Week 14, Final week

All that could be done is done. This week is dedicated to editing, sound, and titles. This is a shame I feel, as I wish I could handball these tasks onto someone else while I touched up my shots, as this post production process is very time consuming at the most crucial stage. When looking back I can see areas which I need to improve my work flow.
Pre-Production: My storyboards were too long, with too many shots. I was over ambitious with story, though story telling is crucial to the enjoyment of any animation, if I’m catering for a demo reel perhaps a sacrifice needs to be made. Unless of course I was clever enough to squeeze a lot of story into very few shots, with very few character and very minimal character movement, then perhaps it could be pulled off.
Character design: Keep it simple. My Sheppard character has a cloak and a flap on his hat. Both these two apparels needed to be rigged effectively, so that they would move around in a flimsy fashion like clothing. Not only did I have to spent more time rigging this character due to his add-ons, but also these two elements slowed me down when Animating. Simplicity is the key to producing an animation that works, and that can be achieved within the time constraints.
Scene design: I was pleased with the overall look of my world, but I made the mistake of modelling the world with the purpose of catering for all shots. What I mean is; I build a ‘location’ in which I was going to put a camera man and crew into. It’s more effective to separate scenes and cater them specifically for one shot at a time. The trouble with this is that my lights would have to be imported correctly, with the right relationships in both strength and space, and then altered. But good lighting is quite important and very useful when adding style and intrigue into shots, so spending time tweaking lights I suppose is forgivable, but I must ask jack if there’s a more efficient way to do such a thing.

Production:
Rigging will be quicker now, and instead of taking up the bulk of my time and preventing me from moving forward with my project, it should be easier the second time around. I’m not foolish enough to assume that rigging will go down without a hitch in round 2, but it will be a less daunting, time consuming task. My rigs should be neat, clearly named with a consistent naming convention. Also all the scripts I have amassed will help speed up this process.

Lighting and rendering; Due to the importance of both, for my holidays or next project I will have to spend quite some time familiarizing myself with both shadows and ray tracing options, as well as experiment with different lighting techniques. Most of this needs to be done through the holidays, as I do not want to be bogged down on this stage, as lighting and rendering happens fairly late in the production process.

Post production:
Learning fusion and using final cut will have a larger emphasis than before, since with my limited knowledge of both programs and a lack of teachers, the usefulness of these two programs didn’t go down that well, as I couldn’t use them to there full potential. Some time will have to be killed in the holidays watching tutorials. I should get Chris and Lee’s help over the holidays.

Overall: All skills levels must be improved. I need better modelling skills so my mesh deforms correctly. I need to master facial rigs. I need to learn different rigging styles, both complicated and simple, as it is clever to use different rigs depending on what movement the character needs to do, as a opposed to creating a fully operation rig with numerous functions I would not need to exploit.
Playing around with Z brush wouldn’t hurt, but keeping polygon limits in mind and importing and exporting animated objects will be difficult.
I should also be researching more animation studios in Melbourne, and ask them for advice on side projects, so as to let them know my name, that I’m pushing myself to learn, and that I’m learning from industry standards. This might help me secure a job in the future, or could help with networking opportunities.
I also need to improve my gift of the gab, so people like me. I think at the end of the day, charisma will serve me best when networking and that trait will be complimented by a high skill level. If I can get that far.

Week 13

I’m simply rendering with Maya software, and Instead of shooting one scene with multiple light ‘passes’ I’ve just incorporated all my lights into one shot, and rendered without fancy ray tracing or shadows. Given the strength of my computer not a lot of rendering time is spent, so that should save me some time. I’m struggling with continuity when it comes to lights. As some of my shots are darker than others. Given that the story revolves around a day night cycle, I fear the animated short could become confusing, and the changing lights would be distracting. Obviously since I have one week left, and i'm still animating, lighting and rendering, time is certainly not on my side. I guess thats to be expected for an animated of my skill level, where the entire project has been a learning expereince, or an exersise in learning an array of programs. I feel like i've learnt alot, and my next project should be smoother and quicker to pull off, I hope.

Week 12

Week 12
Now that all characters have been fully rigged, and my grasp on skeleton systems and constraints has been improved, finally I can now animate the scenes with the most character movement. One such scene involves the Sheppard carrying the sheep, which was tricky because I had to parent the sheep in-between the Sheppard’s palm joints. It wasn’t fool proof, as the sheep would often break through the Sheppard’s hands, but the overall look evoked a sense that the Sheppard was lovingly cradling his lamb, which I was pleased with. To hide the sheep’s behaviour of breaking through the Sheppard’s mesh, I had to reshoot the shot with another camera angle. Now Rendering.

