Unit 13 – Final Major Project Year 2

Level 3 Diploma and Extended Diploma

Assignment Title: Final Major Project

Unit No & Title: U13: Project proposal and realisation (40 x L3 credits)

Assessment Date: 6^th March – 9^th June

 

Learning Outcomes:

Units Covered

Unit 13: To enable the candidate to take responsibility for their own learning by demonstrating their achievement in proposing and realising a project which integrates contextual perspective, research, problem solving, planning and organization, evaluation and reflection, and practical, technical and presentational skills.

 

Project Brief:

The Final Major Project is for you to use all the skills that you have developed over the year to produce an individual response that demonstrates this learning effectively. It is your own motivation, enthusiasm and determination that you put in that will produce the work you can be proud of. All your work pieces must be completed for assessment including your final pieces.

Within this brief you can explore any themes of your choice. Using a mind map on your chosen theme, you will identify areas to research. You will produce a project folder of idea development and your final piece(s). You will also describe and evaluate the effectiveness of your work throughout the project. You must demonstrate independent thought processes and working methods and have a degree of self-direction and motivation in planning, reviewing and organising your own work.

The theme you choose can be interpreted emotionally, ambiguously, literally, abstractly, otherworldly, unnaturally, silly, seriously or any other way you wish to see it. The final outcome(s) can be your choice but must fully enable you to achieve the unit criteria attached and meet the requirements of this brief. You can do more than one final piece.

 

Unit 13 – Project Proposal

Candidate Name:  Rory Gardner

Candidate Number: 20052510

Pathway: Game Development

Project Title: Final Major Project

 

Review of Progress and Achievement so far

Throughout the course the new skill sets I have learned and areas I have improved on is 3D modelling, texturing, normal maps, concept art, research skills, visual 3D Animation, Rigging and skinning and audience analysis.

Over all I am pretty confident in my abilities in all aspects I have learnt over the duration of the course; there isn’t any one area that I particularly dislike or struggle with I feel I have a good knowledge of all areas I have covered.

The area I particularly like the most is Modelling and I feel like this is my strongest aspect of all the areas I have covered throughout this course. My intentions when joining this course was mainly for the animation aspects but I found my self focusing more on the modelling aspects than I have animation because I enjoyed it so much.

One of the aspects of the course that I do not like has been the Research stages of projects I have no problem in creating the research and I am confident in my research ability, it’s the having to record the research and presentation of it that I find boring and disruptive of my work flow. I like to start loose on research or start from a single source of research or build upon an idea that I already have in mind, then start production and then research more and get references as and when I need them as I am in the development stages. My work flow clashes with how it is suggested I layout my work and how much research is required within the brief when I feel that with some units simply do not require me to do the suggested amount and this is evident by the final work I have produced for my units all have been of distinction level and has not been effected by my lack of research.

I also find it redundant some times of having to work backwards and produce research that will not impact my work what so ever to fit requirements of briefs. That said I do understand why I have to do it to communicate the progression and development of idea to final piece to others I just dislike it and find it is redundant and doesn’t show my true way/preferred way of working. I also find the recording of research to be a boring and time-consuming task as I may take 20 seconds to Google a reference of a face for example just to look at the curvature off the jaw or nose for example turns into a 10 minute long process of having to then save the image try find the correct source and create a Harvard reference then upload the image to my blog and write about how I used it for a reference.

Mind map of themes

Project Concept

My Concept for my FMP Is to create a 3D Animation  between 30 seconds and to around 1 minute in length a Battle Between a Samurai and a Dragon with themes of Power and sacrifice, where a samurai Confronts a Dragon atop a cliff overlooking a village bellow that is being sieged by the dragon. the narrative will revolve around a ridiculously power full single slash by samurai uses to kill the dragon but to perform such a strong attack has heavy taxing effect on the samurai’s body that it becomes deformed/possibly loses his own life in order to save the village. I plan for the narrative to be carried solely by visual elements and Sfx I don’t intend to have any speech.

