Year 3 - Major Submission - Reflective statement

This is a reflective statement for my 3rd year of 3D computer Animation Arts. 

I shall outline what it was that I achieved this year, I made a full 3D set consisting of 5 rooms, living room, bathroom, bedroom, hallway and landing. In total I made over 100 3D objects, all Uv'd and textured, the bathroom was cut from the final animation but the assets are available to view in the Art of and in my blog. I modelled 2 characters four times for the main character and six for the secondary character with complete texturing and rigging, facial pose library, and even rigging for interacting with furniture in the set. I was able to finalize the script and choreograph the voice acting and sound design which I gave to a professional to complete for me. I animated approximately 60 scenes and reanimated approximately 15 of them later when I improved. I fully rendered the entire animation without any need for lighting or rendering examples or shots of unfinished work, I have produced 2 demo reels for my characters turnarounds and finally, I produced a 114 page Art of document to demonstrate my journey. 

During the year I found that at the beginning I got heavily interested in modelling my set and I spent a long time, just everyday producing models, I took a long time looking at antiques and old places especially victorian houses for certain aspects to model. I found this practice to be extremely beneficial for me because it made me think in a technical way about modelling and eventually my knowledge for problem-solving improved when it came to modelling my characters I could see each attempt which I undertook periodically whilst modeling the set began improving each time. I found my skills of animation were relatively basic when I began, I found it very difficult with timing and had to resort to acting out the scenes on video and then timing it that way. Near the end of animating I found that I was capable of timing movement much better and this meant I needed to go back and improve past scenes, the majority of which I then had to re-render. Looking back I can see a clear line of improvement of all my general 3D skills.

Rigging characters was certainly the most disliked part of this process but I look back on it bittersweetly now as a time which was very satisfying... once it was over and I could see the results. I found a problem with my main character rig was that I made his hips too short and it made his walking a little strange also his spine too long which meant bending in the middle was very awkward for him I have learned a lot about anatomy through the process and will be much more confident in the future at getting it perfect. 

The Covid-19 epidemic has meant it was necessary to stay away from university, as I heard talks about the University closing I make an effort to go in every day and make sure I had scenes I could render on the campus computers, by the time the lockdown was implemented I already had half of my shots rendered and ready for the final cut. Looking back I think it was a good move to knuckle down during this time as it gave me plenty of time especially with the deadline pushed back to fine-tune and relax about my work. I have always found this to be a double-edged sword because on one hand I can become blinkered and am unable to see the wider scope and often forget or miss things, but on the other hand I am an extremely driven person who works fast and learns quickly, this occasionally does however mean I celebrate before I reach the finish line, I think this is going to be my biggest personal problem to overcome, I noticed this because I tend to put my head down and work, the year went very quickly and I had realized in terms of engaging with my classmates and staff, and posting regular updates on my blog, I had done very little of updating or checking in, i feel regretful because it was not that I didn't want to, it was a mixture of two things, firstly I felt i never had anything really to update on, it was simply a process of modelling, rigging, animating and rendering, secondly it sounds silly writing it down but my perception of peoples moods in the class was that spirits were low and i think subconiously, if I began posting my progress each day with new models and sequences and things it might end up bring the mood down further if people felt they were falling behind. Thinking about it with the glory of hindsight I realised that it's likely that this wasn't the case, I was overthinking things, and secondly, even if it was a thing, it is my own degree that is being affected. It has taught me a lesson which I will work on not to be afraid of backlash and to act as if something new and exciting is happening with my work as regularly as possible.

Overall, during the course, I feel a mixture of pride for how far I've come, the things I have learned despite the problems that have occurred during my time of studentship. Being a mature student with a mortgage and family to maintain has given me no margin for failure and that has always been my driving force when it comes to work and education. I feel I could go into a 3D team and be ready for the industry. I have a level of anxiety that now I'm a little fish in a big pond and now I am creating content no longer as a student but as a professional. this makes me excited equally for the challenge of improving and also to work with other creatives outside of my own mind. 

