Hand In Day

I neglected to mention that my specialization is ANIMATION.

I have however ended up spending more time modelling, texturing and rigging. Sweet irony.

NOTE TO EXAMINERS

Hello nice, reasonable examiners.

Please note that despite this film being incomplete at this point, there is a mountain of work to be considered. Many, many folders jammed full of good quality work, only possible through a considerable amount of time and effort spent. For the majority of the time only myself and Julian have worked on this entire film, and have achieved a great deal.

Since starting this project I have learned:

Improved modelling
UV mapping
Texturing in Photoshop
Rigging (including Reverse Foot, Spline IK and IK/FK Blend)
Lighting (with Light_Linking)
Rendering
Deforming, soft-modification, motion paths, extrusion, animated sweeps, etc, etc
Greatly Improved Animation
Graph Editor

Thank you, and goodnight.

The end is nigh...ish

I am completely shattered. I feel a little like I'm nearing the end of a grueling long distance run and I'm having to force myself to reach the finish. 9 months in and I really need a break from this film. I still love it and can't wait to see the finished job, but it's consumed me for months and my brain is overloaded. Ideally we could have two weeks off and then return full of vim and vigour to finish with real gusto. In reality of course we have to hand in tomorrow and we certainly won't be finished to the standard we want.

Our sound man has been up to his elbows in Rave on Air, and Lovely Icelandic music lady Hidur cant really do anything until she has the absolute finished timing. Consequently there will be limited sound for this initial hand in.

We absolutely will have a finished and marvellous film in time for the degree show. It will have sound and be rendered and lit beautifully and all of that stuff.

Had there been more people on the team we would have finished on time, no problem. For my own part I have been getting bogged down with lighting each and every scene to get the best out of them. Once you pop you can't stop, as it were. It's no good having some lovely shots and some flat and awful. Thus valuable animating time has been taken up lighting and render testing. I have also been improving textures as I go and re-organising all my files. It must be understood this is a real labour of love. I'd rather hand in an incomplete film now and save the finished "master" for the show.

Sleep is what I need now and then I can leap out of bed tomorrow and do a ton of work.

Goodnight.

Brochure Time

Two stills are required from the film, so I have been working on those. Of the two here I have only submitted the shot in the railway carriage. The other shot I chose is Fred and Knitwit tugging on the teddy (sounds ominous). I've already put it up twice and I don't want to bore us all to death.

There is still SOOOO much for us to do. I've got a ton of animation left to do, never mind the rest of it. Folders for this and PPDs for that. I don't know.

I got an email back from Hildur, my lovely Icelandic music lady, and she's still well up for it. I think she still plans to do the music aswell...boom boom! Marvellous. And our sound man, James Goddard, looks like a young Dave Gilmour (top qualification) and he's just landed himself a job - which means he's good. I reckon he's the man for the job. It's all coming together....just.

Well, better crack on! Tata.

More Photoshop Adjustment

The clue is in the title. Upping the red is certainly what's coming through for me.
Minor disaster yesterday. Julian accidentally dragged his hard-drive off of his computer and it didn't enjoy the bang. He is now unable to access his last two days animation and has lost his major file-ferrying tool. Not ideal. He took it well though. I wouldn't have! Real shame, what he had done was really good. Maybe it will be even better the second time round.

Hi. Busy times right now. I've not entered much lately because I'm animating like crazy. I seem to be getting a feel for it now - I hope.

I certainly learned a great deal from making "I, Colin" last year. It's really paying dividends. Plus having IK manipulators on the arms that I can Parent Constrain to objects or even to the character themselves is like a dream compared to keyframing each frame and it still looking shit!

Julian is doing a, quite frankly, MARVELLOUS animation job with Joseph. I'm so impressed. I always knew he had it but he's really coming up with the goods. It's making me a little nervous - all of a sudden my stuff has become a lot less impressive to myself. Which is of course a good thing. That damn bar, constantly being raised.

Then there's Mr. Neil Marriott and Jim Bending, both producing some great animation. I don't know what's happened - suddenly there are some animators in our class. Good ones. HOD, I've yet to see your stuff properly!

I'm nearly finished on the modelling front, at last! Rageen is texturing my tunnel portal (thankfully) which means I've been able to get down to some serious animation.

I'm not going to post any. The main reason being I don't know how to and the second being I can see no point. The film will be available soon anyway, complete with 15.1 surround and a host of DVD extras, including easter eggs (whatever they are) and commentary by my mum and some drunk bloke I met outside the cinema.

Ooh, my butternut squash lasagne is almost ready. Better go.

Bye.

Time waits for no man

Blimey, three weeks and counting! I still have so much to do. I've just made a rather hefty list of things to build and animate, plus the impending Framestore hand-in on friday. I have animated Fred and Knitwit fighting over a teddy, and not only did I manage to complete it very quickly, it seems to work really rather well. This makes me extremely happy as I considered it to be possibly my hardest piece of animation. It involves the pair of them stretching the teddy, and that is an animation challenge. Plain sailing from here? I doubt it. Awfully sorry, no clips to show you here. There has to be some surprise at my degree show.

I'm going to REALLY miss this course. It's been wonderful. I hope I can get a job. (A good job).

I'm switching off for the night now. Aah, sweet sleep. No doubt I'll be up at 6.00 again tomorrow. I keep doing it, but it's a great time to sort out technical hitches and do some very valuable work.

Goodnight.

Bedroom Interiorly finished at last.