I will model the environment set in a Rural mountainous village in premodern japan during the Edo period. I will also model a varied assortment of assets to populate the environment this will include Trees, Rocks and Shrines from Japanese culture possibly Buildings. I will Model 2 Characters a Samurai and a Dragon. for All models, assets and environments I create I Intend to Create my Own textures for them. I plan to animate my  Characters by creating Riggs and then skinning them.

Proposed Research Sources

Google

Books

Anime

Museum trips

Brief outline

 I am going to Deconstruct the Brief as it pretty open in terms of direction and outline what I will need to do within this FMP in order to achieve all the criteria for a Distinction, and to also further refine my own direction of the FMP and ensure that my proposed concept is suitable and can achieve all the criteria set in order for me to get my Target Goal of Distinction.

the brief states that “The Final Major Project is for you to use all the skills that you have developed over the year to produce an individual response that demonstrates this learning effectively” The only new skills we have developed over the past year have been mainly technical with unit 12 creating low Low poly assets and utilising normal maps to give the illusion of more detail and depth whilst making the models less geometrically heavy to improve efficiency for use within game engines for example, Unit 10s Creating Riggs and skinning Characters for Animation or posing and Unit 12’s Vertical slice skills doesnt translate into the Fmp As it is a individual response and not a group effort. these Three Aspects alone are not very interesting as a FMP So I plan incorporate All the Skills I have Learned though out the course, First and Second year to be culminated Demonstration of all my abilities I have Learned so far.

this will include 3D modeling Mainly Developed in the first Years Unit 6 and through out all the other Units I will demonstrate this by Creating efficient Geometry appropriate to the needs of my project and creating Correct Topology on my Characters so they when they are rigged and skinned they will have proper deformations when they are animated. Textureing this was  Lightly touched on in unit 6 and 7 then this was optional on all the other units so I don’t have as much experience as I would like but I plan to Demonstrate this skill By UVW unwrapping all of my objects in my scene and Creating my own textures for Them. Creating normal maps, Developed in Unit 12 I will demonstrate this by Creating normal maps for my assets within my scene. Rigging & Skinning Developed in unit 10 I will Demonstrate this by Creating Rigged and Skinned characters complete with controllers to be used in Animations. Research and Development skills that have been developed through out all the units over the course I will Demonstrate this by Creating various Mind maps, Mood boards, Visual Analysis, Contextual Research, Experimentation, Watching Tutorials, Screen shots of my work in progress, Story boards, Problem solving. Evaluation skills Developed thought out the course I will Demonstrate this by critically Reflecting on all aspects of the Research, development Stages and assessing at multiple stages if I am working as efficiently as possible if what im working on is Relevent and will meet the criteria of the brief using this reflective stage to make any adjustments to ensure my project on track and is as successful as possible.

Assignment review

I thought it would be a Good idea to self Reflect before I start any research or production to identify any problems and weaknesses I have had Through out the entire course and see what I have already changed and improved on and what still needs improvement and try to predict any problems I think I will encounter during the FMP and try to come up with any solutions before I encounter them.

I am Going to do this by reviewing all my past assignment feed back I have received from my tutor and look at my Evaluation from my First years FMP and picking out all  of the most prevalent critical feedback that I think applies to me and will directly affect my FMP. I chose to look at the critical Feedback more over the positive feedback as I Personaly respond better to Constructive critical feedback as it allows me to identify problems and once I know what aspects are weak and need improvement I can come up with solutions.

After Reviewing All my assignment feedback I have found that my “weakest” area is defiantly my Research, the feedback I received is mainly about the quantity of Research I produce not about the quality. I already know about this and have already mentioned this in the “Review of Progress and Achievement so far” section I don’t feel like this is a problem that Needs to be addressed As for the most part the lack of research is intentional as my philosophy is to not do any more work than is needed and only work to my full potential when it’s needed, this is prevalent in the units that only require a pass or fail grade I will do only the bare minimum amount of research in order to achieve a pass grade as I see no merit or reward in producing a whole project at distinction level to receive a pass or fail grade. but this aspect is only reflective of my research stages as my production and  final pieces for the units for the most part have been of Distinction level and that is mainly due to me actually enjoying the creative process and wanting to produce good final pieces and learn more advanced techniques. most of the positive feedback I received about my production and final pieces is about how ambitious they are and the level of quality that surpasses the needs of the brief.

