During this project I did struggle quite a bit with certain aspects such as the UVs and textures, I remade and reanimated my Ghost model with some of the feedback from tutors and I had previously not put in as much effort into the details as I should have, I believe the new ghost is much better and that I created it to the best of my ability. I really enjoyed the setting we chose for the short it was something I have personally never seen before and was excited to create. As well as animating our characters we each created an object or objects to fill out the room, I created a mounted deer head it is low poly however I think it looks pretty good with all of the other objects in the room. When it came to rigging my ghost I could not get face controllers to work even with the help of my group and lecturer, I just used the shape keys as they were to make the ghost’s face move to create expressions.
Overall this year was interesting and I learned a lot and am looking forward to going into the second year to learn even more. Some areas I need to improve on such as not getting distracted which can happen quite easily and not procrastinating as much as I have done which I will work on myself and with my advisor, I also need to improve my memory with things in general which I will also work on with them. I will be practising my 3D skills over the summer especially the UV and texture side of it as I do struggle quite a lot in those areas.
I enjoyed working with my team on this project they all contributed a lot to the project and made it fun to work on. As I have written previously the UVs, rig and weight painting are the areas I struggle with and will practice over the summer by rewatching lectures and youtube tutorials.
When brainstorming for short ideas we came up with a few different things, the one that stood out most was inspired by ”Rubbadubbers” a children’s tv show from the early 2000s I remembered watching it as a child and was interested to learn about its creation and try to make something that would live up to the nostalgia related to the show, we had to create characters without legs so we thought that bath toys would be a fun idea as many of them are boats or fish. The story was going to be a diving toy getting stuck at the bottom of the bath and the other toys are trying to help them get back up to the surface. However, we decided to go with the ghost idea as animating water is very hard on blender and would add a lot of time to render and animate.
Our final idea and the one we went with was of two older looking ghosts going into an old study and then looking around before being frightened by creepy sounds coming from behind the door. They fly around in a panic before hiding inside two objects, the candle and the music box which come to life, the door slams open and shows two glowing eyes causing the two ghosts to leave the objects and flee out of the window. The camera then pans back to the ‘monster’ to reveal that it was just another ghost playing a prank on them and laughing as the short ends. My ghost was the more orange-toned one with a hat, monocle and moustache, I made them do a roll out of the portal, in the beginning, to make it seem like they got a little confused when going through it in an attempt to show that they are older along with the listed accessories. While we were still brainstorming for this idea I did suggest that making the two frightened ghosts wear old items from the Victorian era and making them black and white would make them look older but we did not go with that idea instead opting for more colourful ghosts.
Overall I have learned that I prefer to work in groups rather than on my own, I enjoy group work even more whenever I already know the people in it as I can struggle to properly communicate with new people. Working with other people helps me to stay focused and not to give up if I am struggling which is something I need to work on for the future as I know for some projects I will either need to work on my own or with people I am not familiar with especially as I got into the industry and join a studio of some kind.
With everything I have learned during this semester and last I am looking forward to learning more in my second year, especially Zbrush as sculpting in Blender was quite fun and using a program designed for it will be even better as I love to watch characters come to life as if you are sculpting them from clay. I am also looking forward to learning any character/creature design tips as it is one of my favourite things to do during my free time and will be able to have a lot of creative freedom when it comes to character design especially if it is not group orientated. I also really enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a story that uses characters that do not have legs and to make it visually appealing and easily understandable. I believe that we have done a good job in doing both of these, the ghosts are very cute and so are the animated objects. I love the layout of the room although I believe we should have added more to fill it out and really look like a study such as more bookshelves and possibly a fancy chair and fireplace which would also add extra lighting to the scene.