The Final film...

Hand in

Yesterday we finally manged to had in our film. After all of our hard work, the project is finally complete.

So how did the project go?

As a whole I am very proud of the quality of our film, and think it is impressive visually for just a short student film. I think each person in the group pulled their weight equally, and I am proud of us all for that.

Response towards the team:

Throughout the project, I think at stages people became annoyed and sometimes slacked from time to time, including me.

Self critt-
I think from the beginning I worked well at the planning and story stage, and helped to create some nice story material. Once the story stage ended, and I was waiting for characters, I did feel like a bit of a spare part, as I wasn't doing a job I found as exiting. I think that perhaps at times I should have pushed myself a bit harder then and get more high quality models produced. Once it came to the animation stage I felt a lot more confident, as I was finally doing the job I wanted. After a shaky start with my style, I think my animation turned out OK. Some were perhaps a bit rushed, and there are other issues in there such as timing, but overall I am happy.

Josh-
 I think Josh did particularly well for the sheer variety and quantity of jobs he had, there was a delay for rigs, but he was attempting first off to rig them him selves, so I am happy he gave it an attempt, as we are a team, and it's unfair to say you can't try and rig yourself for time reasons. The rest of us had other things we could work on so that was OK in the end.
Once we had the rigs though, there were a few tiny issues but I worked through them, and don't think it affected my animation too heavily. I have in fact animated with far worse rigs that that with my freelance projects so compared to those it was a piece of cake.
Josh definitely made up for any lost time with his great modelling and lighting skills, and was always around for support on tasks. He definitely put in the max and I think you can see it run all the way through the film. It was nice to work with him, as he had skills I definitely couldn't of had working individually. Also on a final note, I am very thank full for the time he put in with the rendering stage at the end, as both me and him were in every day till late trying to get the renders done, so I am thankful he put the effort in to get the film together.

Amy-
I think the work Amy put in really counted. The amount of times we changed stories, Amy still managed to keep giving us new and exiting concept work for them. Coming into the production stage the textures she created I think really have given the sets a realistic and high quality feel. I think without Amy's flexibility between her concept art, and texture/ Mapping, I think it would have been impossible for our team to produce a look anywhere near as good as we have done.

Phil-
Phil at the beginning was very exited about working in our group and creating a film. Throughout the early stages I felt that passion, and we were regularly bouncing ideas off each other, and I think particularly me and him worked well on the story side, and got some good results. I think the further on through the year, he was perhaps less involved and communicated less about his work, and ours, so sometimes it was hard to know what was going on his end and what he was up to. When it got near the end however seeing the animations come together, he definitely pulled it out the bag, and got some really nice animated scenes into the movie.

Overall summery-

I think over the year there were a few issues, however I think our team was a strong unit, who worked very well together, and I think the dedication pulled off, and I am happy with what we produced. I think we could have clearly changed some things in the story, as along the way we perhaps lost grips of some areas, with needing to cut stuff out, however what we handed in I think was a strong and visually nice piece of work, so I am very proud of my team for all of there hard work, and would definitely work with them again, as every one of them worked equally as hard, and as a unit we worked very strong, and our skill sets blended nicely.

Today's disaster of a render day......

After a day of waisted rendering, it took us until nearly 12 AM to realise that perhaps it wasn't the rendering that was the issue, but that it was very possible that my fork that has caused many issues before may be why it is messing up so much.

After getting home I have completely re animated a new fork deleting any resemblance of the old one. I ten sent the file onto Josh and he could finally open the file on his laptop so it is a very good sign for rendering tomorrow. I look forwards to hopefully getting it all rendered and looking good.

I do however feel very accountable for this waisted day, as I should have looked into the fork issue a long time ago, and being the idiot I am, I left it and it caused a problem within the rendering stage. The reason it wasn't spotted earlier though was because the file itself would open on the studio computers and my laptop but not on anyone else's laptops, so it was hard to realise that the fork was the thing that was causing the issues. I hope now though it can get done and dusted, and we can still be on track for Monday. I do however apologise to Josh for getting him so stressed today with our third day of rendering, and with it not wanted to render a single frame, it got him very stressed. We however do work well as a team whilst rendering so bright and early tomorrow me and Josh should get the rendering going and finished.

End of day 2 of the rendering

Today due to various reasons, we had to re- render a couple of the scenes so they are still rendering over night as we speak. One of the scenes is complete, so that's another fully rendered scene towards the film.

So still to render is the finishing off of the two scenes today (the fork scene, and re- render of Phil's scene). I managed to finish the animation of the short Zilla light switch today so that needs rendering.

I hope we can get it all done. I believe we should be fine to finish for Monday, and have it looking nice.

Zilla Switch animation post 3

1) I have really just added in the switch to the scene, and gone through the frames making sure the animation of the finger can match up nicely to switching the switch. I had to move fingers around but I think it matches up OK.