I also don’t see my lack research being a problem as evident by my First year FMP as it is the unit that decides the Final grade I did an adequate amount of research in order to recieve a Distinction which proves that when required I can and will produce Research of an appropriate quantity and quality, I don’t dislike Doing Research as it is so important to the creative process I just dislike the need to present it to others when i am working on a solo project as the whole documentation of the research is quite disruptive in terms of workflow and productivity.

As I have said I don’t see any problem with my research that doesnt mean to say it still can’t be improved and some comments that stuck out to me with in the feedback are
“You could spend more time on the explanatory paragraph when telling me why you chose to develop these particular designs.
Also, mentioning how you will construct it in max” and “Mentioning which parts of the story you would like to use in your project was a good habit to get into” I already do this but I feel I don’t emphasise on these aspects enough within my research and it’s just good to make a note and keep in mind as I do my research

Another Area that I found that is weak and is Mentioned a lot in almost all the feed back I received is Spelling and Punctuation. This isnt a big deal as this is more a of a presentation issue and doesnt affect any of the creative/research/production of the project. this issue is actually the only feedback I received on my First year FMP. for this issue though there is not much in terms of what I can do to fix this issue as I am dyslexic and also have poor grammar. My dyslexia doesnt really affect my ability to read or write as I have a decent grade in english of a B at GCSE and I have a good vocabulary just my ability to spell words, but sometimes this can some times effect the quality of my written work as I will try to use a word but cannot find the correct way to spell it and even spell check can not discern the right word I am trying to use and I often just settle for using lesser words or some times repeating the same adjectives as to try to find the correct word often involves going to google and typing in the meaning to find the correct way to spell the word which adds to a research stage that I already dislike doing and becomes even more time-consuming. even though I do proof read all my work my self with the help of spell check that isnt enough as some times I replace the incorrect spelling with the correct spelling of incorrect similar word. this is an easy fix though as I will have some one proof read my work for me. I did intend to do this for my first year FMP but due to time constraints I didn’t have chance to get some one to look over my written work before submitting it as it came right up to the deadline.

From my FMP evaluation the main Problems and weaknesses I Self identified were The time Constraints I faced Due to my lack of motivation and sporadic work flow and the area of my abilities being too refined focusing mainly on Hard surface modeling during the first Year. I feel that both of these issues have already been addressed and are no longer an issue since my progression on to the second year. the main issue of motivation and sporadic work flow was pretty much fixed at the start of the second year and has not only improved but turned completely 180 as all of my assignments in the second year have all been completed Way ahead of schedule Unit 12 low poly was basically completed 5 weeks ahead of the brief deadline and unit 10 Rigging and Skinning was Completed Before the Assignment even started. this has had multiple improvements and advantages to my personal development with in 3D allowing me to learn more advanced techniques. As this Required me to use my own initiative to Self teach myself the Techniques needed to complete the briefs, as I was working off my own initiative this led me to research more advanced techniques then what was required of the brief. as was most evident in the Rigging and Skinning Unit once I had shown my progress to my tutor he said that the techniques and complexity of the model used was way beyond what he was going to teach me. I didn’t do anything in particular to achieve this change I would say it was mostly down to enviroment and a slight change in mindset, it started about a week after breaking up for the summer break after the first Year. after a week I was already bored and this gap of interest of things to do led me to fill the gap with Learning more about 3D and decided I wanted to work on some 3D Projects to keep my skills I had learned the past year fresh but I also wanted to make sure what I was learning would be relevent and help me during my second year so I asked my tutor for all the briefs we will be working on in the second year so I had something to reference when learning more about 3D. So before the second year of the course had even began I had Watched Arrimus 3D’s tutorials on YouTube episode 1 to 60 about 20 hours worth of tutorials and had already started creating the first of my low poly assets for unit 12 and this trend just carried on through out the year. the change in mindset was also very simple it was “this is the last year, playing for keeps so might as well put a little more effort in” and thats about it but it has had a major change on my productivity and my ability to output work.

