Semester End Evaluation

Given the amount of conflicts regarding my concept, I feel I've got a clear idea as to how my production will come about. The story has been revised twice, and much of the original concept is gone, however I still feel that I've retained the important elements I tried to get across - A robot suffering from amnesia trying to find his place amongst other life forms. The underlying theme of acceptance remains intact after whittling away a character and a pivotal scene of the robot sitting in front of the Northern Lights which was, what I felt at the time, the centrepiece of the animation. Thankfully, I feel I can live without it.

In terms of character design, I remained faithful to the original concept. The robot, B.C., is more or less how I envisioned him to be. The penguin is merely the simple animal character, he could've been anything be it a tiger or bear, I just decided on the penguin after choosing the secluded Antarctic location. The location itself was ideal, as I wanted it to be a place void of people. After reworking a few other story elements, particularly the ending, it was time to start modelling my characters in 3-D. A task I was not looking forward to. I'm far more comfortable with drawing or modelling a character out of clay, which up until that point was all we had been doing. Once the clay model was scanned in 3-D, things started to fall apart. My lack of perspective and general modelling skills within Maya left me more or less screwed with the penguin. While Jack modelled my penguin, I added joints to rig him up. After some minor tweaking, he animates reasonably well. During the end of the semester, I also made some headway modelling my robot. Only time will tell if the rig will work out, though given his Maya friendly design, he should prove simple enough.

Considering I spent most of the semester overcome with a reoccurring flu, I feel the preproduction for my animation came along well enough. I have a clear vision of how the finished animation will look. There have been numerous instances where I've considered defecting back to 2-D, the most notable being when I completed some concept art, which inspired me to try the 2-D approach. However tempting that may be, I do want to attempt Maya as best as I can. My preproduction has revealed numerous options in how to complete this animation. Looking back on the semester, the various skills I've learned with Maya have given me some small measure of confidence, whereas before I had no idea how I could ever create this animation in 3-D within a 28 week period. Hopefully as the year progresses, I'll acquire enough skill to finish this production to a reasonable quality.

Animation Major - Week 13

A fairly stressful week, given that the entire production bible is due the following Tuesday. While I've mostly completed it, it still requires a front cover, then everything needs compiling in a bound folder. Why am I stressed? After completing a recent concept design, I felt compelled to return to 2-D given that the original concept was thought of with 2-D animation in mind. I'm now unsure at this point if my story will translate well into 3-D, and contrariwise the 2-D concept art is, I feel, a lot like what I had originally envisioned. Nevertheless, I will strive to stay on track with 3-D, as I feel I would learn a lot more being unfamiliar with Maya than I would using the various 2-D methods of animating that I'm more or less comfortable with. Hopefully I will remain focused on 3-D throughout the six week break and not be tempted to revert back to Flash or scanning hand drawn images into photoshop.

Animation Major - Week 12

An interesting week. While the desire to defect back to 2-D for my major animation grows ever stronger, the odd shortcut or interesting factoid pops up that reaffirms my decision to use Maya. Currently I'm attempting to block the background for my animation. With just a plain ice field, two mountains and a sunset plastered on a spherical wrap around the ice to create some depth, it doesn't seem at all complicated to get the layout of the characters and environment nailed down before the end of the semester. Adrian helped with a minor issue regarding my penguin model's problem with a caving in tummy. Now he can bed forward without creating a hole in his gut. I have high hopes for modelling the robot, as he is designed to be as Maya friendly as possible, with numerous hidden joints and no neck. Perhaps I might just pull this off, stranger things have happened to me.

Animation Major - Week 11

This week marked the completion of my animatic, which I found out was a little late. My main concern is actually completing the video block on time, as it will put me back on track where preproduction is concerned. With assistance from Jack, I also managed to fully rig my penguin in Maya. I've attempted to animate some movement, which is proving more or less successful. I hope to complete a full walk cycle and also work on texturing it. Hopefully this animation will come together by year's end despite my lack of confidence with Maya.

Animation Major - Week 10

Having succumbed to some random disease, I again failed to get much done in terms of production. I did manage start some pencil tests to see how the animatic may look. Since I still have the thumbnails of empty backgrounds I can likely implement them into the animatic to save time. With the model sheets finished and the animatic barely started, I'm hoping I'm still more or less on track. I feel I have neglected this blog somewhat. Upon casual observation of previous posts, the blog is very text intensive and lacking a lot of the pictures I proposed to upload. Hopefully this coming weekend will allow me some time to add about a dozen or so pictures missing from this blog. I also await confirmation from Chris when he requires the animatic to be done, as I offered to do them for him. Hopefully my schedule this week won't be too full, as I'd like to get the animatics done relatively quickly, say within the space of a few days.