Animated narrative / film reflection
For the start of the project. It was good; we got to know the new team members and we took a long time to get around to ideas. I think this did come down to not knowing everyone, so the ideas did take soem time to actually get off the ground and by the end of that lesson we did have three ideas one being a zombie Mold idea, fruit gladiator and a kidnapping idea based of the movie taken. The strongest we the gladiator and the taken idea as we could see that they had more interesting plots and a lot more to work with inters of narrative which, was good I was a bit indifferent to the two but, after drawing up soem ideas for both I found that the taken idea had the most point a to point b plot which as a whole was going to make our lives a lot easier in the process. This allowed us a really solid foundation for us to go forward with and when joe mention the movie taken, we came up the idea of the baby carrot being kidnapped by a chef and the rest of the story would be about getting the baby back with our cast of characters. This was all fine but there were segments of which I do feel that me and Arwen were looking into the story and we both made very early storyboard which was useful. This did start a pattern within our group where I would be working on the main idea and the others would still be on last week’s work or just watching the movie taken which, is good but this was the week of the presentation and I do feel that I was the only one gather concept art and understanding what our narrative was and I think it showed in our presentation in the end. After that we made a group chat to better stay in contact with one another but soem people never responded to any updates or quest which meant I had to chase them down and message them directly for a responds. We eventually came up with a more solid plot because we learned that we couldn’t actual do the enter plot of taken so, we compromised and broke it up into three stages this being the kidnapping , rescue and reunite with the middle being the longest segment and having a few short scene setting up the conflict which worked and pushed our narrative forward with the story boards done we were moving ahead. Though we did notice soem problems with the ending and though it Justs ends really abruptly. This meant that we need a new end, and joe came up with a solution of having mother and the baby reunite and walk towards the fridge with everything coming full circle. This meant changing a lot and repurposing soem early elements of our scene, scraping the pan tree sets and taking the props from within the Partee and repurposing them into the scene. The problem lies with we never got an updated storyboard for this and because joe was making the Partee we never actual got a glimpse of it so, I don’t even know if it done or not but, we had to move on. I do have to admit that this unit was really taxing on me due to external factors and a family crisis but, with help from Mia and Mchael I Managed to get see work done in that time. This did hinder my first pass at the pervis though with the way it was a bit clunky and because everyone was building the sets I had to create my own and block out the movement even after asking my team to think about and put in cameras for the prvies presentation which was coming up. This lead me to dived the work load up which did take a weight off my shoulders in the end but this lead to some scene not changing soem weeks and old footage being in the 4 and 5 version of the previse which was great but after a few talks with the tutor we got back on track. though I do like the start of this project with creating the characters and actual using riggs it was tough and I do think I’m much more suited to the animating side of things but it was a good challenge at the start of the of this unit though the stress was building with people not responding or sharing work on soem occasions. For the pipeline it was very similar to the 2d one with soem extra steps involved in the process like composting and modelling/rigging these were fine for the most part but, my rig absolutely drove me around the bend. for the most part I do think my rig is good but, I did feel I actual learned anything from it for example for the title crtl I was really focused on the tutorial and I didn’t really take away anything from it which lead to a problem where it wouldn’t actual work and I couldn’t work it out which lead me to ask for help from mike on a few occasions and this really did show itself on the day me and Reachel tried to fix my rig but we ended up spending 3 hours trying to fix it and eventually ending with me having to restart it from scratch. This is where I actually felt I learned something, and I get the course is meant to encourage finding your own solutions, but I think I need to consider how I learn first and go from there. Though I did enjoy making the bases ring and found it really fun when it was finish, I just don’t feel that I learnt anything during the process. Though I do think I have a way forward where I should focus more on practically learning things and finding my own solution through that method so that it sticks that bit more. Plus, I do have a contact with an animator who went through the same course so, if I just practice and ask for soem advice over the summer I think I will improve a lot over the summer. For the animation process I think I did ok I tried to involved as many animation principles as possible for my scene which I think turned out ok. There are areas I would like to improve like the timing I think the opening sequence of my scene could be a bit tighter and faster as a whole but, I know how this was going to work. Near the end of the project when the final environment was installed it tanked my computers frame rate which made everything play back in a slow frame rate which was ideal. The solution originally was use the uni computers but, I ran into the same issue and had to resort to creating a full render each time. Though now that I’ve make multiple members scenes, I found that the lights were just too intense and there was a temp light file running eve thing down so, the change was simple choose the important one and deactivate the one that are causing the problems. The lights are a thing which I would also improve due to that flickering effect which appears briefly in two scene this is also a byproduct of the lights I helped Mia with most of their lights but I think we missed one because the fridge lights were causing soem problems as a whole and I can’t say about Micheals as he was using his own light set up and I did have any time to help him with his lights. I think for the next time we need to be careful of how many lights are added to the scene this will reduce how many reflections the computer has to make as a whole. For the final film I’m plead with how much we’ve done even though we had soem delays we got a version which works and as a team we should be pleased with what we made in the end. Though we do have areas I could’ve done better in like timing for examples we do have scene that go way to fast when transition between our scene which does create soem whiplash because the carrot goes from, he floor in front of the table to climbing up the far end of the table. This would have been an essay fix with a little scene showing where the character is going. This would help clear up some narrative issues and further improve our continuity as a whole. The other thing I would like to improve is the compositing, though in my previous post I mention the transiting colour pallet works for the themes on a technical level it is disorienting and makes it look disconcerted from eachother and I could’ve done a better job at blending them together in the final edit. The things I like about the film are the humour I think group wide we managed to get all of our jokes to land with relatively good timing. I think this because when I showed the second to last cut the tutors watching did give little laugh at the right moments which was the overall goal for our light hearted theme which harken back to the Muppets slap stick humour. Though I do think that we could’ve integrated our themes better and yes visual I think we captured the Vegetale muppet look the story themes like taken was a bit lost out side of the structure of the plot. This would have brought all of our plot points and themes together and create a cohesive plot and would flesh our narrative out more. The last thing I think works for the film is the ratatouille competition with most of the shots of the vegetables being shot from down up. I really like this touches due to it making it look that much better in the process. This gives it this scale which does show how big and menacing the chef is and does go to show how much danger the baby carrots in. It also saved a lot inters of modelling stage because the original idea was to make bigger versions of the props but, by doing this we were able to save time and take a little pressure off our PC’s. Though there is a lot of which I could improve I am pleased with how it turned out in the end. For the unit as a whole I found it interesting, and I do think it gave me a much better idea of the 3D pipeline, and I can agree animation is really hard. I do think that I was a little hard on myself throughout this project though and this has been an ongoing theme throughout all of the units this year. I think I feel this way especially in the group work is that I want to be the reliable team mate and the one everyone could go to for advice but, I do feel that it back fired in this unit especially in the last stage. It back fired in the way where I was on occasions doing the previse, editing, presentations all on my own and it took a toll on me to the point I had to go to the doctors because I was so run down which isn’t good. In future project I do think that I need to commentate this with tutors well before had so things get worked out and so that I’m not the only one doing a pacific job. Though I do think that I haven’t improved this until am proud of what l’ve made this unit and I can’t wait for what is to come next year.
