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.