week 8: Final WEEK!?!? :O

This week was possibly the worst last week of a project ever. We scheduled in a 9th week, as stated initially, however we recieved the information that the project ended a week earlier bit too late. By tuesday this week, we were up night and day trying to do in three days what we estimated to take 12 days. We had to make alot of sacrifices and all the hard work putting into be careful to not make mistakes felt like such a waste of time... We were lucky that we had been prepared this week to try and finish it but alow a week for after effects and mistakes, so we hadn't left everything to the last minute which was fortunate. However trying to work well when you are stressed/ annoyed and frustrated was difficult, esp when may decided to close itself down and the worst moments.

Over all i felt the project was still sucessful. Like i said befoire, we actually aimed to finish the animation this week anyway, the only thing we felt gutted about was that we were unable to take our aniamtion into a editing program to make it look awesome on a dvd or something. And lets be honest, that does take a whole week to get it right, so in that respect we felt cheated esp as it was our last project of the year.

Animation over view:

I think that the animation was fine. In fact i actually think that it suited the blocky environment we created. We were able to visualise the envionrment but i think perhaps we didn't plan what we actually wanted from the puma... It works well and walks fine, and Kanika did an excellent job at making it interact with certain things, esp for the three days she did it, however i know that she was disappointed and gutted that she wasn't able to fine tune things so that it wasn't too similar to the animatic version of the puma. However for the unfortunate early ending of the project we had to hand in what we could and make it the best we could for 3 days work. Most peoples opinion of the aniamtion was cool aswell and they assumed we used the same cat and rig fro mthe previous project which was pretty good so i was pleased about that as in theory it only had 3 days work on it.
We both love how the animation in the environment looks. The newspaper birds work so well and move at a good pace that realistic and clear. And how the puma interacts with one is quite cool.
There are many subtle things that move in our enviroment which we enjoy. esp when people notice them after a few watches. i.e. there is an alligator that swims in the water that is difficult to see at first. The intention behind this, you may be thinking whats the point if no one sees it? Is this, in any advert, the onesthat last and are watchable over and over again, are the adverts that have TOO much going on i nthem, so that everytime you watch them you notice something more that is inkeeping with the theme. It makes the viewers feel like they are watching a new advert when they're not... we're such idiots aren't we...
I quite like the London eye animation, the fact its spinning much faster than it should be adds to the quirkyness of the entire scene...

Environment over view:

As said in my of my blog entries i am really please with the environment. It would have been nice to take the scene into after effects though to experiment with particular things.
We tried to blur a blur on the scene to soften the edges abit and to help create the depth we wanted. This was 'sort of' acheived. i think if we had carried on experimenting we would have found the perfect one, however for the tiem limit we were on we had to use the one that did the job and go with it. Again... very disappointing it came to this.
The colouring of the environment would have been improved but what we produced was still aiming towards our intial idea. The sacriffices we made, weren't changing the style, but giving the scene a taste all over of wha tit coudl potentially look like if we had the extra week.

If we had the extra week, what would I do:

1.Take the entire scene into After effects
2.take more time finding royally free music that worked well
3.add more colour to the environment
4.spend more time fine tuning the puma animation

Week7: con't puma animation and finish environment

This week we sort of plodded along. We felt pretty confident in our schedule that the pace we were going wast fast enough to avoid as many mistakes as possible but still allowing us to prepare for problem solving situations plus any after effects experiments we wished to attempt.
Kanika's puma walkcycle was comin galong nicely and it woudln't be long before we could start blocking i nthe puma in the animatic to see whether we got the camera move moving at the right pace or whether the puma would look to unrealistic moving at such a fast pace.
The environment was still unfinished, but not by much. We felt that it still needed to feel 'closed in' and more jungle like. We knew that because of the style, and using toon shader, maya would struggle and lag immensely (which it did) but we thought it was worth the risk if it achieved our goal (which is also did). We enlarged most of the buses to create more depth in the jungle, and also imported more trees etc... to the foreground. This was particualry risky as it may have had an awkward camera move going through an object and inside the object. Luckily we were succesful and the risk was well worth taking. The extra added models at the foreground really helped create a sense of depth and perspective.

week 6: Starting the animation!

This week I knew I wouldn't be too invovled, Kanika is the main animator for the project. Kanika will go into more detail on her blog about what exactly she had to go through but from my point of view, it seemed to be going well still. The book she borrowed from learning resource center seemd to be extremely helpful to do a cat walk and run cycle. My role in the project seemed to be near to an end, as a conceptual artist, i don't really participate in the animating side of things, due to my skills being so dire in that area... However, by the end of the week, I knew that to put all the puma walkcycles together and to get the environment aniamted, i knew i had to get out of my comfort zones and try to do some animating.