I am confident in my abilities now that I have completed my 3rd year and feel capable of going out into the world and making a name for myself despite all that has happened this year I can thankfully say it affected me little and I wont allow it to affect me in the future either.      

           

Sleep Tight - Major Submission - Year 3

3rd Year Final Submission:

Year 2 Final Submission

This contains concept art, character orthographic, a previz draft and a draft script.

Year 2 Interim Crit Submission

This contains Concept art, character design elements in 2D, the original rough block modelling cut of my previz set for the previz in the year 2 final submission, a drawn animatic and the first version of my script.  

Year 3 Minor Submission

This contains an art of document displaying many of my models, uv'd but untextured, the final script, the radio drama script, some influence for the final set, the final child model, uv'd and textures but no head rig. finally some show reels.

Year 3 Art of and Sleep Tight Animated Short - Final Submission

Sleep Tight Art Of by Thomas Sherwood on Scribd

Major update - 24.04.20

So I managed to get around the problem of neglecting to realise its hard to UV map after Rigging a Model. I managed to stick to simple Ai shaders as it fitted in with the art of the characters anyway. however, the eyes turn out to be much more of a problem. as they wouldn't UV I first tried to vertex paint instead but this certainly conflicted with arnold; eventually I decided on creating new eyes, Uving them and snapping them to the original eye locations. then made the old ones invisible and parent constrained the new ones to the old. it works like a dream.

I have Lip Synced the first clip my grandmother says It needs work on one syllable but ill correct that before i render. I installed the pose library to make things easier, hid the joints and put the Geo on a reference layer so I couldn't accidentally interact with it.

A Quick render from that scene below with accompanying playblast.   

Last Minute Remodelling 22.04.20 - Grandmother Full Rig

I finished rigging the Grandmother character, I decided to do my own brow rig however which worked out nicely, now I can make shapes dynamically using 3 controls for each brow. 

On another note I before rigging the mouth and lateral movement I neglected to turn off the skin cluster and input blendshape, this meant that I inherited a squash through the model which got progressively worse. I Fixed this by applying a negative parallel blendshape to the head cancelling out the inherited movement. 

She is now finished, All that is left is to texture and get on with more animating. 

 

Last Minute Remodelling 22.04.20

I've spent the last two days integrating a mouth blendshapes rig into the remodelled Grandmother's head. With any luck I should be finished with her by this afternoon and can get on with texturing and finally animating her spoken parts for rendering. Once that is done, I'm going to add some more scenes to make sure the Animation transitions smoothly and suspensefully. 

Last Minute Remodelling 15.04.2020 - Nan

So after some hard decisions I decided to remodel the head of my Grand mother Character. It came about after Rigging the original Geometry simply wouldn't work smoothly and simply needed to be redone. This time around, with a little more experience under my belt I managed to correct the Geometry and remake it with the thought of rigging in mind ahead of time.

Edge Loops flow better now and I've managed to add in more detail now to make the surface fit more with my idea of my Uncanny Grandmother. Now i should be able to sail through skinning and rigging the head to get a professional finish.

Luckily, she is only in a few scenes which require speech, so if I've planned this correctly, everything should be rendered for the submission.

  

Minor - Reflective Statement

Minor - Reflective Statement

Looking back at Minor I feel like it has been a promising but never-ending stream of consciousness since I began at the start of the year. It had embodied the reason I first decided to go into Animation. To be a creative, a world builder, a dreamer and storyteller. Someone who wants to sculpt amazing things which can only be born out of the imagination, This project has been the first time I've had the skill and knowledge to be able to do all of that even though it is true that there is still a curve of learning which needed to be climbed.

I began this project really, from the end of the second year, the beginning was built on the foundations of the end of my premise feedback, It occurred to me during the break in the summer that my premise ideas were flawed in certain regards, therefore, required work, it turned out the work that needed doing was fundamental and the entire thing needed to be re-written and started from the beginning. The two main problems were that there was too much fluff in the middle, meaning it was just filling time without a lot added to the story, this was adjusted by removing much from the middle which then allowed me to add more to the beginning meaning I could capture more personality from my characters for the audience to add to the tone of the animation, and also some extra time to the ending to draw out suspense. The other thing was that the set needed to be altered because originally the final bedroom location was down some stairs in a basement, this came across as odd rather than what I intended which was uncanny and weird, therefore I altered the set so there was a1st floor instead, which at it turned out worked much better. I also altered something which turned out for the best and also made things easier for me in the long run which was changed a sequence where the boy watches tv at the beginning and instead is now playing with toys and listening to a radio drama.

