Animation 21/6

So overall Im happy with my animation. Unfortunately due to my somehow screwing up my Wacom drivers at home, I shortchanged myself with time and had to leave the final scene off. If I had to re-do my project, I would definitely have spent more time earlier on in the semester working on it, so that I dont have the last minute rush like I did this time. Once I got in groove of animating, I could spend hours and not even notice, which could be a good or a bad thing lol just getting started is the hardest part. For my first time animating, it certainly was an eye-opening experience, and is making me re-think the education path Im planning to take, and angling more towards animation as well. Although, I dont know how well I would survive all that workload lol.. but thats a decision for another day. The animation in the level 4 course next semester will help me decide. Bring on the NZCC(?)!

Film 18/6

All done and dusted. Im not really happy with the final cut, but its the best I could do with the footage I had. Thats my fault for reasons already covered in this blog, but at least now I have a better idea of what is required. If I could go back in time I would definitely change up what I recorded, and tried to come up with a better film plot. I consider this semesters class as a training exercise, so I need to take what Ive learned and improve upon it for my future study. Onwards and upwards!

Animation 14/6

Today was a productive last day in class for me, I managed to design, and animate my end credits scene to a point that I am happy with. There was a lot of fussing around with my keyframe timing but it was still way quicker than if I had tried to frame by frame it. Im starting to enjoy animation a lot more since I got the hang of the keyframe stuff. Next semester will be a great chance to keep practicing and who knows, I may get my speed up to a better level by the end of the year. Touch wood.. although I am thinking positive about passing so I hope I'll be there next semester. This weekend is going to be a huge animation burst, I have finished 90% of all my other assignments now, and after tomorrow I will only have animation and the final cut of my film to go so I am feeling pretty positive about that.

Digital Sculpture 14/6

Last official class today, how sad =(. I am very happy with how my bear model turned out. The larger print was worth the wait, and now I have a mother bear and a baby bear lol. I am undecided about whether I want to paint the iceberg with some blue or not, I am going to do a test tonight on the scrap print and see what it looks like and then make my decision. Due to printing issues, I had to make a different bear for my physical sculpture and so I have decided to keep the two sculptures separate from each other. However, I think I will tie them together by placing this one in a dish of water to mirror the other sculpture. Ultimately, I have had a lot of fun with this class over the past 4 1/2 months and Im a little sad that its over.

Film 14/6

Last class before hand-in. Im semi happy with my footage, but I feel kinda obliged to produce it due to the amount of time I spent filming lol. It doesnt quite fit the original proposal, but it has some sexy motorbike vrooms and visuals so its not a complete waste. Ill be doing the final polishing and exporting on monday morning, just so I can step back for a couple days and come back to it with a fresh perspective. Thanks Ash for giving us an extension <3.

Gaming 13/5

Success! First project of this course handed in. Im mostly happy with how my environment turned out, there is a few things I would change if I had more time though. Firstly, I though of adding the angel tower in class today, I think it turned out ok considering how much time I had, but I definitely would have liked to play around a bit more, add some more detail, make it more interactive. I think I could have made it possible to walk through the doors on each level.. if only I had decided to add it earlier! The run speed is a little frustrating, I would love to make her run faster, however at the faster speeds when she hits a tree or a bump, she ends up going flying off in a random direction. Im not sure if thats colliders or just a side effect of the faster run speed. My character is currently balanced between not sluggish running, and just able to walk up the mountain path that I created. The path is the final thing I would change. I think if I had spent more time working on it, I would have been able to get a smoother path up the mountain, instead of having to fight the characters penchant for following the ground angle as she walks over it. All in all though, it was good to play around in unity and I learnt a lot.

Digital Painting 11/6

Second last week. I feel a lot more confident in my pieces now, how they have evolved over the last few weeks. Todays class was quite nice in that I was just playing around with no real set idea in my head at first. I really like the way that my black and white piece turned out, the focus becomes more on the textures, and the subtle gold highlight in the centre of the mans chest. To me, this piece feels like the conclusion to my series. The mans acceptance that the wolf is part of him, and with that acceptance comes the loss of fear, and the strength that brings to him. Limiting the colour palette helps with the impact. The other image I created is completely surreal, very few distinct shapes, colours all swirling together. This one was fun to make in that I got to smudge everything, in every which way which meant I could zone out and play with the effects. The muted colours help add to the sinister shadowy feel of the piece, while the sunset sky creates a contrast and helps to keep it tied in to the rest of the series, along with the two shadow figures.

Animation 7/6

I am proud of myself today! I do have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks, however I have over 1/3rd of my cartoon animated now. Today I spent my time animating the title screen, and then added sound at home. I think its cute personally lol. I am looking forward to handing in most of my projects next week so I can spend all my time finishing off this animation, and then if I still have time, getting all finnicky about the things I want to refine. Oddly enough, even though it is the end of course, I feel less stressed than I did two weeks ago, possibly because my projects are coming together and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Until I start next semester of course!

Digital Sculpture 7/6

So, due to my time running out, I wont be sculpting a city into the back of my bear. Instead I went for a separate bear and iceberg model, so that I can either use the bear in my resin iceberg pile for physical sculpture, or I can connect it to the iceberg I modeled, and have it potentially float around a body of water. That one is a little uncertain until I get the model to test how well(or not) that it floats. Im quite excited to see how the texture prints out, hopefully the machine doesnt throw a hissy fit and refuse to print it clearly. Either way, I still have that cute little test print, it isnt perfect but its a nice contrast to show how far my model has come. For some reason, the extra little details that I sculpted in Mudbox, did not transfer over to Maya, and I cant remember if I made the .obj file from the mudbox file or the maya one. The mystery will be solved once I see the print lol.

Polar Bear or Sheep? ... 

Film 7/6

I put my rough cut together in full today, sadly the amount of usable footage is less than I wanted, so I am going to have to be extra finicky with the editing to make it work. I have found some background royalty free music that I think fits the non-dialog parts, I just have to chuck it into the timeline and get a better idea of whether it fits or not. It sucks not having premiere at home, but I work around it by doing the other classwork at home, so on monday mornings I can focus on my film since Im at tech early in the morning. I think a couple more hours tweaking my edit, and I'll be good to go and not a moment too soon.

Gaming 6/6

I made a thing! After so much fiddling and wasting time, in the end I just spent a couple of hours and re-made my terrain. Something was making the trees broken and I could not figure it out. Ultimately, I think it was a good thing because I got to redesign my environment a little bit, and Im much happier with the 2nd iteration. After struggling with the imported character not having her eyes, I figured out that the mesh didnt have the eyes selected the final time that I exported her so that was an easy fix too once I discovered it. The wobbly walking on terrain that is 100% flat still bugs me, but thats part of the limitations of using Unity the way we are, and just have to work around it with the terrain tools as best as we can. One week to go, and all I have to do is finish the concept art, Im feeling happy with this one.