FMP Digital Reflective Journal #4

This week I wasn’t able to make up for as much time loss as I had wanted. This was because as the application for my new Uni course was still very uncertain, I spent a lot of time trying to organise it and deal with stress. This meant that a lot of time got taken out of my project that I otherwise could have used to catch up from last week.

We began the week as normal with both a drawing session and a peer feedback session. For both sessions I found them to be quite enjoyable, with the drawing session combining what we had learnt so far and the peer feedback session being very relevant due to the similarities of our projects. In terms of the feedback session however, I didn’t get as much as I had hoped. This was because I showed my old storyboard with the hope of gaining feedback for how to simplify it and make it more realistically achievable. For this specifically I didn’t get much feedback outside of researching teaser trailer storyboards. This was because most of the feedback was aimed towards research suggestions that I didn’t find very relevant to this stage of production when looking at them.

After this, I was still feeling very stressed so I made a conscious decision to take a break Tuesday and Wednesday to try and reset my motivation for the project. Despite this however, I still ended up working on my project by producing the first part of my new storyboard on Tuesday so I would have something to show during the narrative group peer feedback session that day. Ultimately, I was happy with what I was able to produce for that session and with the compliments that I had received, however I didn’t have much feedback on the project itself.

After I took Wednesday off, I tried to hit the ground running on Thursday by completing more of my storyboard. I then showed what I had completed in my 1 to 1 session with my tutor Kat. Kat showed some concern for the workload that my project entailed, which was concerning as I had restarted the storyboard for that exact reason. A major problem that she raised was the render time that it might take to pull of some the scenes. She offered some suggestions to help this, such as use other programs to achieve certain effects to save on render time. From her comments I also decided to decrease the length of my storyboard to decrease the workload. However, at this stage of writing this, I am still unsure if I had cut enough for the project to be reasonable to complete within the time frame. This is mainly because I don’t know the timeframes for animation or rendering for larger projects such as this one. This led me to the decision of focusing the primary scene in the story board when I come to plan my revised time table. This would allow me to make sure that I defiantly have a product to present that conveys the narrative, even if I don’t realise the full storyboard.

After this however, on the Friday, I did a After effects and Maya workshop. Before this point I hadn’t attended the After Effect workshops as they were focused on 2d animation. However, from the suggestions in my 1 to 1 session and the fact that this workshop had a 3d focused, I decided to have a look. Whilst it wasn’t as focused on 3d as I would have liked, the workshop showed off some promising techniques that could be applied to my animation to save on render time. However, this would only be the case if I was able to composite the renders to make full use of it. Moving on to the Maya workshop however, I was once again feeling fairly stressed and tired at that point. This made it very difficult to follow along with the workshop where we were being taught how to animate a walk cycle. Eventually I got frustrated when I had to restart my animation for the second time because I had made a mistake. This led to me giving up on the workshop and deciding to give it another go when I was in a better head space. A couple of days later I revisited the workshop and was able to make a competent walk cycle.

Unfortunately, however this left me conflicted on what program I should use for the final outcome. Whilst I found myself really liking the animation systems in Maya, there are many things that are easier to do in blender. Another complication to this is that the free rigged T-rex character that I found was set up for Maya. This means that if I wanted the use the program that I am more familiar with, I would have to either find a new model or spend time re-rigging the character which would waste more time. Ultimately before finalising my decision I should see what models are available on other websites before choosing a program. To help with this I need to finalise my storyboard and create an animatic so that I have a good idea of what assets I am going to be needing for this project. Luckily as it is Easter break, I have plenty of time to finish this. However, I must be careful to take breaks to make sure that I come back from the break with full energy.