The end of a few busy weeks...

<p>Phew! The past couple of weeks have been properly busy for me; finishing various projects, revising for exams and finishing coursework. Today however: I am finished. At precisely 11.19am today I finished the last exam of my Msc and quite possibly the last exam of my academic career! </p> <p>If you are <a href="http://twitter.com/TEDavis">following me on twitter</a> then you will probably be glad to hear that my exams are over as I do tend to tweet about revision quite a bit! </p> <p>Anyway, amongst the revision I had a final module to complete: 3D design. I absolutely loved this module, I had always wanted to give 3D graphics a go but never really had the opportunity. </p> <p>The brief for the 3D design module was: <cite>"Create a 3D animation of at least 50 seconds in duration that demonstrates modelling &amp; animation skills.</cite> - Quite a broad brief but at the same time it was perfect for doing whatever I wanted!</p> <p>Although the brief was quite broad, the whole project had to be completed within just one week as well as being accompanied by a production report (mine ended up being 4000 words long) - this plus the fact that I had no previous experience using Maya (apart from the introductory tutorials we were given) made for quite a large task!</p> <p>In the end I went with a tongue-in-cheek film trailer style animation, take a look and let me know what you think:</p> <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xpG5Q2LnK6c&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x3a3a3a&amp;color2=0x999999" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xpG5Q2LnK6c&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x3a3a3a&amp;color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><p> The video was produced using AutoDesk Maya 8 and some post production within Adobe After Effects CS3</p> <p>The tower in question may or may not be Bowland Tower:<br /><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/213/484019400_ae8d0657c1.jpg" /><br /> Certainly a visible feature of Lancaster University!</p> <p>Image from: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilsonjj/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilsonjj/</a></p>