Reflection On The Week: (Week 29): Starting Monday 28th April

Monday 28th April
Finished putting together all of the Going Live PowerPoint Presentation, then went through the presentation with Kieran, figuring out what we're going to say for each slide. Also tested connecting my laptop to a TV screen and seeing how the videos play back and look on a bigger screen.
Here are all 30 slides of the presentation (all the black screens are video files):

Got 2 more shots done for Tug of Biscuit Animatic.

Had a quick look over Kirti’s model of the Owner for Tug of Biscuit. Will have a better look over it tomorrow as been too busy preparing the Going Live Presentation today.

Tuesday 29th April
Spend part of the morning in the library to write out my notes for the presentation tomorrow. Also had a (in my head) read through of them with a stopwatch to check how long my part of the presentation is.

Also had a run through of the presentation, where we showed the rest of the class the presentation and mentioned roughly what will be said for each slide.

Had a better look over Kirti's model of the Owner for Tug of Biscuit. Took down a few notes, then sat down to discuss them with Kirti and also Giorgos who will be rigging this character. Once we had finalized the adjustments, I put together a quick document which Kirti can use as reference the final adjustments:

Also had a quick look over the Dog model which Giorgos is working on. Looked at the anatomy of dogs to check how the back leg should look for rigging, to make sure the geometry will be suitable. Also suggested to make the tail rounder and thicker, to give it more 'swish'. The back legs were slightly further apart than the front legs which is maybe what was giving the model a bull dog look. It might just be fixable though by simply moving the feet once the rig is set-up.

Carried on work with the 3D Animatic.

Packing and prepping for tomorrow's trip to Glasgow!

Wednesday 30th April
Today was the road trip to Glasgow with the class to present our finished Going Live film to AXIS Animation. Myself and Kieran presented the PowerPoint which was then followed by a Q&A session with everyone. I think we're all extremely happy with how well our film is being received :D

Photo taken at Axis Animation by Phillip Vaughan

Then went over to Digimania to speak to artists there about their production pipeline - which was very interesting to see!

Thursday 1st May 
Catching up with blogs, working on animatic.

Friday 2nd May
Supervisor Meeting with Phil at 11am:

• We should prioritize getting the dog character ready for animation first as it is the most featured character in the film.
• Definitely experiment with painted textures - this will help our film not look so '3D'.
• See if we can cut the film down to 1min 30sec - after finishing the 3D animatic.
• Create milestones for the new production schedule.
• Keep allocating team members jobs.
• For the animation, take a stylized realism approach to it - plenty of overlap/follow through to help the animation not look stiff.
• Move the cameras like real cameras - already started this by setting up the camera in Maya with controls such as Pan, Tilt, etc.
• Use blendshapes for the facial animation - this will be the easier approach.

Weekend
My film happened for real and I missed it!! My dog took a biscuit out into our garden, got distracted by something and then a big black crow swoops down and steals her biscuit! I did manage to observe her behavior afterwards which was entertaining to watch - confusion and sniffing around everywhere trying to find her biscuit!