Part 2 – Cinema 4D Tutorial videos

Silver arts award part 2 A/B –Leadership skills.
My unit 2 project is recording a series of tutorial videos demonstrating how to create a minecraft rig using cinema 4D software.

What is cinema 4D?

Here is a short video about cinema 4D software.

And here is a link for more information about cinema 4D – My chosen software for this arts award.

http://www.maxon.net/products/cinema-4d-studio/who-should-use-it.html

Aims and Scope  – I aim to be able to effectively demonstrate and teach other people to use cinema 4D software to create minecraft rigs, with a series of tutorial videos.  I aim to make 3 videos outlining and showing how to create a rig from scratch.  I have also created this website to present my whole Silver level arts award, this hopefully demonstrates my design and creative abilities also.

My Audience will be people who are beginners and people who are new to cinema 4D, as well as individuals who are familiar with the software but want some tips on how to create minecraft rigs. It is after all a specialised type of software which is not available for free, so these tutorials are not for everyone, there is a niche of budding young programmers (like myself) who love to use this kind of advanced 3D software to create and alter images to make new and awesome rigs. (other characters can be imported to the software to make 3D versions, such as Roblox characters or other online profile characters and avatars). I am choosing Minecraft’s Steve character because he has been the main minecraft character since the game began and he is very well-known and popular.  I will access my audience through social media such as twitter and facebook and I will gain some feedback using facebook also, as well as word of mouth and emailing my friends and family to give me feedback for my efforts.

Leadership skills and qualities – I will be demonstrating and explaining how to create a minecraft Steve rig using cinema 4D software, including every aspect of what is involved in a step by step way, explaining in simple terms so that people can follow as I create a rig in real-time on the video tutorials.  I have done many hours of research in the weeks leading up to this arts award. (as I have been teaching myself to use this software for my own personal programming passion).  So I am very pleased to be able to pass on the knowledge I have gained through my own research and experience.

My Role – obviously, my role will be teacher, programmer, and designer.  I will be designing, and programming the cinema 4D rig as a demonstration, but I will also be teaching others how to do the same by creating the tutorial videos as I go along.

Silver arts award unit 2A  (pdf) part 2A & 2B Planning of my project – This pdf contains my plan, timetable and practical issues, including a 4 week detailed plan of action. (click on the highlighted link to view the pdf)

Part 2 C/D – Deliver my project – See Below.

Dylan progress notes (pdf) – This is a pdf document of my progress notes. (click on the highlighted link to view the pdf document). I made some notes as I was doing the videos, including a brief end of week review for each of the 4 weeks.  I also had some photos taken of me as I was working through the last 4 weeks.

Video 1 – a tutorial video showing modelling and texturing.

This is the first video of the series.  It shows how to model the ‘Steve’ character for the rig.

Video 2 – a tutorial video showing the creation of joint controls

This is the second video of the series.  It shows how to create the joints and joint controls.

Video 3 – a tutorial video showing creating facial expressions

This is the third and last video in the series.  It shows how to create the facial expressions of the character.

Part 2E – Review of my project –My leadership skills improved because after watching and reviewing my own videos, I could see how I could explain things better in future, so that people can understand fully what I’m demonstrating.  My plan worked pretty well, although I guess I could improve on it next time.  That’s the good thing about reviewing your own work, you can always think of ways to make your work better. The best part of my arts award (part 2) was the actual making of the videos and setting up the website, because these are the parts I enjoyed most.

The most difficult part of making the video series was making part three, this is because the mouth and eyes are pretty hard to do (you’ll see this in the third video).  Because near the end I was testing and there were glitches which I needed to rectify, but I managed to do this towards the end, so it all worked out ok, but these are things that are worth mentioning as I can be aware of this in the future if I ever decide to release a similar tutorial video series.

If I was to do this again, the things I would do differently would include, as usual, better time management (I still finished within my time frame and completed within my deadline, but I didn’t stick the the initial schedule I set.  This tells me that its ok to adjust as I go along. I can alter the plan as I go along according to my progress).

I would use better recording software next time, because I used bandicam ‘trial version’ which can only record up to ten minutes at a time, so I had to compile all the videos together at the end, which was obviously more time-consuming, having the full version would speed the process up.

I found that social media is a good source of advertising for these types of things, especially as there are many groups set up on facebook for example, that specialise in home ed subjects as well as gaming groups and programming groups that you can share your work with and get feedback.

 Here is some feedback I’ve had from others so far – Please leave a comment below if you like. Thank you.

• “Looks brilliant Dylan! If you want constructive criticism then I wouldn’t apologise for forgetting what you were going to say for a moment, it’s alright to have pauses for people to take in the information – if you don’t say sorry then no-one knows that you’ve forgotten, they think the pause is part of the plan. When I grow up I hope I’m as good at using a computer as you, oh wait hang on a sec…Doh! Xx”      From Laura

 

•  “Brilliant work Dylan!” From Debbie

 

•  “I have just been reading the actual text vs watching the vids…STUNNED he is only 11!!!! There is a maturity demonstrated FAR beyond his 11 years, in my opinion”.   From Adam

Final review – I have had some really good feedback about my work. Thank you everyone!  It has made me very happy to be told that people are impressed with my knowledge of cinema 4D and my creative ability with it.  I’m glad that people like the video tutorials and because of all the great feedback I am considering planning a new series, which has more videos, including a basic one outlining the software controls.  (I didn’t initially plan for a video explaining the controls of cinema 4D because there are simply so many controls that it would be an extra long video and would have overly increased my planned working hours).

Next time I will also consider using different recording software or asking my mum to buy the paid version of bandicam and I would probably use my mums rode studio microphone to make the audio even better.  I would have liked to provide some step by step pdf documents to go with the videos, but that also would have taken a very long time.  There is alway the possiblity of using a transcribe service for this in the future, if I find that people would like that as an added extra.

Overall, the experience was new to me because I haven’t done any tutorial videos before, but I really enjoyed it and it was very exciting to see how it all looked and to see what everybody thought about it.  I didn’t like the pressure of the box ticking for the arts award or having to work to a schedule, because I prefer to work without much of a plan, allowing my creative skills to flow and adjust my method accordingly as I go along.  I don’t worry too much about the process in advance, I like to figure things out as I go along.  So I thrive by being given a challenge and a deadline, and then prefer to be left to my own creative devices to deliver.  Not everybody creates in the same way, so that is one of the main things I’ve realised about my journey with this arts award.  I enjoyed it a great deal, but have realised that I do not fit into the usual expectations of planning and schedules.  I create organically in a much more flexible way.  But I think thats a good thing even if society doesn’t.  We can’t all be the same in the way we do things.  So to sum up it have been an epic journey for me and I thank you all for your support.