Major Project: Reflective Statement

This project from premise through til major project has been one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced. By going through it I've learnt a fair amount and gained more passion for parts of the process while there were some parts of the process I was more reluctant at tackling. For a long time I never felt like the project was coming together as I had a problem properly envisioning it and struggled with overall design. But as it went on it all started to come together and in the end I was quite happy with the film that I submitted.

There are issues that still need to be fixed with the animation and edit and I could easily spend another couple of weeks working on the sound alone, but I also think I got my project to a point that I could show it off as a post-viz product. I plan to keep working on it and keep improving it as although I'm happy with what I've made, I still know that I could make it a lot better. At one point Phil suggested that the music for my project didn't quite match up with the narrator and I agree with this, so if I decide to push this project further I will likely look for a different narrator. Although this project started off as a mockumentary I started to prefer it as a children's story or fairy tale as the story of it fitted better, especially with the style being similar to children's shows. But the narrator is more fitting for a documentary so I want to look for someone with more character and energy to their voice.

In terms of the frame renders I wish I had spent more time getting the lighting right as there are some that aren't quite right and need a bit of work. With my Art Of, I should have also spent more time working on it, and included more of my work as there was a lot more to include that I didn't get around to and I didn't treat it so much as a 'making of' document but more as a way to show off the better looking work of the project. But even then there were a lot of renders and captures of the maya process I could have included but didn't.

Overall I ran into many issues from start to finish but managed to overcome them for the most part, and learnt a lot in the process. I'm now more interested in the rigging process even though it was one of the parts I struggled with most, but in general my experience with Maya has been quite enjoyable. My least favourite part of the production process was likely animating, and with this I should have probably taken a different approach and got more stuck in. I was happy with a lot of the facial animation in my film but the body movement definitely needs a lot of work and I had trouble with the walk cycle due to the lack of any knee joints but I think I can still make them look better than they currently do. All in all I'm happy for going through this process, and have managed to improve my work ethic by a large amount in comparison to previous projects (although it still could have been better). It's by far the most time I've spent on any single project but I think having control over it made this more enjoyable. The entire process has improved my skillset by a considerable amount so for that I'm glad.

Major Project Submission

Major Project: Final Playblast

Major Project: Character Turnarounds

Major Project: Just an 'armless Munch-kin

I created an extra blendshape on a copy of my character so I could remove his arms. I'm sure this isn't the correct way to achieve this but the character is only going to appear for a few seconds at most so it wouldn't be worth re-creating a limbless character.

Major Project: Decapitated Body Render Test

Major Project: Animation Progress

Here is my progress so far. Sound effects are still a WIP as well as backing track, as I am currently talking to a composer. I still need to animate the last 20-30 seconds as well as refine a fair few of the shots and add effects to them in post.