Evaluation

During the pitching process, I was given a lot of positive feedback by the tutors, but they said their was a lack of character design and camera angles, I knew the film was in its early stages but there was clearly potential.

Tara,Sam, Hayley, Dean, Karl and Stephen said they wished to work on my film and make it into a 30 second film,I had to cut the team down as it was only a short so I made a quick decision and decided to work with Hayley , Tara, Dean and Sam. Originally the film was split in to two groups, but in the end the tutors felt the Mongolian story had more potential and we decided to all make one film.

Therefore research began and the whole team got on well with research. I carried on with the animatic and design of our main character. The initial concept was developed and story line ideas were thought up, but I was still lacking in getting the right type of cinematic camera shots. At this point I was also not taking on board director style decision, and was to concerned with keeping people happy. I would often say is that ok ? trying to please everyone was getting the film no where. However this all changed in the alter terms.

We got Clym to help us out with the modeling of the Mongol and he looked very realistic and quite nice.  Unfortunately the model was very High Resolution to work with and Tara and Sam made a decision to re-model the man. I thought the model he made looked more like the character I had originally designed, and Tara was happier to rig it as she thought a higher mesh would have been harder to paint weights on. Tara had been working hard over Christmas to rig the marmot she modeled, and was still finding a lot of problems, so we got Hayley to begin rigging the Mongol as she had been doing rigging for Dans earlier unit. Nearer to the end of the third term we found this was perhaps a problem as her rig was hard to animate with. I was hoping to get more practices of animation towards the film, but we kept finding problems with the rigs holding back what could be animated. Rigging was a new skill to both Hayley and Tara so any kind of propblems were completely understandable, we were all still learning.

Dissertation also took up a lot of everyone time, but we held lots of meetings to keep everyone up to date with whats going on and I thought the second term progressed the film a lot further. I would sit with Tara once a week and decide the paln of action and goals of that week. Tara would then right it up and send a copy to everyone email. As my producer, she was in charge of organization and scheduling.

I had created countless animatics and they were improving, but I felt that it had got to a point where the film had to move on, me and Sam decided to team up. we Composed the final animatic and from this point we had the shots down. Finally the film began to progress. Since this point I realized I had to seriously step up and make decisions and stick to them, this was the first time I had directed a film. I was determined to finish and make this film a success, so I now took on a different approach. I was in every day and so was the majority of my team we became an extremely tight unit. I was there with my team every week and woudl be there to guide each scene and tweak any animation. I think this level of commitment completely changed the dynamics of the group we all had decided to work non stop in achieving my goal as my teams confidence grew so did mine, we also had a really psositive response from Our tutor and this effected the team in a very good way.

We did have some problems and there was a stage where I was so concerned with the amount of animation and the quality of the animation that was being produced, I felt as if the film would never be finished. I felt our animator was never in and the growing concern effected my teams moral, ultimately me and Tara had made a combined decision to inform our tutor and we had to have a contingency plan.

Our contingency plan was to have another animator on board which was quite normal as at the time we only had one confident animator on the team. We divided the animation shots and all got on with making the film. Sam continued to push the visual style and I would let him know which render style I preferred. Rob Bowles actually saved our film as far as animation, he was extremely accomplished in his ability. He was easy to manage, and often understood, exactly what I wanted.

In the end we had finished our film for the hand in which was a huge achievement in its self and a testiment to hard work everyone put in. There is still room for improvement but the overall quality of the animation is good. The film has a simple style yet has some traditional aspects such as the oriental paper which features throughout the film. We could have created more life in some of the scenes some moving trees, the sky needs to be moving, some rays of sunshine and other natural effects could lift the quality and visuals of the film.

This has been an eventful year and an extremely rewarding one, it has been exhausting and I constantly felt responsible for the film and I ultimately was. The entire experience was fascinating and I would do it all again as I felt I have learnt so,  I have learnt a lot about the stages of film making but most importantly how to deal with people and ultimately how to lead a group and avoid conflicts but instead concentrate on the positive aspects and make sure your team remain positive. I am proud of the work my team has produced and the film would have never been complete without everyone contribution.

Artist

My main folder was Artist, I knew that my most natural skill is drawing however, I decided to pick a film that was very playful and cartoony. My natural style, is a lot more serious and realistic so I did struggle with the characters but I wanted to make a film which was not highly realistic. I dd push on with the character designs and eventually reached a result that worked well. I was in charge of creating the mongolian concept, the early ideas of the marmot and the eagle and I continually developed the style and landscape of the film.

Technical Folder.

 I knew I was never going to be the technical person on this team.

However I wanted to challenge my self so I did composite one scene and did mess around with bend deformers on the tres, which added some basic control and movements. 

Animation

Although Animation wasn't my strongest point I felt that my animation went quite well.

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed animating and animated four scenes, I had not done any animation since first year and I think I was so determined this year that I just pushed through. I understand some of the 12 principles of animation but not to a great extent. I also could have benefited if I knew how to work the graft editor.