Week Thirteen

MONDAY 17/09/07:- The last week of our Maya industry brief. Continuing to animate my character. As ever Maya has a mind of its own and does the opposite of what I want it to do. Maya will obey my commands or in the words of Ivan Draco from Rocky 4 "I will break you!".

TUESDAY 18/09/07:- Finished a rough animated version of the reveal scene. Tim Allen will be in tomorrow, hopefully he can help with smoothing out the character animation.

WEDNESDAY 19/09/07:- Today I've test rendered my scene. I'm quite happy with my character animation but as I played back the scene I noticed a few glitches. I lost some frames of the scenery. Never mind something to figure out tomorrow. Tim Allen didn't come in today, he'll be here tomorrow.

THURSDAY 20/09/07:- Tim Allen came in this morning. He suggested some changes to the work and helped with the character animation. He went through the limb movements and explained the effect of moving one limb has on another. He also explained how you can keep a character 'alive' by adding subtle movements. My work has improved a hell of a lot since this morning. I think it would be good idea to have Tim in more often especially when it comes to character animation.

FRIDAY 21/09/07:- Completed my Maya project. I'm quite happy with it. It ain't bad for a piece of work done in three weeks with no previous experience using Maya.

Week Twelve

MONDAY 10/09/07:- Continuing work on the Calon industry brief. Created a short storyboard for my character's revel scene, I hope to make it as cool as Harry Lime's revel scene in 'The Third Man'. I've also been building a set for my character to appear in. It's very simple. The lighting of the scene will play a important part in the reveal.

TUESDAY 11/09/07:- Today I scrapped the set which I created for my character to have his reveal scene. I also didn't like the storyboard. To me, the manner in which my character was to be revealed didn't have a strong enough impact. The set didn't create the atmosphere that I wanted, however I've made a new one which is much better, and I've also redone the storyboard for the reveal.



WEDNESDAY 12/09/07:- The day has been very frustrating. I've gotten better using the Maya program but there are still aspects of it that I'm having trouble with. There's a lot of trail and error using this program but I suppose it's the best way to learn. Despite frying my brain, I have begun animating the reveal scene.

THURSDAY 13/09/07:- MAYA is the most frustrating programme in the world ever! When you think that you have a grip on things it chucks another spanner in the works. I've never cursed at a computer screen so much in my life.

FRIDAY 14/09/07:- This week my stress levels have been quite high, however I'm ending the week slightly more mellow. This week I've been having problems with my character deforming as I've been animating him. Thankfully Matt Leonard has come in for a Maya tutorial and has straightened a few of the problems out. I basically made my skeleton a bit too complicated, by adding too many IK handles. As I was moving one part of the character it was also moving and deforming another part of the character. I hope now that Monday will be a easier day. Tim Allen also came in to help us with our animation. It'll be great when he comes in next week to give us some pointers on improving our character animation when our puppets are glitch free.

Week Eleven

MONDAY 03/09/07:- Today has been spent playing around on Maya, creating environments and figuring out the dynamics of an environment(Gravity Etc); as we await our Maya industry briefs.

TUESDAY 04/09/07:- We received our industry briefs late yesterday afternoon. I've been given the Calon brief. Using the Maya program I have to build and design a character, then animate a 'memorable' entrance to a scene using lighting and movement. It sounds simple but it ain't. This will probably be the most challenging brief I will have to do as it's the first project I've done using a 3D program. There will be blood, sweat and tears in this project!

WEDNESDAY 05/09/07:- Yesterday I sketched out a few rough ideas for a character, and began modelling him/her in Maya. Today has been spent finishing the modeling process including colouring in the character. The character is of a simple design so hopefully he/she will be easy to animate. The day has also been spent adding the skeleton to the model, Ive done this a few times today. I've had problems moving the skeleton with the 'IK handle' tool. The 'IK' tool allows you to manipulate the movement of a limb from one point, this cuts out the need to move each individual joint to create a movement. However as I've discovered its not that easy, you must make sure that the orientation of each ball joint is correct, otherwise your limbs will twist around at an unnatural angle. Maya is frustrating at the moment but I think at the end of the brief everyone will be pretty savvy on it.
This morning Andrew Offiler the 'Head Honcho' at Calon paid a visit to CYFLE. He took me and Kei through the brief and gave us an outline of what we can do for the 'Reveal Scene'. We watched some DVDs that he had brought, looking at the reveal scenes of characters e.g. 'Dumbo' and his ears. It was useful. It gave us an idea of what makes a character introduction scene work.

THURSDAY 06/09/07:- The plan for the day is to finish rigging the character. Hopefully by the end of the day I will have completed attaching the skeleton to the body, and prepared it for some test animations tomorrow.

FRIDAY 07/09/07:- I'm very happy today I finished rigging my character, all the bones are in, all the control points are in for the limbs, body, head and eyes. I've got a CG puppet that can be manipulated into any pose. Two weeks ago I knew nothing about Maya. The first week on Maya was intense. INFORMATION OVERLOAD. However this second week has been a real learning curve. Through trail and error I've managed to create a working CG puppet. Hoorah!