Semester One: Reflection Piece

I must admit, once it hit September of this year, anxious was an understatement in regard to how I felt about coming back to university. This relied solely on the fact that I knew I was returning to my final year and was in no way prepared, or aware, of what to expect. It didn’t help that my mind had also been plagued by stories from my, already graduated, friends who insisted on telling me that my following year would be “a living nightmare” and that I “would never sleep again”. I am glad to say, however, that this was most certainly not the case (at least not yet), and that in actual fact, I found my first semester to be quite enjoyable. It was also really nice to see so many familiar faces again, especially considering it had been well over a year since I had last seen most of them.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see just how much my time on placement had influenced the approach to my work, especially in regard to group dynamics and the hierarchy within a team. I was very fortunate, however, with the team that I was part of as it was a nice mix of both sociability and professionalism, which I found to be a very pleasant and enjoyable experience. In relation to work, there didn’t appear to be any underlying issues or conflict regarding our workflow or our vision, also, everyone seemed to be on the same wavelength; working towards the same creative goals. Personally, for me, I found the introduction of Scrum to have been an excellent tool in helping me to better visualise and manage my time when working towards our weekly deadlines. It also brought me a bigger sense of accomplishment when I managed to meet my own personal goals; both making and creating things almost every day. I also thoroughly enjoyed the freedom aspect of the project, as even though there was a set brief and a fixed audio, it still managed to allow us the opportunity to interpret and expand the project, allowing us to create whatever we wanted. This was a nice change, opposed to my previous year in Blacknorth, which consisted of following strict briefs with very limited creative freedom.

I must also admit, that back in September, the thought of trying to balance both a dissertation and a group project at the same time was a very nerve-wracking thought. However, once again, I must confess, that even though I did find it quite daunting at times, I also found the experience to be quite manageable; especially considering the topic I had chosen for my dissertation was one of great interest, and hence, the research didn’t seem as tedious as I would have expected. However, with that being said, I’m delighted to finally have it over with. Although, on a side note, one can only hope that I provided sufficient information and that I have achieved what was expected from me.

With semester one having drawn to a close and semester two quickly approaching, I must confess, that despite the pleasantries of the past few months, I am still quite nervous to return. I believe these fears, however, boil down to the nature of our upcoming project which presents us the opportunity to create something of our own design in a team of our own choosing, which for me, is a very daunting prospect, as there is literally no end to the scope. What I’m hoping for, and what I feel would be very beneficial, is for everyone to come together and discuss the plans of their potential future projects beforehand, so that everyone can get a fair idea of what people want to work on, and, therefore, making the division of groups, a much easier undertaking. However, I’m sure that once everyone is grouped and aware of their projects, it will become yet another fun and enjoyable experience… at least one can hope!

Here’s to semester two… roll on 2016!

Gif sourced from here on December 31st

Final Animation: Building Possible Futures

And here we have it… presenting our final animation, ‘Building Possible Futures’:

We are aware that there are a few issues such as missing textures, and background animation i.e the workers and moving trucks, however, we are hoping to rectify this come March when the animation is officially due.

Gif sourced from here on December 31st 2015

Hand-Off Scene: Background Setting

As the scenes were being comped together, it became apparent that the balloon scene, featuring the interaction between the child and helpful adult, was missing a background. I volunteered to take over  this scene, and tried to create something I felt would work in transitioning between the construction site and the horizon with the hot air balloons.

Due to the fact that the construction scene ends with the camera panning up the giant child construction and ending in the clouds, I thought it would be best to maintain a cloudy atmosphere; rather than build an open field-type environment like we had originally planned back in the beginning. To do this, I inserted the cloud simulation as a base and inserted some mountains that I then textured to look like glaciers. I had originally intended to tint them, but because I had built the scene without textures, I grew to love the simplicity and purity of the white, so instead I just added a simple purple area light to add a subtle hint of warmth to both the mountains and the clouds.

Overall the feedback was excellent, however Aodhan did suggest that the mountains were too close to the characters and that the scene would benefit from some more sky, so I simply pushed the mountains further into the background and duplicated them so they fit the screen, before scaling the clouds back so that they closed the gap.

There still needs to be some clouds in the sky, however, Niall has offered to throw in a skybox with the lighting, and apply a hint of soft focus to give it some more depth, before rendering it out the final thing.

Inspiration was drawn from Star Wars planets such as the Cloud City of Bespin, and ice planet, Hoth:

And yes.. you can blame the latest Star Wars instalment ‘The Force Awakens’ for their influence!

