This week we were really focussing on getting our preproduction wrapped up, with the purpose of almost finishing at the same time of our presentation in 2 weeks.
We selected our final characters, and made sure they looked like a nice cohesive party so that it would make sense for them to be together.
I also went ahead and typed out a quick checklist for people so we knew what tasks had to be completed for next week.
PREVIS
After learning about previs, I went ahead and blocked out my character, since we would need some basic movements I went and took this blocking and set it up for basic animation. I moved the origins and parented my parts together as well as labelling them as L/R. I also saved a copy of this before I set it up for animation, so that I could use it as the base for my sculpting, makes the use of time more efficient!
I made sure that we all had the same version of blender before starting, and then started quickly blocking out our dungeon location. I wasn’t really liking how this turned out, but I informed my group of what I had done and shared the file for them to work on if they wanted. I told them that I could go ahead and redesign this area, since this was an area that the group had missed in planning thus far. So I plan to take a look at plotting out something similar to this in design, a long corridor that opens to a room with a pressure plate. I think the addition of real life components adds a nice playful element into the piece so I really like that we chose to take this in from our pitch critiques.
Making the Dungeon Location
Eoin went ahead and modelled up a version of the dungeon for us, and I used what he modelled with what I modelled to sketch out a way to combine and simplify the location so that we could get what we wanted. I went ahead and used Eoin’s first panel of the storyboard to recreate the entrance we would use for our establishing shot and then worked from there to build up the other elements of the dungeon. I went and sketched out a top down and side on view of this to get the 3D aspect worked out and let me plan for things liek our light placements, the real world objects and where the storytelling elements like the ball and the pressure plate would lay.
I then used this sketch and brought it into PureRef so that I could have my reference with me while I worked. I found this very helpful, as the way I sketched allowed me to quickly navigate between the different views as I worked to get the placements right. I worked in sections to make sure I got each area worked out roughly to help not overwhelm me with the work. I also made sure to organise and label my objects so that when I shared this with my group they would be able to navigate it easily.
I wanted to check if the Models would fit through certain elements, I know scaling later could be useful for this, but to make sure I went and brought my set up previs model in to help me visualise what it would look like when it comes to animating with the group. I thought it looked quite good! I’m actually quite impressed with how this was coming along.
When it came to adding the real world elements I went ahead and looked up reference to make these. For the crisp packet I used a subdivided cube and applied the modifier once I had the shape, then I went into the sculpt menu and using the grab ( to not add any geometry) I adjusted the shape into a rough knocked over crisp packet form. I used a similar technique to make the shape of the flames for the torches.
For the doorways, bottle caps and bottles, I used just hard surface modelling techniques that I learnt last semester.
With that I was done! Here is a comparison to the sketch I made, you can see I went and changed some areas of this as I went for what I felt looked nicer. I also added a treasure chest, this is something Eoin mentioned we could include for a reason for them to be in that room but it is unclear if we were gonna go along with this plan, so I modelled one just in case.
Then I went ahead and shared this with my group members- I hadn’t added any materials just yet since I had been working on this for a while and needed a bit of a break. This means that both of our locations had been set up for previs! Now I have to jsut wait for my group to get their previs character models and I can work to organise how we will approach animating together.
