20th May, Wednesday

Today i bumped into Alierza and told him how James was going to ink in his scenes, and the head deflation scene and if he could give us his 2D animations so that we could start inking them in on flash. He asked me and Daryl if he could give it a try so i let him know that I gave James till next week friday to get his scenes done so his scenes would have to be done by that date also. Even though that is three days less time than James has had he has agreed to do it for us anyway.

I have updated the Production Schedule again..

Newer production Schedule

Ok Elisha, now you have no excuse :P

New and possibly only production schedule!!!

Here's the the production schedule for the rest of term. It's near the end people, so follow the schedule and we should be fine. :)

It will be updated when we have more information. You'll all be told/asked what you can do though so don't worry, no ones name will be put next to any task without them knowing :)

Today I decided that Sam’s intro was great, but really wasn’t good enough for our film... simply because it looks to modern for our film.

In order to make sure I asked a few members of our group again whether changing it was worth it. Daryl wasn’t too bothered about Sam's design either way, he thought it looked good as it was but did agree with my comments. I asked Elisha also and she too thought that it wouldn’t fit with the style of our film.

I came up with an idea where we can still use most of the assets of Sam’s film so it wasn’t wasted time on Sam’s part but also fits in place with our film more. This was that the film could start off playing on an old 50s television set in black and white and a fuzzy screen. It would then zoom literally into the screen where it will then look straight through the ‘cameras’ of the broadcasting stage. Basically zooming back into our original animation.

This idea was helped from a previous group meeting we had with Kieron Dennis a while ago when showing him our storyboards/animatics of our progress with story ideas. He helped us brainstorm several ideas in several areas of the film, one being that the film could be entirely on an old television set. Although we didn’t catch on to the idea at the time it is obvious that it helped me come up with this idea for a new intro at this stage.

Daryl agreed that I could start working on the assets for this intro when I have time.

We knew that it is getting late to change things, especially considering the film isn’t near completion yet, but I still feel strongly that a different approach like this needs to be taken in order for our film to fit together well.

Thursday 7th May

Attempted a rough lighting test and composition test with 2D over 3D. Saw a potential problem of Daryl's animation being that RAM is bigger than the 3D set. He has started the animation already, outside of the scene and wants me to later composite this over the 3D background in After Effects. Reason being, that he didn't want to resize RAM and place him in the scene as it skrews up the toon shading on RAM. Doing it this way may not look as good as rendering from the set. For example lighting would be different and will have to be redone in After Effects. This of course means more work for me, but also wouldn't look as good as if it was already in the 3D scene with the scene's lighting. I suggested to Daryl that the best way in my opinion, is that RAM should be resized and to contact Moe (the creater of the model and toon shading) to see if he can adjust the toon shading afterwords so it doesn't skrew up. If this is possible then I see this as the best option as it means less work for me and no need to add extra grading as it won't be needed.

I have also showed James how to ink in so that he can start inking some scenes also.

I also asked Daryl to make a list of all the cameras he created in Maya and to create a chart with which scenes go to which camera. I could go through them myself, but it makes sense, and saves time if Daryl does this as he has already created them and he originally named the 2D scenes also.

Harrison worked out a good technique in order to reduce/eliminate cleanup issues with scans. I have asked him to relay the information to Daryl and have asked Daryl to use his technique in future scans. The reason that Daryl should use this technique is because he is already using Photoshop to batch scan his work and using Photoshop actions in order to reshape/resize the images in preparation for inkers such as myself to use. Whilst he does the scans it will be easy to implement this technique into actions alongside his other changes so that the files come out cleaned as well as cropped.

Recently I have been working with Daryl in order to complete the inking of the 2nd Year’s 2D audience animations.  I have also worked for Anja this week in re positioning all the cranes within the scene.

Friday 1st May

I attempted to make the Fish Animation even slower at the beginning and quicker at stay in teh middle more as Anja suggested. Unfortunately I was having many problems with the fish randomly turning angles, even when adding new keyframes previously redone frames would change. I had no idea how to sort this out and have giving the animation all I can. I let Anja know how much trouble I was having with it and she said she would finish the rest.


This is the exact reason I only wished to do effects/compositiong/editing for Anja from the beginning as I told her I have never animated like this before before.

Considering this I am surprised I managed to work out motion paths as well as I did. I guess it would be better if someone rigged the fish to the motion path better than me, perhaps someone with more experience with them.

Continued Inking in Daryl's frames also.