories.

Full Fact: An independent fact-checking organization based in the United Kingdom, launched in 2009, which aims to "promote accuracy in public debate." Full Fact is widely considered as a well regulated, strongly sourced, thorough fact-checker.

If you're looking up information about health or medical conditions, this is particularly sensitive, and the best way to verify claims is to check PubMed, a website run by the National Institutes of Health that publishes medical research articles. You may find some of these articles difficult to read, but you can use them to fact-check claims you see on other wellness and health blogs.

Much of the content on PubMed is only available to subscribers, but there are many articles that you can access in their entirety, and that aren't written for people only in the medical industry. Bonus tip: you generally only need to read the Abstract section of an article on PubMed, which presents the question it addresses and conclusions.

Bottom line

Always remember there are not necessarily "two sides to every story," and that false equivalence-presenting dissenting opinions about an issue just to pretend to be balanced-doesn't guarantee balance. On the contrary, often false equivalence is used to bolster ideas that are false or manipulative.

Ultimately the best way to verify information is to do your own research, seek advice from those you trust, and then make up your own mind. What you do with it is your own business.
Further reading:
About Kirk McElhearn
Kirk McElhearn writes about Apple products and more on his blog Kirkville. He is co-host of theIntego Mac Podcast, as well as several other podcasts, and is a regular contributor to The Mac Security Blog, TidBITS, and several other websites and publications. Kirk has written more than two dozen books, includingTake Control books about Apple's media apps, Scrivener, and LaunchBar. Follow him on Twitter at@mcelhearn. View all posts by Kirk McElhearn →
This entry was posted in How To, Recommended and tagged Fact Check, Fake News, online scams, phishing, Real News, Research Tips, scam, security. Bookmark the permalink.

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How to tell if an online article is real, fake or a scam - The Mac Security Blog

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Posted on September 7th, 2018 by Kirk McElhearn and Derek Erwin Fake news, scams, and phishing are the plague of our times. It's getting increasingly difficult to determine which websites are presenting truthful information.

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So this is where things start to get slightly trickier. The 3D cursor typically suggests where the canvas is sitting. You can change the angle of the canvas from top, bottom, side, etc but can move it around anywhere in space as you move the 3D cursor.[1] The canvas determines where you are drawing within the space. Once you’ve drawn around the space by moving the canvas from one area to another, you would have to put the canvas back to the areas where you have scrawny again if you ever wanna edit it. This is quite a hassle with blender because you could be off by minuscules without noticing since the gap is being blocked by the brush lines. Since i’m using blender at its a rawest state without any add one/plugins , you would usually put cubes (because it has a flat surface) to each of the sections you drew on. Now, the 3D cursor will be able to stick to the surface of the cube and you'll be able to edit that section precisely.[1]

There is an option to draw on a shape rather than on the canvas and you do this by changing it from 3D cursor to “origin” which is basically the shape in the centre. To prevent drawing in the side of too close to the shape, you can change the offset of the brush and it navigates how close the lines will appear on the shape (shown in image 1).

When you click on the grease pencil object, you will be directed to the layers panel where you can separate each grease pencil drawing so they don’t all overlap within one space, making it difficult for you to manipulate. Each layer corresponds with one another so if you were to fill or colour something within the lines, they would automatically detect the closed space and fill it in.

REFERENCE

1. https://cgcookie.com/posts/blender-3d-cursor-ten-ways-to-improve-your-workflow
2. https://youtu.be/c57qq2nE3B0 (Dedouze explains at 34.30)

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The biggest issue I had using layers and “materials” (basically the colours) was that you could not prevent seeing through the back of a drawing , even if you have a block of colour covering that area. This might happen because of the order of your layers. To fix that you can change the stroke depth order from 2D layers to 3D location, now the layers’ order doesn’t matter anymore and you can view the colours and lines like how you would in a real world physic space.

Now, this is where the bigger problem hits. The colours of the drawing starts looking glitchy and thats because we put different coloured layers in the exact same place in the space, which isn’t possible in a realistic sense. You would have to select some colours and move them slightly from each other, but that would make the colours look strange and separated. What you should make a habit of doing is drawing certain overlapping things within different layers to prevent it from being seen through.

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As you know, each colour is a “material” and not something you can just pick and place from the colour wheel like traditional digital art. This means you have to make a new material every time you use a different colour. It is quite convenient when it comes to toggling from one colour to another but you do not have that many variations unless you choose to add a large amount of materials. This makes blender’s colour style very limited and pushes you to stick to a certain range of colours.

The most useful thing that I have gotten out of this, is that I can select a certain colour material and adjust the colours whenever, so I do not have to stick to just one colour if i don’t like it.

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https://liveteesac-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/a0298988_live_tees_ac_uk/Ef6qZWAusLZGh3h3Gv0ypB4BThnql0d_d9LO55DzGW3O9Q?e=ZJi73l