wow, a lot has happened since my last post.
in terms of the project, im up to the modelling stage, sort of...
my character design was a little bit of a nightmare, but im happy with what ive come up with. i got help from Nick Roberson, who pointed out where i needed to make subtle but important changes. It definatly helped, and even though they're not perfect, i just didnt have time to mess around with it much longer.
my final designs look like this.
Like i said, im happy with both of them.
im currently rigging my robot. this is a stage i really dont like, but im determinded to get both characters riggwed by the end of the week... i knew this bit would slow me down. so yes, im behind. but im confident i can make up the time.
im contemplating asking if i can just hand in an unrendered piece. im not that interested in rendering.... id rather spend more time on the animation than faffing with rendering. i may hand in a simple version, then render over easter. i'd rather have it looking good in both aspects rather than average overall.
my enviroment needs working out too. its blocked out but i need to work out how im going to do the grass in a way that doesnt take forever to render ( if i end up rendering for deadline.)
it looks like this right now.
this looks ok, but not great. this is using maya fur for the entire grass element, which takes far too long to render. i may end up locking my camera as much as possible and painting some elements in. i could spend ages trying to get a field to look right, but in the end, it doesnt help me. i want to animate.
one big thing to happen recently is ANIMEX!
it was fantastic, 5 days of pure inspiration, meeting lots of great people. I talked to Ed Hooks many times, about my script, and animation in general. hes a really great guy, and i honestly wouldnt be doing this if it wasnt for him, so it was good to be able to tell him.
All the game stuff is excellent to see, and know where the industry is right now. i think its likely that i could end up in games, which is iromnic since its where i originally intended to be. the Dead Space talk was great, as was Midway talking about Wheelman & motion capture. Andy Walsh talking about script writing was also a good highlight.
Both me and Cahit did the Stuart Sumida animal locomotion workshop, and the Jim Gentile motion capture workshop. both were great, and at the end of the day it felt like id learned more in that one day than a year of uni (sorry steve!)
the aniamtion lectures were fantastic, one after another they just kept getting better. running your own studio, producing childrens tv, ed hooks on the future of... well.. everything... tips for students, Behind the scenes on Iron Man and Incredible hulk, Jason sadler showing us artwork from Horton hears a who, the tale of desperauex... and that was all just one day! and the next day was very disney focused, with talks from Rachelle lweis and a panel of industry heavyweights, then another from the disney channel execs, a talk from Mark Walsh from Pixar about Presto, the history of mickey mouse, 2d/3d intergration, and then 2 lectures about Bolt.
a fantastic time was had by all. the best thing about animex though is meeting people. ive made many contacts which will help this project and my work in the future.
but yes... my project...
currently, im up to this bit.
not lookin great is it? well, have faith! it'll all be fine!
at least i bloody hope so!
i also did my animatic, but it may get pulled because of the music.... im trying to track the copyright holders down....
The music is Django Reinhart - 'My serenade'
