Animation nation

The film is officially under way! Hurray!

I started animating the first dream sequence. The shot is very very long, about 40 seconds, and very complex as well - it involves two characters and the teddy bear, as well as keeping everything in sync with the toy train revolving at a constant speed. Today was quite boring - I always hate the begining part of an animation sequence - it feels like staring at a blank page. Once the key poses are sketched in I can begin refining them and then finally start animating. So I've completed Lucy's main poses. They're very rough at the moment - nothing to write home about.

Tomorrow I'll refine the poses and begin thinking about the motion. This weekend is all about breaking the scene to about 5 or 6 main parts, and then moving from one to the next, creating keys and breakdowns. I want to finish a rough rough stepped version by next wednesday - only Lucy at the moment. Next week I want to further break down her movement and add homie's subtle acting, as well as fitting her hands to the dolly so it wouldn't have any wierd penetrations. I want to begin participating in the film department's thesis sessions (the only place I can still find animators in Pratt), and see what Pat Smith has to say about the scene. From there it's straight to Gavin, while I start smoothing the tangents out. Completed scene by 20th of next month. Then I'll begin working on the second dream sequence, hopefully crack up the pace and finish it in another four weeks. My goal for the last two weeks is rest a bit and finish a short dialogue scene, including rough lighting (as long as I still have Rob, it's good to tackle all the technical issues). If I can do this I'll be in quite a good place. I also want to rerecord the dialogue, as well as sampling real subway background noise. Winter break is a huge stretch, and I plan many things for it, but let's just cross that bridge when we get there.

Later!

Just another day..

Here's my current situation:
- Homie's rig is complete, except for bump maps for his forhead.
- Lucy's rig is complete, except for her simple hair.
- Environment modeling is about 20% complete.
- Environment rigging has not even began, nor did texturing of any kind.
- I created a 3 second test shot for homie as well, and it all works great. I even animate faster than I thought.
- Established a formal mentoring relationship with Gavin Moran from Sony - he liked the test shot - and he usually doesn't like anything, so that's a good sign.

I took the day off today, tried to decide whether I want to buy a license for Syflex. It's quite an investment, but pirating it means risking infecting my brand new computer, and potentially loosing data, which is a risk I can't really afford to take. I'll try talking to them about maybe reducing the price for me - fortunately Rob knows them so maybe he can hook me up.

I want to finish homie's cloth and hair by this wednesday, which means I'll have to get crackalakin' this weekend.

The Pressure is on

School officially kicked into gear, along side with its useless distractions, such as 3 liberal arts classes, poeple, girls and what not..

I also had my first 'unofficial thesis class' with Rob, and we devised a plan for the near future. I need to start animating in 3 weeks. For this semester, I want to finish all the preperations including models, rigs, textures and cloth/hair/soft bodies, and finish the 2 main dream sequences, which are essencially about 40-50% of the film's run time. Winter break would be a big stretch, as it has no distractions. I want to finish re-record the voice (in a recording studio), sample subway noise, and hopefully lock down the music with Dory. Also during that time I want to begin animating the dialogue scenes, about 5 of them.

The Spring semester is the final run. Only 1 extra course should give me plenty of time to finish the remaining 12 scenes in about 6 weeks. The remainder of the time should be spent on lighting, rendering and putting it all together.

As for the next week, my goal is to finish off homie's test shot (not including cloth / hair) as well as Lucy face and body fully rigged, and thats all by next wednesday. By the way, Homie's rig is complete, and lucy has all her blendshapes. The week after that it's figuring out the cloth and hair, texturing and more work on inside of train. A week later the first dream sequence should be ready to go, including the track / toy train rig.