1 to 1 Feedback session #2

For todays 1 to 1 feedback session with my tutor Kat I showed her the progress that I had made on the new storyboard after I had decided to start again. I had already shown this version of my storyboard to my peers as part of a group exercise. However, I didn’t receive any real criticism for the project and direction of the story. I did however have a lot of compliments on the concept and subject matter of my narrative.

During the 1 to 1 session the thing that Kat was most critical about was the work load that I was setting myself, with a major concern being the render time for my project. Whilst I do think that after re-doing my storyboard for this exact reason that I have something that is achievable, it would also rely on a tight schedule without any major setbacks. Furthermore, as this session had made me realise, whilst I am confident that I can produce the work, I have no reference for how long it may take to render a full animation. This as a result makes it very difficult to plan out the amount of time that I would have to leave for rendering it all out.

As solutions for decreasing the render time Kat suggested that I use other programs and animation techniques to achieve certain scenes. Whilst I am against doing a 2d animated scene, as it doesn’t play to my strengths, I am going to use programs like After Effects of transitions and atmospheric edits. She also suggested that for one of my more computer intensive scenes, that being an establishing shot of a forest, I should make the background trees flat images to save on render time.

In addition to all of this, I also decided after the meeting to change the direction of my storyboard. Originally, I was going to have an establishing shot of a forest and have the camera go under the tree line to follow a shadowy silhouette, who would then find the player character as they are forming. Instead, I decided to change it to the camera simply diving towards the play character from above the tree line. I made this change because it would make the scene shorter and less intensive. This Is because a major concern of Kat’s was the fact that the player character was a made out of a blurry smoke substance that would require volumetrics and a lot of computer power. Thus, by limiting the amount of time the player character is on screen I would also decrease the render time. I would also get rid of the need to animate an additional character. My only gripe with this change is that I think the original version would have flowed better, however with such a short time schedule I need to be realistic with what is possible to produce in the time frame.