Tomorrow is my final and next Thursday I will have graduated from college!!
I'll post updates for my project and then thoughts on my undergrad thesis as a whole
Vis Dev
Current Progress
Modeling
Current Progress
Animation
Current Progress
Music
Current Progress
Lighting/Rendering/Compositing
Current Progress
Thoughts on my thesis:
Overall this was pretty much one of the most amazing projects I've ever experienced in school :) I learned a ton about a lot of different areas such as directing, producing, and even modeling. Most of all this project really helped me become more confident in myself as an artist because I have proven to myself that I was able to bring my vision to life and I myself alone carried a majority of this project to where it is now in just 39 weeks.
I thought this was the perfect project to have my senior year because it used everything I learned in my previous years. Having taken a lot of illustration classes allowed me to critique and communicate with my visdev team. My experience with design elements such as composition and balance as well as my storyboarding experience really helped when I was storyboarding and doing previs. My very limited experience with modeling helped me a TON when dealing with the technical difficulties I was having with some of the models. Those are just a few of the many skills I acquired through college that became essential to the success of this project.
My main criticism of this project was how much time I spent doing everything except animation. It was really frustrating that I spent a whole semester spending over half of my time working on things that weren't animating. I know that animation is at the end of a pipeline and I did enjoy the things that I had to do for the project like directing and producing... But when it's your last year in college and you know you have to get a job in 8 months, it is pretty scary to not animate for long periods of time. Second semester was a lot more fun though because if I wasn't animating at least I was critiquing animation.
As for the future of this project, I think it is essential for the program to find a way to give the people helping out on the projects some sort of school credit for doing it. I honestly could have finished my whole entire project by this time if I had a dedicated crew (or even just one dedicated person from each discipline). It took twice as long for things to get done because there wasn't much incentive for others to spend more time on the project. It shouldn't take a month to do 48 frames of animation but when you have real classes to attend to, other things fall to the wayside, and it is completely understandable. Others I have talked to agree that often our biggest obstacles we're the amount that others were able to help out.
My advice to SJSU A/I students who do a 3D animated thesis in the future:
So yeah! Super long last post on this blog/practically my diary haha. I plan on continuing to work on this project and finish it as soon as possible. Since I have an internship over the summer, I am not planning on working on this during that time (plus I want to enjoy living in SF!!) so I will start working on it again in the fall.
I'll post updates for my project and then thoughts on my undergrad thesis as a whole
Vis Dev
Current Progress
- Brandon, my Art Director, finished touching up all of the layouts that were needed for the end of the semester screening.
- 9/12 of the layouts are completely finished.
- Brandon will be helping me out in the future to finish the last 3 layouts.
Modeling
Current Progress
- All of the modeling needed for the project up to this point is completely done.
- I am probably going to have to make another pass on the textures for Ahmi, the staff, and the rockrich.
- I also may want to get the tree and sapling modeled in the future.
Animation
Current Progress
- All of the shots that were needed by the end of the semester screening have now been completely finished!
- 11/20 of the shots have been completely finished.
- I will be animating the rest of the shots for my thesis!
- I "finished" Seq02_Shot01 but I need to keep working on it.
- I may also want to have my animator continue to work on Seq06_Shot02 if she is able to since I gave her a very short amount of time to do that shot. Or I could take over the shot.
Music
Current Progress
- The musician I have been working with has a rough layout of all of the sound for the film based on the previs.
- My musician is based in Oakland. This summer I will be up near SF so I plan on meeting up with him to show current progress and listen to the rough music.
Lighting/Rendering/Compositing
Current Progress
- Every shot required for the end of the semester screening has been finished!!
- I want to re-render Seq02_Shot03. I have fixed the rig since I rendered that shot and I also want to fix the rocks in the scene.
- I want to try to figure out how to add ground shadows for Seq02_Shot01
Thoughts on my thesis:
Overall this was pretty much one of the most amazing projects I've ever experienced in school :) I learned a ton about a lot of different areas such as directing, producing, and even modeling. Most of all this project really helped me become more confident in myself as an artist because I have proven to myself that I was able to bring my vision to life and I myself alone carried a majority of this project to where it is now in just 39 weeks.
