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Overall, what I did during Review Panels and Winter Break is listed as follows:
Some problems:
The advice I received from my review panel was more technical suggestions, such as keeping elbows back to help hide any problems with feather deformations. However, Bob and John made three main points:
I also flipped through some of the old feedback and found someone's mention of Fresh Prince (no specifics) which reminded me of the Las Vegas dance competition scene. I felt that I pretty much needed to overhaul my entire film, but I also was having trouble thinking of it linearly/cohesively and putting down all my ideas, so I decided to sit and type everything down into a short-story type of description. It really helped me figure out exactly what is happening in each section. Basically, the biggest change is the introduction and reveal (especially reveal)-- I took inspiration from Bob's video and decided to take out the bird entirely and have him just show up at the end, which makes more sense in a nonsense-way. I also establish a shoddy club atmosphere to explain away the emptiness, and move one character out to be a DJ, which solves the soundtrack issue!! Yes!!! Feedback from last week:
Other:
1) Concepts and stuff! Exterior: Susan suggested I take a look at hummingbird stands, and Nasya suggested I consider more lights, which really helped a lot (particularly the following photos) Interior: I've added branches to the floor surrounding the platform, but not quite done drawing yet so those aren't included. The following is what I came up with; depending on feedback I think I'll be either going with the one in the middle, or the one on the right (albeit replacing the string lights with strobe lights) Props: I asked Andy to continue modelling general bar items, the following of which is what he sent me. I also asked Andy to send me some examples of his art so I could figure out an art style that he can get used to for the posters. I made a sample, plus a list of parody albums/celebrities for him to get creative with:
I also did as suggested and photoshopped a photo of Francesco in a bird suit. The best thing I could come up with was the Taylor Swift 1989 thing... 3) Animation: I wanted to get rid of all the parts still in thumbnail and update the parts I didn't get to yet, so the dance battle section from last week hasn't been touched, but the rest is new! Also, two versions. This week was a bit of a mixture of everything. 1. I asked Andy to start making props for the bar-- drinks, bar snacks, etc., but as if they were for birds. I drew an example of some cocktails to get him started What he sent: 2. I also needed to get design/concept art done in order to pass it off to my helpers, which I didn't *quite* manage to get done between animating and texturing, but the interior design is, for the most part, finalized. I also tried to get the exterior down so I can animate the opening: As part of decorations, I need posters/vinyl covers of some birdy musicians, which I won't be able to draw all myself. Thus, I asked some people who might be interested in drawing something for me, and so far I have Deanna, Julia, and Scarlet. For the exterior, I looked for inspiration in disco clubs, bird houses, tree houses, and bird feeders. I also figured out a general palette-ish, and want to maintain a square outer appearance to match the interior design. (Also honestly I want to keep it as a bird house because it's like a pun on the music genre house haha...) 3. Texture + render; to be fair the only reason I did this this week was because I needed to for another class, but it ended up helping me get some problem out early on. I went back to try and find some proper tutorials, and I found these two to be the most helpful: https://vimeo.com/217465073 https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/pegasus-xgen-maya-1510 Based on the info, I first used xgen to create a single feather and exported as an archive so I can generate it across the surface. I attempted this two times-- this worked fine, however it either could not or would not render-- every time I did so either Maya would crash or I got an error message-- something bout points versus vectors. I googled it and got nothing, so proper feathers were abandoned. Screenshot of first attempt sans second description (second attempt the file won't open...): Test render using regular xgen fur (tried to mimic feather shape + forgot to turn off gamma, my bad): 4. Finally, animation: This week I tried to focus on finishing/roughing out the short shots-- mainly the dance battle as I'd been having trouble with it this whole time. This week:
My plan this week was to blast through as much animation as I could, both to get in more practice by forcing myself to re-animate each week, and to make my life easier later on. However, it turned out more as a testament to my own lack of practice. In terms of planning, I reached out to Stacey, Chao, and Andy to see what they wanted/could do, so I could plan the rest of my production.
Stacey: animation, anything else I need help with Chao: anything but texturing For Andy, I thought I'd use the set/props as a way to teach and get him started, then have him do the rest. Ironically, texturing was the one thing I wanted help with, so I decided to flip things around a bit-- I'll have Stacey + Chao take care of the mob characters (modeling, rigging, animation-- everything), and split work on simulations, so that I can focus on animation and texture. Got nCloth to work! I tried two things
I had to change the parenting of some joints to get it to look right, but playblast of nCloth when I got it to work: Rigging: I wasn't careful rigging the first round (I think I may have been too tired) so my skeletons were all messed up; some parts didn't have enough joints, joints were parented to the wrong ones, some joints were doubled, etc. Collectively, I probably rigged about 18 "models"... I have two models left to rig, one half-rigged and one I literally just forgot about (woops), but otherwise I'm very happy with how the rig moves and it's pretty easy to animate! Weighting is half-finished; I need to weight the feathers, beak, and some legs, but most other things are weighted already. I managed to do half my layout and combined things between the first and second thumbnails. Set is stand-in. It's unfinished due to time, but I also happened to find that I need to do some animation tests before I can really figure out how to design the dance battle and ending sequence. Plan for next week:
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April 2018
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