Cloud city sourced from here

Hoth image sourced from here

And the lovely Han Solo was sourced from here

All images sourced on Decemeber 30th 2015

Construction Scene: Final Adjustments

Here is the most recent version of our scene with both colour correction and updated cameras included. I feel, that even with these slight adjustments, it is already looking much better and closer to the look that we are aiming for. Now, we shall send the files onto Niall and watch him work his magic.

 

Construction Site: Colour Correction

Basically, the only thing that needed to be addressed in our scene was the cameras, and as I mentioned before the colour scheme. Due to the new setup of the cameras, Scully felt it was necessary to remove a bunch of props from the scene so that it didn’t feel as cluttered. While she continued playing around with the cameras, I moved onto desaturating the textures so that they weren’t as stark. In order to do this, I used Aodhan’s compactor truck as a reference and took each of the individual textures and manipulated the hue and saturation so that they matched up. Here are a few examples shown below:

I definitely feel that this simple adjustment to the colour makes all the difference, and that the scene is no longer as overpowering as it was before. I am looking forward to the results of Niall’s render tests, and in the meantime am hoping to help out wherever I can. However taking into account our most recent scrum meeting, it would appear that everyone else is merely making final adjustments to their scenes also, and it is basically just the render tests that remain.

Construction Site: Test Render

We wanted to have something put together so that we could get a rough indication of how our final animation is going to transition onto the screen. However as happy as we are, with how everything is starting to come together, we feel that it is essential that we start putting a great more deal of effort into achieving the final look we are going for:

Niall is going to concentrate on rendering for the next week, and see what works best in order to achieve that, whether it be double passes or whatever. Whereas the rest of us will finish up whatever needs to be done in our scenes and help out wherever we can. Luckily for us, Scully and I are almost finished with our scene which means that we can move on to help out with whatever is required.

Animating The Child

When it came to the child builder, initially we wanted to have him listening intently to his father’s directions, and in some way, replicating his father’s actions using the equivalent of what the child’s version was. However, in order to stay true to the nature of children, I thought it might be better to have him distracted due his short attention span, and, therefore, having the father builder have to really try to grasp his attention, especially when it comes to the reveal of the giant child sculpture. In order to do this, I had the child be distracted by using his small toy hammer to hammer away at a piece of wood until his attention is finally caught by his father who beckons him to look at the child sculpture being constructed right in front of him. As you can see, I have inserted the father into the scene, so that the child’s actions make more sense.

Builder Dad Adjustments

I still wasn’t 100% happy with the movements of the builder dad so I made a few adjustments in an attempt to make him move a bit more fluid and feel like he belonged in the scene. Even though it’s quite a simple animation, and it’s mostly just the arms moving, I tried to manoeuvre the rest of the body, such as back and shoulders, in order to compensate for the slight shift in weight. As you can see, I also animated a slight bend in the legs so that the directions he is giving are more obvious.

On a side note, the reason for the lack of anticipation for the opening spin is because, using the pre-vis, I have perfectly timed how long my character will be on screen and didn’t feel it was necessary to animate something that wouldn’t be seen.

Animating The Builder Dad

Ok, so as much as I enjoy animating, it’s been quite a long time since I have worked on anything that required any form of character animation, so to be honest, I was feeling pretty rusty. I started off by looking at examples of stock videos of construction workers and architects in the field so as to get a feel for the movements required for my character. My goal was to animate the dad so that he would be giving directions to the construction workers, whilst simultaneously talking to the child and trying to get his attention. Here are a few example of what I looked into:

 

 

After that, I began playing about with the new rigs to see how the character was going to move, and then, using the examples above, plotted out, and started working on a few test examples of the Builder Dad in action. I do feel, however, as a first attempt, that he is quite static and is still in need of a few tweaks. Although, considering this is the first character/prop that has been animated in the animation, I am still not 100% sure of what level of animation our group is going for, whether it’s super simple “lego type” movements or proper fluid motion, as it has always just been passing comments, never really set in stone. In order to counteract this, I kind of went for an in between, which even though it’s not overly complicated, I still feel works in the world we have created.

*insert playblast*

Both stock videos were sourced from here on December 3rd 2015

Character Development

When putting the presentation together, I made up these little character boards to show the transition from initial character design to finished model. I thought that they’d be interesting to share, so that you can see the journey from start to finish:

 

We still have a little way to go, but we’re hoping that when it comes to final renders, we can achieve a look more similar to the initial concepts.