SEM 2 WEEK 6: Modelling can be Mind-boggling

30 Oct 2016

Modelling, Uv, painting Uvs (repeat)...  That was basically thats basically how my week went,though my other non related course modules seem pretty tough because i am not use to writing or studying :( i should work on my weak area.

Here is a quote to keep everyones moods up:

Learn from yesterday

Live for today

Hope for tomorrow

Meeting with the mentors

We met the mentors separately this week. First Borko: he taught us how to create shadows in aftereffects and how to soften the lines. He is ok with our environments look.

Philip: suggested ways how to make our camera movements more complex by adding tracking, panoramas and 180 camera turns

We understand he wants to challenge us to learn and grow. But we are on a really tight schedule and are far behind the other groups. We tried explaining our reasons for not being for the idea but it doesn't seem to be registering,

Work done

This week I felt very accomplished because i have finished all the environments except for the exterior street. I'm leaving that for next week. For a long time I've felt the work I have been doing is for not because it seems like whatever I've done has been thrown away. But after penning down everything, I realised I am making progress! By next week tomorrow I CAN START ON LIGHTING HALLELUJAH!

Group dynamics

Right now everyone is really looking for a leader. We have established as a group there are some suggestions we are going to ignore from our mentor, but everyone are asking the same question; "so are we really going to do this?" or " How we going to explain it to him?". All the answers are the same "I don't know.". I don't have the rights to critique on my own teachers comments because he has way more experience than I do and i think thats why we have all been so hesitant to rebel though we really want to.

See you next week! Here are some sketches

Toilet completed 

Monster lobby completed

SEM 2 WEEK 5: Draggy and dull

23 Oct 2016

It has only been week 1 of the school semester and already my life seems so bleak. Working on the same project everyday from 9-6pm is killing me. The school came up with this new system of having weekly dailies with our supervisors. It was like a messier version of Vivas since we do not have to produce powerpoint slides. Currently, I am trying to find something to help me focus. My mind has been wondering all over the place on the internet. MUSN'T WATCH AVATAR THE LEGEND OF AANG!! (my favourite series which i have watched over trillions of times)

AVATARRR!!! WHY DO U STOP PRODUCING THAT SHOW

Weekly Dailies: 

As you would expect it, our team took 2 hours in a 1 hour time allocation. We showed our teachers Our POC, environments, what we are currently working on (starting the animation) and our animatic.

They advice us to continue editting our animatic as we worked on the animation.I can officially state that the main office is finish. The exterior environment we are changing the design of the main office building to the pink one most right of the sketch.The teachers also commented that the other buildings next to the main one has to be more detailed. There's more comments about the toilet and the fire escape, those are minor adjustments. 

We currently do not see eye to eye with our supervisor as he envisions for this scene to be "this way" however we find that the work will make the film nicer but its unnecessary and will create more problems in the animating stage. We also are exceeding our animatic timing again by 1min40sec. Making all these changes will just extend our time even more and maybe even change the meaning of the film if we stray too far?

Currently i am improving the exteriors and starting to light the shots.

Here are the sketches i did for the week: 

Experimenting for background buildings

Thumbnails for the fire escape

Group: 

Currently we are working well together in a slow pace. And we are all very frustrated because our film is becoming very foreign to us and we would like to have more control over it. We aren't sure if we should heed all of our supervisors advice or not. Anyways I'm praying for a good week ahead and for good rest. :)

SEM 2 WEEK 4: LAST WEEK OF HOLIDAYS

17 Oct 2016

Since its the last week of my break I decided to soak up all the freedom I have left. I went to a movie called the red turtle (it used tv paint and 3D proxies) and USS. This weeks work was minimal :( . I was just revising all my 3D lighting and doing some sketches to further improve the environment.

FYP
Borko didn't come this week to look at our POC and thank god because we haven't finish. Also that shot we are doing for our POC, turns out its just got taken off our storyboards... so its practically useless can dump it in the trash.

Right now I'm finding a bit hard to handle my work because as my group-mates are currently changing the storyboards and i have to model new things and UV them etc. However I noticed I've made a mistake with the toon outliner by making it all connected. So the objects cannot be moved. Now i am planning to get all the placements fixed so i can reconfirm the outlines of the objects.

Group dynamics

We are all casually doing our work slowly. Which is fine for now. Since next week is the start of school i hope this attitude won't continue, myself included. Currently we haven't gotten into any arguments and we all have common frustrations about our clients so thats keeping us together.

Lets go and conquer this semester! Jia you :)

Here are the sketches i did and a render:

2 WEEK 3: MY MOTORS ARE RUNNING

9 Oct 2015

I am very please with my this week progress, finally i have broken out of my slump and becoming more productive :). There is one more week of holidays till official school starts so far I'm watching as many movies as i can. I've watched Tropic Thunder, Kill Bill and Sausage party. So far Kill Bill is the best for me.

Completed work

Our group is still in the Pre-production stage of our short film and its a bit worrying because other groups has already started animating. Though we aimed to start animation this week. Our client wants us to further imrpove our animatic/storyboards. Its nerve-wrecking as i am now modelling new items for new compositions and as alvin works on the colour scheme he wants to make a changes to the environments. So the current environments i have now are yet to be finalised. I have modelled finish the furnishing for Stanley's house and the lift lobby.

This week Borko tasked us to complete a still POC with the 3D backgrounds, lighting and everything done. I'm really happy that he did that because now there is a goal for me to aim for. I know i sound like a workaholic but it gives me a sense of duty that i have to achieve something :).

Right now I am working on the lighting for the POC but its pretty hard to follow people's lighting sketch,  I realise if i have to render the whole room, the scene is too heavy so i have to cut it up. I'm also re-watching all of Yitting's DCG videos, it is good to hear her voice again ahahah.

Here is the work that I did last week:

2 Week 2: Introducing client.

2 Oct 2016

It's already week 2! Though school has already started it doesn't feel much different other than having to go to school everyday, i don't really do any FYP work at home because there isn't much motivation for me to do so.

There are some updates from this week.

Having a client.

So this week we chose our group mentors, we are really lucky that they allow us to make our own decisions. We chose Philip ( a 2D animation specialist) and Borko (a 3D specialist). Since Philip was eager to help us with our project. This week he gave us alot of feedback about; our films colour scheme, the composition flow of our storyboard, the models of the 3D environment and the 2D character designs. Some of the comments i did felt like it was excessive, but he is our client and in the working world the clients words are gold. Philip has been really help, he printed out notes for us to read and lent me his Zootopia art book. Which is really expensive....

I admit the comments were overwhelming so i decided to sort out all my thoughts and decide what to do one step at the time...

Group Dynamics

Jamie is fitting perfectly into our group from my point of view. We haven't gotten to any squabbles and her opinions on animation is really helpful. She and Roxann also taught me how to use TV paint this week and i did 5secs of the animatic hur hur!

Here is the car model that i completed this week: I am currently working on the newspaper for our film "Monsters injured in the aftermath of a major human riot!"

I am praying that i would be motivated to do work for the weeks to come!