Thursday 25 August 2011

Production Report - Week 5

So it’s week 5 and I’m not where I’d like to be or where I should be. Basically I put this down to having zero motivation to work on my animation at home, and the constant travelling down to Geelong on weekends isn’t helping me get things done, though I do hope that I can get something done this weekend as I’ll only have to travel down on Sunday.

The saying is ‘work, rest, play’, at the moment I’m making it to Uni more than I was last semester, which is good, but I’m not sleeping as much as I was and not going out and doing things that I’d like to be doing which in a way is really my own fault but its draining and that has been reflected in my work.

I need to play catch up quick smart. Having cameras locked down in only a few of my scenes and so much to do by week 7 I need to get motivated before I fall too far behind.

Class time is where I’ve been getting my work done. I’ve started to listen to music more so as to help me concentrate on what I’m doing and not be distracted by what’s happening around me, which kind of makes me want to be at home where I know I wouldn’t be distracted by noise but that’s just not going to happen, so please excuse the head phones, I’m not ignoring I’m just trying to concentrate.

Initially I was going off the timing that I had from my storyboards and the After Effects running comp but after creating it in Maya and watching it back it looks like my shots need to run longer otherwise I wont be able to convey the emotions I want the audience to feel, if everything is too quick in the beginning it going to set everything up as being a comedy but I don’t want that, I want everything to seem ominous so when the comedy does kick in the audience wasn’t expecting it. In a way this has slowed me down quite a bit and I have to guess the timing then tweak it a lot to make it work.

Some decisions that I was still not too sure about at the end of first semester, mainly that of how Death will look, have been concreted this semester basically because of the time constraints that I have places upon myself. Sure it would have been nice to have had a nice flowing cloak and drags along the ground and interacts with Deaths movements but that just isn’t going to happen, I’ll go with a more ridged look where I still hope to have the clothing interact with Death, all be it in a more simple way.

After blocking out the street where the animation is set in I’ve realised that maybe I don’t need to do as much modelling as I had first thought. I hope that I can still get a nice looking street using textures instead of having to build all the fine detail.

I hope the realisation of just how far behind I truly am will sink in soon and make me motivated.

Anyway, back to it.

Playblast

The first shot from my animation.
I guess that's all I can say about it.


The low quality is due to it being a play blast and low quality render.


Monday 22 August 2011

Store Clerk Animated

Just a quick animation of the store clerk falling asleep then looking around to make sure no one noticed.
My biggest problem with this stems from the model, he needed eye lids.
This isn't for my final animation, it was just an class exercise.

Restaurant

Simply put, this is the restaurant. The final scene in my animation where Death meets the lady he likes.
For the most part I liked the way it came out. Some things I would have liked to have put in there though are some dirt/stains on the table cloth, finger prints/lipstick on the glass and possibly some differences in the chairs, like rips/tears/wear marks, but I wasn't able to figure out how to implement these into the maya textures I had chosen.

-Click for bigger picture-


The store clerk

Heres a rotation of the store clerk.
Its all one piece of geometry, which may not have been the best idea as it made things a little more difficult to use in mudbox and photoshop to get the textures in the right place.
I would like to put some eye lids on him and get some jaw movement as well.

-Click for bigger picture-