The script was shortened and I worked on stripping out everything which didn't mean anything. I was left with about three pages, the bare bones of the animation which was all I needed to make it as clean and meaningful as possible. From the script I was able to determine exactly what I needed out of the animation in terms of broad structure for the set.

This allowed me to go about writing a prop list and writing a script for the radio drama, on a side note, the radio drama was written from my second-year character design project, I managed to write something which fitted the bill perfectly for what I wanted, a story of impending doom of a monster lurking in the distance, inescapable to mirror the boy and his uncanny granny.

This was all more of a process really and just took some forward-thinking, however, when it was done I ended up with a prop list of around 100 objects which all would need to be modeled, uv'd and textured, not a small feat even for a professional. So I set about making them and Uving as I went, the process taught me a lot about topology and how to design things, I used a lot of photographic references specifically from scenes of horror, haunted dwellings, antique furnishings, and victorian products, for more modern things I took to the shops and used real-life or things from my home as references to create many modern items. By the end of this process, I found that I was going back over older models in order to improve them where I found errors which would be problematic in the future for me in an effort to keep everything as clean as possible. By the end of it was found that I had a great love for just simply modeling and found it to be rather therapeutic. It was a good experience, one that I think will hold me in good stead for my future career.

Once all my assets were complete and UV'd I went about using Victorian imagery to stylize each room of the grandmothers' house, I did this to make sure the space reflected the grandmothers' character, I want the boy to feel as if the fear he begins to feel for his grandmother is inescapable and haunting him wherever he goes, I wanted to heighten the drama and suspense as the animation goes on.         

I intentionally built the set consistently throughout to allow myself the freedom to film the previz in a way similar to a real set where I can to experiment in a digital space, it is reflected by my script as I've intentionally been relatively vague about the majority of the shots, I've learned that I tend to work better after much consideration on a subject rather than making decisions i.e. writing the entire script with rigid commands for filming. I have found it really helped me to have a bit of viscosity in terms of flow for filming. It worked in my favour as it was an extremely quick turn around for filming and putting together the previz. On this subject, I think it's important to note here that I decided to work with a sound designer as I've learned through my degree that I possess very little talent with sound and it was important to me to get it completely spot-on as the sound is so important with horror. So in light of this I got in contact with an old friend of mine who now works in the sound industry, I outlined the project and what I expected from a sound designer and gave as much detail about the sound as possible, I also wanted them to interpret it as their own because as I previously outlined I am no good with sound, this went to my advantage as when the previz was returned to me the sound added much to the suspense and drama and really complimented the visuals. I think this will hold me in good stead for the future and the final render because it has allowed my sound designer to make a loose first draft of the final thing.   

Closer to the submission for Minor I began the rigging for my main character, this has always been something I've struggled with since I first encountered rigging; That being said I feel I've grown massively in my knowledge of rigging up until the point I had arrived at before the submission, which was up until pose space interpolators, this was due to having massive problems which I encountered over the Christmas and New Year period. I feel this was part of the learning curve and with assistance I have now learned what the problems were and will be able to overcome them in the future.

On the whole, the Minor project has been really uplifting and freeing for me, its been a great opportunity to learn in a way which benefits me, I find it helps me to learn through repetition, as in, scripting everything, designing everything, modelling everything, then moving on to Uv'ing everything. It also gave me the freedom to experiment and learn through trial and error. I have a tendency to be quite narrow-minded and need to experience problems for myself before I can adapt and improve, I feel with the feedback I received I think I was able to hone my project in a positive direction and now I think I'm in a good position to be able to finish my characters and get straight to animating.