Telling Tales Production Diary Week 5

Monday - On monday i met up with my partner and we talked about whether or not we were actually satisfied or confident in the characters and narrative that we had come up with. While we were happy about our characters as they have gone through a lot of development, during our crib it was suggested that we work on our storyboards and animatic and to consider elements such as the rule of three in the context of comedy. So we had a look at what could be added and removed and together worked anon a new retelling of the story. While i left the making of the animatic to my partner again we collectively came up with the best way to tell the story without losing any of the context gained from certain scenes that were already in their. We decided to add more to it, adding more gags, starting small and gradually building up to it becoming truly ridiculous, this built up the tension and the excitement for the end adding to the narrative.

Afterwards i began to do Maya tutorials starting with the character model tutorials. I came to realise that the model was actually a lot more complicated than my model was going to be so i decided that id model it until i understood what tool did what as i didn't want to waste time making something that wasn't going to be used in our final animation.

Tuesday - I began to model my character using the notes i had taken from the tutorials and started to building his base shape.

I spent a lot of time modelling the shape as i was trying to successfully recreate the shape i had test run the in previous weeks but it became warped and didn't have clean shadows for us to work from so i created a box and used the bevel tool on it tis created the same shape with minor differences. I asked my partner what she thought and we came to the conclusion of using the beveled shape as it was easier to come to in the end. After this i added Edges to extrude to create the legs and the arms we chose to make as separate entities so that they'd be easier to move around and animate.

Wednesday - I finished my chracter model by Extruding from around the collar and head to make the cloak as the rest of the clothes will be flat to the body. We decided that the clothes woundnt be seperate entities that interact with the body as it would work better with our planned aesthetic of janky movement.

There were a few dificulties with the cloak as the deleting of extra edges from wrong extrusions caused a few warps in the faces but i was able to sort this problem through mostly trial and error.

Since the model was made i chose to not do the rigging just yet and focus on getting the set and scenery modelled modelling all the objects we needed. I started with the large and simple objects such as the shelves.

Thursday - while the shelves were very simple to model the desks were a little bit more difficult as they had asymmetrical extrusions and shapes so i found myself creating multiple polys and then deleting chunks to get the shapes. This wasn't too difficult on the wizards desk as its fairly straight forward as it was based on an old fashioned wooden desk. There was slight hiccup when i merged the vertexes so the top of it isn't actually connected to the rest of the desk.

 The scientist desk was a corner desk and the planes kept on warping and excessive edges and polys were appearing.

Friday - I was able to finally figure out how to make the desk by finding the blue prints for a corner desk however it took a lot of deleting and weilding of edges and vertexes. These were the more complicated things to model as i didn't know which edges needed to be deleted and which had to be kept. I also quickly modelled the portrait and room (roughly) as they were simple. Certain details we have to keep in mind while modelling is that the scientists stuff specifically the desk needs to be lower to the ground as he is shorter so things need to in easy reach for him.

 Ive found modelling objects easier and simpler than modelling characters/humanoid characters. because there doesnt need to be much thought in the polygons since they keep very straight and orderly polygons.
My partner also finished the new animatic. This entailed more gags and situations that gradually escalated to classical music.  This all built on the comedic build up of the final situation it also works with the rule of three, the initial distain, the build up and the merge.

Saturday - Modelled the fridge and while i modelled my partner began to look into the UV mapping. We decided to UV map water colours onto the models as my partner created concept art in water colour. We collectivly made a list of stuff that i needed to model as well.

Responsive - Brief Research

For studio brief one we are required to work alone on live briefs, wether this is commissioned work or competition entries, anything not set by the college and which work flow can be documented is eligible.

11 Second Club - This is an online monthly competition like loop de loop and do it in ten which works with a theme for the month. But with this competition it uses a selected sound file and focuses on character animation and making use of the sound so unlike do it in ten and loopdeloop i feel like i would be able to get something beneficial from this more than the other monthly competitions which felt like too small a scale to actually leave any impact on my work or development. With the 11 second club it is a good opportunity to practice simple but effective character design, animation and lip syncing. I think i will do two of these briefs one in hand drawn traditional, the other in digital cgi in order to practice both sides of the lip syncing.

DNAD:

Autism Awareness - This competition entails raising awareness for Autism. As of this point i have little to no knowledge on autism except for an awareness of the concept of sensory overload so i am going to have a lot of interviews with autistic people and carers to fully understand it. I think thats one of the key reasons i'm very interested and invested in this brief as it is something i don't understand and that is something that i want to understand because based on experiences with friends they find it difficult to explain conditions like autism and dyslexia etc so i want to use this as an opportunity to try something that isn't narrative based but also lets me grow as a person, this will in turn help in assisting me in the future.

MUBI - MUBI is an independant streaming service online similar to netflix except they continuosly switch up their roster with a variaty of what id call cult classics and noir movies. But they are also wanting independant shorts with very much a focus on entertainment and film. Their brief is completely open with any possibilities and themes for animations or films, but i dont like this as i think it is too broad for me to actually come up with something effectively or interesting enough to be used.