We went live and came back in one piece...

It's been a while since the last post so there's quite a lot to catch up on. In week nine dissertations were all handed in and i continued directing the animation cycles we were receiving. I've also accepted the job of heading the design team for the exhibition after the end of term, I've drawn up a few layouts so far for the brochure and just need to send them out. In the last week i drew up a new schedule for the rest of the production and things are getting increasingly tight especially with the deadline for ROA getting closer and closer.


We also started fundraising for the degree show having the first Rock at Rave guitar Hero tournaments which were won by Gemma Mariotti and fellow organiser Rob Evans, although i was quite happy to get into both finals. My producer role on the film was well in gear as i decided to press forward and finally get to work on the live action intro for the film. I had to organise booking the room and the equipment, but tracking down lights proved to be the most difficult part as apparently health and safety says animators aren't qualified to switch them on, hence why I've been sitting in the dark for 3 weeks making it difficult to post any new work.

My laptop was sent away for a week while we got on with the shoot. Caspar and I took it on ourselves to get things done having attended a tutorial earlier in the term Caspar handled the camera whilst i took control of set design and lighting although we did chop and change. The whole process was quite fun making the set and dealing with real lights we had 3 days to get it all done and it was amazing how it all came together without the need for modelling and texturing, it's definitely something I'd like to experiment with in the future even though we didn't get to animate much more than the camera. Here's some pics from the shoot.

building the floor plane for the set, made with Wickes cement and volvic, only the best.
Hey that hairy freak is touching my toys!

The set for the intro altogether and below lit with a spot, ambient bounce, and 3rd bouncing to light inside of box.

After that I've been concentrating on finishing up all the models, UV mapping them and getting the textures done for the office scenes in the film, it should be complete in the next few days and I'll put up some screen grabs of the finished thing. I've also been finishing up Red's facial expressions in Illustrator and Caspar's making a Set driven Key to animate them when the time comes, as well as thinking about the effects shots in the film.

As well as that after my laptop was away for the first week of Easter holidays, while we were shooting, it came back having had nothing done to it. Within 3 days it was up to is old tricks again and is seriously jeopardising our schedule to be ready for ROA. After much complaining its been taken away again now to hopefully be fixed, luckily i have a great girlfriend who has lent me her laptop to get through the next week and get some stuff done. Anyways lots more textures to do and hopefully putting up some of the animation soonly,

Can't think of a good sign off...

WEEK EIGHT, Sorry it’s late, It had to wait, I was in a state…

Finally completed the waiter model for Ash’s film this week modelling for Monday, Tuesday and mapped him twice after Maya went crazy and got rid of all of the work I did on Wednesday. Here’s a pic of how the final model looked.

Then at the end of the week I had fun making the general monkey model and texture in Illustrator as usual although I did map the hat and work from a UV set for the first time on this film, I sold out and took the easy route. I think he looks cool tho let me know what you think.

A few of the stages his eyes went thru, getting more and more aged although I am fond of the Neanderthal, look in the first one.

I keep getting stupid comments about anti-virus software so it would be nice to get some feedback from whoever is looking at this stuff, as I get very disappointed when it’s just junk. I have loads of hassle putting the text in with the pictures as well so sorry if the formatting is a bit off at times it drives me mad.

We’ve received a lot of animation cycles this week as well, so many in fact I think I’m going to save uploading them until I have more time to spare, they are really coming along well, thanks to all those guys for helping out! And also thanks to Sjors who drew me up some expression sketches at stupidly short notice, he rocks!

For anyone that cares I finished my dissertation earlier today as well so once it’s given in there’s nothing but film work until deadline… and PPD, dammit.