I thought this was the perfect project to have my senior year because it used everything I learned in my previous years. Having taken a lot of illustration classes allowed me to critique and communicate with my visdev team. My experience with design elements such as composition and balance as well as my storyboarding experience really helped when I was storyboarding and doing previs. My very limited experience with modeling helped me a TON when dealing with the technical difficulties I was having with some of the models. Those are just a few of the many skills I acquired through college that became essential to the success of this project.
My main criticism of this project was how much time I spent doing everything except animation. It was really frustrating that I spent a whole semester spending over half of my time working on things that weren't animating. I know that animation is at the end of a pipeline and I did enjoy the things that I had to do for the project like directing and producing... But when it's your last year in college and you know you have to get a job in 8 months, it is pretty scary to not animate for long periods of time. Second semester was a lot more fun though because if I wasn't animating at least I was critiquing animation.
As for the future of this project, I think it is essential for the program to find a way to give the people helping out on the projects some sort of school credit for doing it. I honestly could have finished my whole entire project by this time if I had a dedicated crew (or even just one dedicated person from each discipline). It took twice as long for things to get done because there wasn't much incentive for others to spend more time on the project. It shouldn't take a month to do 48 frames of animation but when you have real classes to attend to, other things fall to the wayside, and it is completely understandable. Others I have talked to agree that often our biggest obstacles we're the amount that others were able to help out.
My advice to SJSU A/I students who do a 3D animated thesis in the future:
- First and foremost, do what YOU want to do. DON'T COMPROMISE.
- We are artists. Being an artist is interpreting how you see the world and sharing it with others. This is pretty much one of the few times you will get full creative freedom at SJSU A/I so freaking run with it.
- For this project, I knew I wanted a strong female lead. I knew I wanted creatures. I knew I wanted it to be heavily influenced by nature. I knew I wanted it to feel larger than life. I knew I wanted a chase sequence. I knew I wanted the main character to be a strong character even though she was afraid - and it's okay to be afraid. These are all things I knew I wanted immediately and I never compromised on what I wanted. The story may have gone through many iterations but they always had those elements.
- Probably the best piece of advice that my mentor Scott ever gave me was to really think about my goals and add points underneath that you will sacrifice less for. He said that Michael Bay's main goals when directing a film is to make a shit ton of money and have cool explosions... and he does both REALLY well. His goal isn't to have a riveting story. He set his goals and he reached them.
- Right now our industry is known for it's multimillion dollar film studios so of course as students we might think that success = working at Pixar = having deep and emotional 3D animated movies. But like I said, you're an artist. Everyone has a unique vision. Do your vision. Success is arbitrary. If you want to do a simple 2D animated children's TV show then do it!
- Just for reference, here were my main goals for my project: 1. Create an animation for the art of it. I want beautiful paintings and animation that takes advantage of the medium - aka not a domestic scene. 2. I want an audience response. I want it to be unlike anything that has ever come out of SJSU A/I. 3. I want it to have a theme so it's not forgettable. Many beautiful very short animations are visually appealing but you can't really tell what's going on. I want it to allude to a larger story. And yeah, I would say I accomplished all of those things because of Scott's advice
- Set your limitations first and work from there.
- I knew I didn't want to design, model, and rig a character from scratch - it would have honestly been impossible to do. So I picked a rig, made sure I could use it for non commercial purposes, and modified it as much as I could. I did that for all of the rigs I used for this project.
- This was more of a decision of aesthetic than based on limitation but I think it still applies: I had 2D painted backgrounds. Like I said many posts ago, I was inspired by a short that integrated 2D backgrounds and 3D animation a long time ago and that is mainly what drove me to do it, but I also knew that getting a modeler to model a set for me would be wayyyy too much. If you want to do a 3D set you really should think of the scale of your project. I knew I wanted mine to have a massive world, but if yours takes place in a smaller setting then maybe a 3D set could work!
So yeah! Super long last post on this blog/practically my diary haha. I plan on continuing to work on this project and finish it as soon as possible. Since I have an internship over the summer, I am not planning on working on this during that time (plus I want to enjoy living in SF!!) so I will start working on it again in the fall.