Week 11

Due to problems with rigging upper body FK handles, I chose to animate the scenes with the least character movement; scenes in which my characters were remaining static, looking up in awe. I used a simple twist blend shapes to make it look like the sheep character was looking over his shoulder. This saved time, and allowed me to actually complete scenes without rigging. Little short cuts like this, though using blend shapes makes the animation quite cheesy and wouldn’t impress anyone in the industry had it been on a demo reel, at the end of the day it’s still fast and simple and gets the job done.

Storyboard had to be revised slightly again, this time it was a joy cutting shots, not a horrid amputation as it was the other times. The entire version is just too much work to handle with my level of rigging skills. Story has been condensed and has, as a result lost a lot of it's impact, but an atmospheric piece is beginning to rear it's head through folders of rendered Tiff files. It's beginning to take shape. I ended up using alot more camera movements then I had orginally planned, both to show off the world and character, and beacuse it's movement without animation. Taking short cuts ect.

week 11

The dead line looms. Other assignments occupy my time, though the beasts are not on my pipe line, they must be tackled none the less. Further perfecting certain scenes, but i feel as if I've burnt myself out. Needed to take a wee break from the project, so I could look upon it with fresh eyes. If there's something a traditional artist could appreciate it's that ones perspective becomes clouded when working on a piece for so long. He begins to see it through the biased eyes of a mad man.

week 10

Problem with arm rig. Inverse Kinetics (IK handles) don't give me the movement I need. Animating individual bones proved to be time consuming, difficult with a poor result. used the 'make fk controller' script by commet and it did all the work for me. Rendered out some scene, but not happy with the lighting. I've been study the fine art, but still getting my head around it's functions within maya. Some industry professionals just use spot lights, and ignore all the other different lights in maya.

Compiled some ruff play blasts together.

week 9

The break between semesters, it almost broke me I tell you. The goal was to put in about 6 hours of homework a night, of course not every night could be dedicated to such a fete of honor, such a heroic display of disciple, of passion...
It's not what you think though! Oh yes you guessed it, it wasn't actually all that productive. I began to develop quite a distaste for my characters shoulders, which would deform horrifically whenever he raised his limbs above his head. It was loathsome and it began to gnaw away at me. I deleted his entire upperbody, assuming that it was responsible for this thorn in my side. But of course I was wrong. In hein sight I could have just added weights, or used the component editor to zero out unessesary influences. So I had to needlessly remodel the torso mesh, as well as re-skin the baby, causing much much more trouble than the task was worth. Obviously I would have asked my tutor, but i was all alone.

Review of Semester

I feel the Semester hadn’t quite gone according to my pipeline plan, with allot of problems and time restrictions slowly chipping away at the quality of my minor piece. Very envious of the 2d students who could simply start animating as soon as they wished, while the 3d students production was broken into many different and time consuming fields, all of which we needed to accomplish before we could start animating. Modelling and texturing was perhaps the easiest and quickest, taking only two weeks to build all props and scenes. I made the mistake of building the entire 3d world, as if I was preparing myself to film on a fictional location. Jack urges us to build each individual scene, and cater it to the specific needs of the scene. For example, my exterior shot of the shack reveals the shacks size within the world. I felt that my interior shot of the shack needed to be true to this size ratio, however this is not the case as there is room for movement and adjustments. Apart from this, no other problems where faced within modelling and texturing. Subtly using bump maps were an issue, but I feel happy with the overall aesthetics and look of my 3d world.

Rigging was the hardest facet of the production, and I am still running about 6 weeks over and have still not completed rigs to a satisfactory level. It amazes me the amount of work found within rigging, where in we have to not only get our heads around the mechanics of Maya, but also have to memorise countless steps. If one step out of 20 is forgotten, or skipped, or done incorrectly, the entire rig is forfeit and must be redone. It amazes me that we weren’t given classes on rigging, I feel as if we needed at least 4 hours per week, but we have only done 3 lessons with Pat, and 4 with Jack, and both teachers have a different approach to rigging. Pat sped through a foot roll and a ribbon spine, but one lesson on both isn’t enough to memorize both.