2) After thinking it was complete, Amy just suggested putting a bit of motion into the arm, so I have gone back through the animation and added in some arm motion, and altered a few bits of hand animation. This however is the last video so hoepfully it will be ok for a very quick animation, and will hopefully duplicate well wehn it comes to repeating it in the compositing stage.

Zilla switch animation post 2

1) I have now moved onto the faciels of Zilla to try and get a good overal pose. I started by getting the basic face pose and have added a basic blink.

2. From there I have just added slight lip and mouth movements, to get the face moving a bit more.

3. I have now moved onto adding body motion, and have duplicated the blink to cycle through twice.

4. I have been further editing the body animation, and have also altered the camera for more of an over the shoulder shot.

 

5. I just minimised the animation slightly as her mechanics were a bit to distracting, and take away from the actual switching motion of the finger.

Light switch

For the light switch I always wanted one of the metal ball shaped switches, as I knew that would be the best to flick.

I started of with the generic square shaped base for it, however after researching decided to go for the more traditional, and appropriate, cylinder shape.

To model it, I just used a cylinder, and extruded in and out the faces when appropriate, and tried to keep it looking as close to the reference as possible. I think it has turned out OK for a five minute fast model.

Zilla animation post 1

First of all I am starting off with the hand/ finger. As I said before I am going to go for a flicking motion to cut down animation frames.

1) This is my intitial start on the animation, getting some basic finger/ hand motion into it.

2) Starting to play with the timing and adding bits of drag, to the downward flick.

3. Editing the fingers flick up to have more of a hit, and more power in the movement, to show a hint of resistance, adn weight to the switching.

4. After finnishing the finger off, I just looked at the thum and got some nice overlap on it for when it comes back .

My Zilla light switch idea

Toying with thoughts on how to best animate Zillas light switching to find shortcuts, but still resemble good animation.

My ideas are the following:

1. I'm going to create one of the old fashioned switches ( the metal ball shaped switches). I think this will be easier to flick on and off, instead of pressing it in, as that will take far more frames to animate, and in turn longer to render.
2. To save time I am going to just make one cycle of animation, and then in after effects we can just repeat it. (this will halve the rendering time it would be otherwise).
3. As there is no voices, and Zilla can't say "Zilla the light switch isn't working". I have thought of the idea to add a small wall lamp and have her looking at it when switching on and off the switch, as if to say she's trying to get that lamp working.

Back to rendering

I just got in this morning to find that the over night rendering hasn't exactly gone to plan.

After setting eight computers in the studio to render, it resulted with three of the computers completely crashing and were found turned off, resulting in them rending a range of two-eight frames before dying. One computer had just stopped rendering after fourty frames. All of these I had to set off again and hope we can play catch up and get them all done.

Another animation........

Phil text me a few moments ago, asking me to animate his scene of Zilla switching on and off the light switch. If I am honest I really wasn't amused by this, as I'm extremely busy at the moment with rendering and I also have a freelance project in for Monday which is realy far behind schedual, so I honestly don't have the time to spare for this. For the film however I guess I have to make time, and then do my best to make up in my freelance work.

I am also a bt dissapointed that Phil didn't already find time to animate this, as in theory it should have been completed ages ago. I suppose however it gives me a chance to get some extra animation in to the film, it's just unfortunate that I didn't no more in advance as I could make a better go at animate it nicely. WIth this short amount of time i'm going to have to find shortcuts.

Rendering

Today me and Josh have been getting stuck into the rendering. Thankfully some of the machines are coping with some of our less demanding scenes that don't contain Zilla and her fur. We have started off 3 scenes today, and are hoping that two of the scenes will finnish over night, and the biggest of the three will finnish tomorrow in the day.

Scenes rendered:

1. Opening street- 2 shots
2. Phils tie caught scene
3. My Reaching scene
4. My in between scene
5. Phil's ending scene

Scenes rendering:

1. Re- rendering Phil's opening scene: 283 frames- hopefully finnish over night (spread on 4 computers in studio)
2. My safe scene- 200 frames (rendering on 2 computers)
3. My Fork scene- (Josh is currently finishing the lighting but is going to render through the night and tomorrow. (rendering on 2 computers)
4. My zilla scene- (rendering on Josh's powerful desktop computer)

Scenes still to do:

1. Phi'ls Light switch scene (also has Zilla so may cause a problem)
2. Phil's sink dynamics scene

Inbetween shot post 2

I left the animation yesterday as I wanted to look back it it today to make sure I was OK with it. I also left the tie for today for the same reason, as tracking the tie takes a long time so I wanted to make sure the animation looked good enough to progress with.

1. Starting to track the tie (badly) 

2.  Improving the tie

3. Starting to add a settle going both ways on the tie.

4. Finishing the tie animation, making sure the settle worked well, and looked good.

5. This is the final animation with the rest of the kitchen showing.

Hopefully after this work the two scenes should blend together better. Itt's short and sweet but should do the job. I would like to of started a new animation from fresh but due to a short deadline I had to think of a shortcut.

Inbetween shot post 1

I decided that I would recycle part of my turn from my previous animation as we are low on time.

