EDITING & SOUND
As the group member most familiar with compiling clips into a final cut from my previous projects, the group assigned me to creating a timeline and editing the final cut of the short film. My software of choice was CapCut, as it is easily accessible due the fact that it is free and I am already familiar with the user interface from my past work.
CREATING OUR TIMELINE
Initially, I compiled all of the unfinished clips into the timeline to add a soundtrack and create a multilayered audio track where I could experiment with sound effects and timing while the clips played. This would become a good workflow system to use as we could swap out individual clips for the finalised ones after they were fully animated and rendered.
OVERLAY ANIMATION
Wanting to incorporate a segment of 2D animation into the final film, I animated a short ‘versus’ overlay effect to play on top of the introduction to the big standoff scene. I chose to use bright colours to allow the overlay to appear bold and striking against the 3D environment and character models. I also created the logo for the film using striking fonts to grab the audience’s attention from the offset.
FINAL FILM (WITHOUT RICHIE’S SCENES) – SWEET TREAT FIGHTER FINAL FILM.MOV
FINAL FILM (WITH RICHIE’S SCENES) – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f4zb58ybK-xAkj4XxHYdg6DN5DKD7dxB/view?usp=sharing
RETROSPECTIVE & SELF REVIEW
Overall, I really enjoyed working on this project alongside the others (mainly just Hurley and Nikita) to create a really appealing final short film. The production stage may have been a bit of a struggle for me when it came to texturing my models, however as I mentioned before, I really enjoyed the time we took during the project to animate our characters, as it felt as if I was able to add a lot of personality to the character despite the film’s lack of dialogue.
In retrospect for my self review, I feel like I tried my best for the majority of production, however if I could go back, I would have taken more time to practice texturing in both substance as well as in blender’s shader tab, as I feel like I pushed texturing aside simply because I didn’t enjoy the process as much as when I was animating. Therefore moving forward, I am going to spread my focus to all aspects of my future projects, even the aspects of production which i don’t find as appealing, as they are equally essential in creating the final film.
PEER REVIEW –
HURLEY : 55% – Hurley carried this assignment on her back from the beginning, being the most involved with the entire group and calling Richie out alongside me when they weren’t completing any work to go towards the project. She was the person who created the production file that we all worked in, and regularly checked up with us to see how we were getting on, as she has more experience with blender than the rest of us do.
NIKITA : 40% – Despite Nikita having to push classwork aside for her job, she produced a really good amount of work including animating her character model really well and her cafe for the environment of the project. She worked well alongside Hurley and I to finish our project on time.
RICHIE : 5% – Richie put little to no effort into communicating with the rest of the group despite our group being vocal that communication was key and setting up our own discord server, and left no time to complete and render their animations (which they didn’t even render themselves, they sent the files to the class rep on the day before the due date, putting double the pressure on that person to complete their own work whilst having to deal with Richie’s impoliteness) which was irresponsible and damaging to me particularly as I was in charge of editing, leaving me stressed when I had to add their half-baked animations last minute to the final cut of our film. Hurley, Nikita and I all agree that they are incompetent with keeping up with their peers at a university level, with a plethora of instances showing that they didn’t even attempt to. I plead that I never have to work with them in a group project again due to their lack of responsibility, effort and will to complete work, as I am worried that their weaponized incompetence has affected our final project and all of our grades due to the sheer amount of damage control that had to be done throughout production.