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.

Major Project: Scene 7 shot 3 Playblast

Major Project: Scene 6 Renders

Major Project: Scene 1 Shot 1 - Set complete

This is the set for the first animated shot in the film, in which the camera scrolls through a regular forest to find the small village.

Major Project: Scene 2 Renders

This is a short scene in which the ugly munchkin is first introduced.

Major Project: Scene 6 Shot 3 Render

I haven't posted in a while as I have been getting stuck in with animation, and as I haven't been animating chronologically I didn't think it was worth posting mismatched scenes, but hope to post a large chunk of animation by the end of the week. For now I've set out some renders from some of the animated shots.

Major Project: Scene 4 Renders

In the breaks I take from animating I've been leaving maya to render stills from scene 4, although I had rendered stills from this scene before, the settings weren't consistent for lighting and textures throughout the stills so I decided to correct it. I'm still a bit unsure about the specular for the characters and if they look too shiny or not.

Major Project: DJ Character

 

 

Major Project: Completed Sets

All of the 5 main sets are now fully complete, the only changes to be made are that floor details may change depending on the shot as I don't want to have a ridiculous amount of objects in my scene.

Major Project: Scene 4 Renders

I've now corrected all the textures and got the area lights set how I want them to be. Apart from polishing up the animation this scene is now complete.

Major Project: Scene 4 Playblast

There are still some changes that I'd like to make but the main chunk of animation is complete for this scene.

Major Project: Scene 4 Shot 4

 

Major Project: Character Interface

I decided to make a quick interface for selecting controls as I thought it would save time in the long run with the animation process.

Major Project: Scene 4 shot 1 Playblast