I have used the basis of the turn and from there progressed it to link and fit in well in the new place in the story.

1.This one is just a basic video showing how the animation has started out linking the turn with the original position that my scene ended with. 

2. I then played around with the door to get it to look as though the door is getting slammed shut my zilla. I also started to get the camera into position and follow the animation better. 

3. Once again I have altered the camera to be closer and it follows the animation better. 

So what's next for me to do?

Now that I have finished all of the animation for my scenes, it's a case of what else can I give to the project.

Looking at the animation we have so far, me and Phil noticed, that through our sections of animations, there was one particular scene that we need blending together more as my scene doesn't particularly flow into his. The scene I am talking about is just after zilla has left, my scene ends and it cuts to Phil's scene where Zilla is looking at the door. So really my new task is to find a short but effective way to transition between the two to make the animation fit together better.

My ideas are really to find a way for him to turn to that position.

• My ideas include having him turn and look for Zilla and look at the door perhaps as it slams to a shut.
• Or he could do a turn and relief as she's gone, or a turn showing him relieved.

Safe and pulled section put into kitchen

I have now put this animation which I finnished ages ago, into the new kitchen. The way I had the camera though was blocked by the big decorative pot so I have had to move that, and the small jars in a way that allows the animation to be visible, but also show the pots are still there, in the area they are suppost to be. It also I think gives a nice frame to the shot, drawing your eye to the action.

My 3rd scene put into the new kitchen

After lots of time playing with the tie, and adjusting cameras, and Roy's lims, I hav got the scene to how I am happy, and into the proper kitchen, so now it just needs sending across to Josh for rendering.

Still can't find the memory stick

I have pulled my whole flat apart looking for the memory stick, and have asked everyone from animation, and no one seems to have seen it anywhere, so the likely hood is it's either been stolen or dropped somewhere.

Sean has sent an email out for me, but I'm pretty sure it won't turn up now. The last time I saw it was Monday when I was packing away in the studio, and from there I have no idea what has happened with it.

I am realy frustrated I have somehow misplaced my memory stick, and it's realy not good. Although there is nothing on there that prevents me from finnishing the project, there are videos and files that I wasa transefering to to my harddrive through. My computer is so terrible I have to transfer files onto my memory stick as a temporary precaution to allow space on my laptop to work. I then later further transfer those files onto my harddrive.

So it appears I have infact along with the memory stick lost all of the videos/ playblasts of changes I have made to my fork scene, so I am realy annoyed about that.

I realy hope I can find it, because I am unsure what else is on the stick.

After the external examiner

After today's visit, I was a bit more relaxed to hear that the viewing of work wasn't as strict as I thought, and his visit was more to See how the course was going. He however did go through out idea, and seemed to like it, however like I suspected I could tell he wasn't fully sure of the idea in his head as there wasn't much of the story visually shown to him to go by.

My second scene colour playblasted

Once again due to my ridiculously bad laptop I cannot even open the kitchen file with the coloured textures shown in Maya so I had to pass it across to Josh to re-assign the textures and create a playblast from that.

I think as a whole I am happy with this scene, the real trouble was trying to get the right amount of force in each movement. It really was a huge challenge to get the correct shifting weight whilst remembering that he's always being held back by his tie.I just look forward to seeing it rendered out along with the rest of the film now, hopefully it will look great.

External examiner rush to try get things together

I have wanted to really get things together for the visit tomorrow, and really hoped we could improve what we have to show him. Looking at what we have, we have indeed made improvements however we haven't added more onto the film or put much more together to show, so it looks more like we will be relying on the hand in film.

I hope it turns out OK and he likes what he sees, I'm just a bit nervous as we don't even have a full story of any quality to show at this point.

My coloured scene handin for 9th of May

Hand in day

Today it was the hand in for the films, and although today's hand in was nothing like the final film, we can finally see things shifting in the right direction.

The positive

1. I have got one scene ready to render and am well on the way for the second, so it's looking good for my scenes rendered in time. 
2. The texturing, lighting and rendering is coming along well so far, so it's looking like the quality of the film will be good.
3. The rest of the group are all pushing hard to get the project finished, so I am positive about us doing well.

Issues

There's no particular major issues, just a few things that would have been better, but have been affected.

It is particularly annoying that the computers in the studio cannot render the film as it would ease the pressure of rendering, as everything is having to go through Josh's computer, so it may take a long time to get this complete. I am still optimistic though as we are all still pushing hard and everyone is pulling there weight towards the end. 

Due to time and technology restraints, we've also had to cut down on particles, and effects in the film which is a shame, but I feel we still, have worked around this and made up for the problems.

I just hope it will all come together in the remaining weeks and look and resemble the quality we all wanted from the beginning of the year.

Animation put into kitchen

Pull from the tie

Reach1 post 3

Reach 3 post 3

Tie animation

Reach 2 post 3

Fork section post 7

Fork section post 6

Sorting Zilla out

Scene with Zilla

Changes to Zillas entering

Zillas close up