Due to problems with freelance animation teachers finding better jobs, we were left in the dark with rigging and forced to learn from tutorials, which isn’t as beneficial as a teacher, as everyone’s rig, depending on their animation was different. Also my common sense seemed to be absent, as I was striving to build a fully operational rig, where in I only needed simpler rigs for characters. Alot of time was eaten up learning compositing programs such as fusion. Probably something thats more beneficial to us in post production, not in the middle of production. Also lost our Fusion teacher, who was replaced with another composition artist who was only familiar with Shake, so more time was eaten up waiting for the teacher to get up to speed. Of course I sympathise with the demand on a teacher who has one days notice to take off from where another teacher left, but is it so much to ask for a course that isn’t filled with Teachers that disappear .

Even rigging with Jack now is difficult, because a rigging teacher can’t stand up and lecture the entire class, but rather must deal with students one on one. So you only get 15 to 30 minutes of contact time per class.

Overall the semester has been a great exercise in self discipline, having to due a large bulk of the production without proper guidance, forcing me to be self taught in the field of rigging, but saying that, rigging is a very temperamental and anally retentive process best suited to those with adequate teachers and resources.

I Feel i know what squash and stretch, timing, and arcs look like, but whether or not I have the skills to demonstrate them is another story, and is in fact the most important part. If I don’t have something worthy of a demo reel I feel the Semester would be a failure.

week 8

Week 8:

Rigging information still coming in drips. Having trouble getting blend shapes to stay attached to the head when animating. Now I’ve cut my characters into smaller groups, so I can animate and rig each part separately. Need help on my Back and Hip controls, as with all character movement the centre of the character is the source of movement and energy, where the line of action is drawn. It’s a big step and I’m struggling to pull it off just based on the tutorials. freaking out.

Week 6

continued working on those blend shapes. Watched a fantastic demo reel on facial blend shapes by some dude rumored to be now working at dream works according to his Youtube comments. What credibility they hold is beyond me.
Can't get the IK spline to work correctly, it's just mental. Had a look back over my storyboards, and now im not sure if it's nesseasy to have one. I was just enthusased about master rigging, but even learning basic rigs seems to be near impossible.

Week 5

Written work is consuming some time. i've managed to get Ik handels and pole vectors working in the legs and arms, but Pat has told me that my Mesh wont work. Didn't tell me why, but I assume it's because the mesh isn't even enough, and i'd be likey to get deformation and have alot of problems skinning, and with blend shapes. Specifically for the monster character, so we've (I) remodeled key characters. Speaking of blend shapes, I also got them working too. All on my own, since we don't have a teacher that knows rigging at the moment. Been urgeing the others to get into it aswell, since any tricks they learn I can harvest.

Week 4

The Battle continues. I've been adding in unnecessary objects into my scenes, just to add a little more life, But i shouldn't be wasting time on things that don't contribute all that much towards the functionality of the animation. I'm wasting time on aesthetics.
Can't get joints to rotate or orient properly, then I find out the by hitting f8 in Maya you can go into component mode. Such a simple step, so simple that digital tutors seemed to skim over it and assume i already had that 'common knowledge.' Man elitist geeks, who ever would have seen the day. Surely they could have made rigging a bit more user friendly, but then i guess everyone would be able to animate. A world full of animators isn't something auto desk wants.

week 3

OK, been procrastinating rigging. The tutorials are fucking complicated, I've sat threw them all, killed like 8 hours this week on tutorials, but just watching them isn't giving me the skills I desperately need. None of the classmates are up to rigging yet, which makes me feel a bit better.
I shouldn't have been lazy, should have been keeping notes. I'm finding doing 1 or 2 steps at a time, pausing the tutorial, then practicing the technique on Maya is better suited for my learning.

Production week 2

Things are going well on the modeling front, and I feel my skills are progressing nicely. Just time consuming which is always going to be an issue for both a freelance animator and a loathsome student. All characters are textured save for the Sheppard, as I may save the way he looks last, as he has the most complicated rig and depending on how his mesh deforms will take preference on his look. For example if his skirt or gown deforms I may give it a cotton weave texture, but id it's static and doesnt change much, I may feel like a raincoat plastic will be better suited.

Production week 1

Production begins. Used my holiday time, perhaps not as wisely as I should have, to get most of my modeling and texturing done. Hopefully this will put me ahead on my pipeline schedule. Things are looking good, will update as time goes by. Having trouble with lighting. Went to borders to find a good book, but photography seems to have a monopoly on lighting techniques, and I don't want to sift through irrelevant information of shutter speeds ect. Must find a book on 3d lighting, or a good teacher.