Week 8 - making the blockout and blendshapes

..and ofcourse the dissertation.


On Monday Josie and I meet up in college to do the blockout, I met our sound guy Emmet in the corridor and we discussed sounds for the film a bit and I told him that finally he would get the block out today. Moahaha. Never say never. Ironically everything that could go wrong did go wrong and even more, images from shoots appeared as the background on the timeline so I almost thought the computers graphic card was about to die and all the 2D art work went made when I tried to make playblasts out of the animation. Josie and I chose to laugh about it. We tried different solutions from ten to 4PM and then we gave up and called it for the day. Aminata meet us and heared my mental laugh and decided to come to my house on Wednesday and try to sort out my Maya and save my mental health :)
Ben in my class came and asked me for work so I told him that I, Aminata and jess all needs help with various things. He was interested in designing a new Bobo as I told him that we had problems with him - I also told him that I had to discuss it with Wan as he already is working on Bobo, but maybe Wan want time to work on his dissertation as I know how much work he has done for me and knows that he is a bit behind with dissertation work? I also wanted to make clear to ben that if he wants to do this it has to be done in a week or maximum two. Ben called me the same night which made me happy, he seems really up for it, nice not having to hunt people all the time. Talked to Wan about it on skype and I told him to keep all the work that he had done but that I was not happy with Bobo still and that maybe fresh ideas from outside could help us, right now his legs looks more like human legs then toy legs and there was no development done from the ruff maya Bobo that I had done to show Wan how we might make Bobo more like-able by giving him more shape, rounder belly, more bottom, details on the then very flat ears etc. I need new concept or a modeler who is familiar with character modeling who can do it. And do it now. Did not want Wan to be disappointed or angry with me so we talked about it and he said that he actually much rather makes blendshapes so then it was all for the best for both him and Ben. So now Wan will work on his dissertation and the both of us will make blendshapes for the girl and if Ben doesn't do it then we use Wan's version but we decided to give it a try.

Tuesday, easier to write what I do everyday cos I noticed that otherwise I forget a lot. Dissertation meeting with Mike.H, waited for him for an hour and was so tired when I could see him that I don't think I made any sense - BUT - I did borrow him a digital recorder from college so that he could record his daughter and / or his sons voice for my film :) Told Wan that he could stay home tomorrow and work on his dissertation as I feel responsible for the bad concept work with Bobo. Ben was in and had two Bobo sketches, I told him that i really liked his drawings but that they felt both a bit to comical and that we wanted a fairytalish, sad and beautiful film so that Bobo could not be to cartoonish. Wan was also there so I asked him what he thought and he thought the one we liked the most could work but that it right now looked more like a boys toy and I could see what he meant when he said it so I asked Ben to give the toy a slimmer and less masculine body and try to make it more like a girls toy. I need to discuss the ears with him as well as the long ones he had now would be LOTS of animation work..dont want that eventhough it could be really nice. I hope that Ben is serious cos I am so tired of people saying they will do things n then disappearing.

Wednesday, I can't work anymore. I try but nothing comes out of it. Can't wait for the easter break!! Worked on the dead world, changed a clip in sequence 1 in the first scene n came up with some much better camera angles then the ones in the animatic which is good. Can't stand the playblast problems with maya anymore and the look is not what I am after either so today I imported the animated girl into After effects, cut the background of n started with scene one that also would define the style. Looks so much better in After Effects! need to sort out the clouds and the background so that they follow the 3D camera though. Couldn't finish as Aminata was coming over to fix my maya. Don't like working in college so it is so frustrating not to have maya at home!! We worked about 5 hours on it...doesn't work on my Intel computer. Nice. Oh yes! Raphael showed up today and he also e-mailed me a couple of days ago so it was nice to see him again. I told him that we have a formative next week and that he actually has nothing to show for as he has done nothing for me this term. I asked him to get images that could work as the view from the hospital room and to develop the white flying creature that he should have done when he disappeared, we discussed if it should be 2D or 3D and decided to go for 2d as it would fit the dead world much better. Had a meeting with Mike and told him about our status and what we were doing.

We are behind but I feel more positive then before.

Now I just need to get:
a really good blockout done with Josie
do blendshapes for the girl
finish my dissertation,
make sure we get the train and has everything finished for the easter week with scene/camera/mood and animation list for all involved. Less then two weeks to go!