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Daily Digital Wanderlust

One of the hassles with having a life when being involved in a major project like this beast is that you inevitably have to play catchup at some point. Schedules should be somewhat flexible, but I’m not allowed that flexibility in this project. Unfortunately this project relies on a bit of dynamics to create atmospheric effects as a rather integral part of the story. As I can’t really fudge such things, I’m stuck using having to experiment with a proper look while simultaneously trying to get my animation done.

It’s not exactly a positive experience, but I’m nearing the look I want for rain. I’ve completed multiple clouds which look pretty darn good. It’ll probably take a week of sneaking in snow experiments before I get the snowfall to where I want it. I’m concerned that it may look a bit out of place no matter what I do, but there’s not much to be done about that. I’ll create what I can and try to fit it to the style of the piece to the best of my abilities, and if the dynamics don’t look entirely right, we’ll they’ll be close.

It would have helped if I had actually learned dynamics when I took the class, but the truth is that looking back, I really haven’t been taught all that much at all. Most of what I’ve discovered that is really great has been done on my own which feels rather hollow. Self-learning and self-discovery are great, and often such lessons are learned better than others, but why am I paying a ridiculously high tuition to basically wake up every morning to be told I suck? Once again, I find myself back at the lack of motivation due to a lack of mentoring.

But back to the subject at hand, the ever exciting all-nighter. My strategy for pulling the such an event is pretty basic. Avoid caffeine during the day, then slowly dip into it throughout the night. Stand up and move around at regular intervals. An occasional *1-song* interlude of Guitar Hero is perfectly acceptable. Listen to music, avoid video. Music should have a good beat, and in the later hours of the morning, you should be able to dance to it. I like mashups because they keep my brain guessing, but I’ll occasionally dip into some retro 80’s glamslam crap or even the occasional movie soundtrack (usually Lord of the Rings or Star Wars). A shower around 3-4 am is usually a good plan. Avoid your other vices, as such things usually just lend themselves to tiring oneself out.

Most importantly of all, promise yourself you’ll never put this work off again, even though you know that you will come next time around.
It’s back to the grindstone now, and hopefully what I show in the morning isn’t too terrible.

At this point into the project, I’ve so far learned one extremely important lesson:

Negative reinforcement simply doesn’t work.

During this current project, we’re expected to create our own schedules and then adhere to it, without the ability to shift things around in this schedule at a later date, even if the end result is still achieved. That kinda bugs me, because essentially we’re to blame for not knowing how long things we’re expected to know how to do should take (or something). This is the first major project of this sort that any of us have done, and it just feels like the lack of even a chance of flexibility in the schedule can be a serious demotivator if you fall behind on one’s schedule, as I did last semester.

Positive reinforcement and some constructive guidance by a ‘mentor’ have seriously been missing in this project, and that’s probably why I’m still not as confident a 3d animator as I should be. Perhaps if I make it into a graduate program, I will be able to find my Obi-wan.

My schedule has been approved for this, the second semester. In order to create an even work load, I started by looking backwards to my animatic. After viewing it a few times, I created a new shot list based off my animatic, then made corrections to the list based on the feedback I received when the animatic was presented. I then went through the new list and with my scenes open in Maya, I created a list of cameras needed for the entire shoot. I ended up with 70 shots and 15 cameras, excluding the fight scene (which is a whole other pickle in of itself, in need of a serious analysis (at a later date)).

I divided the 70 shots across 6 weeks, meaning that roughly 12 shots were due per week. I divided my week according to my class load–Tuesdays and Wednesdays I need to animate only one shot. Thursdays and Mondays I need to animate 2 shots, and Saturday and Sunday I need to animate 3 shots. Fridays are exclusively reserved for redos starting in ‘week 2′ of the schedule, but can also be used to pick up weekend shots early if time is available.

Thankfully a good chunk of those shots are relatively quick–there are only a handful that exceed five seconds. Probably on my busiest of days, I’ll only need to animate 15 seconds of footage. My average should be between 5-9 seconds of footage a day. That’s a lot of animation, but it should be achievable.
Over spring break and the week following, my sole goal is to work on the fight scene. This will be the most challenging aspect of the film, in spite of the fact that it will last less than thirty seconds. Creating a convincing fight between two titans is no easy task, especially since they’ve been endowed with rather strange proportions. However, I’m hopeful that I will be able to create something that at the very least, doesn’t detract from the remainder of the film.

After the fight scene, I have two weeks for redos, compiling, sound effects, and music. The film is due on Tuesday, April 17th at 09:00. After that, I have three weeks to work on a portfolio, which will be a cake walk. I already have a good chunk of my portfolio completed, and I’ll have time to work on it across *3* different classes.

Now it’s off to the races–here’s hoping I can stick closer to my schedule this time around.

Now that the semester has kicked into gear once again, I’ve resumed serious production on Godflower (remember, working title only). I finished off plotting the calendar and schedule for this semeseter–I have to average around 2 shots animated per day. OI! It’s not going to be a pretty scene, but thankfully I’ve left in considerations for redos if need be. I’ve also paced this semester out better, so that I don’t have to deal with a lot of work during the middle of the week, leaving the bulk of the heavy lifting for the weekend.

As the semester rolls on, I’ll be continuing to update this blog, for two reasons:

• As a record of my work on the project.
• As a tool to help keep myself motivated during the semester.

While I won’t be putting up the script, I do hope to get stills from various stages up in the next few days. I also need to find a good Norsk final name for the project. Thus far, I’ve mainly been running into dead ends with the limited time I have to look for such things.

Additional projects for the semester: College of Business and Professional Studies Interactive Flash Piece, perhaps writing a comic entitled The Unluckiest Leprechaun, perhaps writing and drawing a comic entitled either Henchmen or The Cleaners, painting class projects, print production projects, library publication projects (both digital and printed), and possibly an assistant editorship (primarily layout) for the monthly school newspaper.

Too busy? Nah…