and with my second issue of staying too much within my comfort zone and mostly doing hard-surfaced objects is not an issue anymore apart from unit 12 where the low poly unit called to create assets that were hard-surfaced as it was Sci-Fi and mechanical in nature I have actively chosen to stay away from doing Hard Surface objects in favour of organic models like characters as before when given the choice to modeling things I would create things robotic and metal in nature. and this is reflected in my concept for my FMP as I will be creating hardly any hard surface objects in favour of organic objects as I will be creating organic characters and the environment will be set outside requiring me to create objects like trees and rocks etc.

another aspect that I would like to keep in mind as mentioned in the evaluation for my development for my First Year FMP that could potentially be a problem is Remembering to document any problems I encounter and the solutions I used to fix them as they are good references of development my problem was that as I encountered problems I would instantly start working to fix them without thinking, forgetting to take screen shots for development. I just need to be more conscious of documenting my development evidence even though it is really un-practical and disrupts my workflow immensely

 

Peer evaluation

I also thought it would be a Good idea to also Look at my Peers and Evaluate their work as a point of reference to compare my own too and to see what aspects of their work are better than my own and use that information to improve my own work. To begin with not untill the second year of the course I had not even seen or Looked at any of my peers Blogs, this was mainly due to a lack of interest as no one was creating anything so amazing or using any crazy advanced techniques that made me think I want to know how they did that or their reasons behind it. I would also say that I am the Probably the strongest in overall ability so there wasnt really anyone that stood out as some one to aspire to or compete against in terms of creativity and technical ability which I found funny because a joke was often made in class about how far ahead I was, that during the first year I was already working on the second year stuff when I personally look at my work and know that I have a Very Slacker low effort approach and putting very little into my assignment work and they were glorifying my slacking tendencies as some kind of amazing feat, which in reality I would just neglect the research stages and work primarily on the Production of the final piece which gave the illusion that I was much further ahead then I was.

also as when I Started the Course it would be the first Year that the college had run a Game design and animation course so There was no past student peers work I could look at to get an idea of the type and level  of work I am expected to produce and also having no experience in producing any type of digital 3D work before I had no idea what to expect and not seeing any one with in my own peer group to aspire to and compete with and my only other experiences with the 3D medium is the media i had consumed which consisted of either Top tier of 3D graphics, animation and games made by AAA company’s or terrible mediocre level 3D animation in anime that tries to replicate a 2D style or blend the two mediums which very rarely works. I have no idea what student level 3D work should look like so I am basically Setting new levels against my self in terms of aspiration.

so mainly out of curiosity to see how my peers do their Research stages and Evaluations and the idea that it would be a good idea to include a peer evaluation to get more perspectives and ways to critically reflect on my own work to look for improvements I asked my tutor for the links to all of my peers blogs and asked him to point me in the right direction of the people’s blogs who basically do things better than I currently do so I can look at what they are doing differently and apply it to my own work. He told me that in terms of design and Technique I am the strongest and that in terms of research and evaluation Dan, Matt and Carrick are the strongest, I will briefly view all of my peers blogs then focus on the research and evaluation aspects of my stronger peers. I Decided to mainly look at their first year FMP’s as if they are anything like me their assignment work will not be Reflective of their true abilities and their FMP work should be their best effort and more reflective of their capabilities. Some of My initial thoughts about my peers blogs is that I don’t like most of their presentation in terms of the lay out of their blogs and site navigation some blogs most of their written work is download links to word documents or links to google drives. this probably my own bais as my pre-existing knowledge of blogs was just that tumblr was a place SJW safe space trigger warning for snowflakes and and the phrase “hey check out my blog” so I personally prefer the way my blog is set up and this is probabably just my own bias mainly due to the fact that pre having to use a blog to upload my work for this courese I never browsed or looked at blogs at all so I am only familer With the navigation of my own blog. Also the amount effort put in to their Research stages regardless off Fmp or not is amazing to  low effort slacker like me and this is my own bias because I detest the Research stage as it is so boring and tedious to me to record it all, some of my peers Research stages probably have for more research for one unit then my last 3 assignment units research stages combined. Upon reviewing my peers research and Evaluations stages I can instantly recognise and see why their research and evaluation stages are Stronger. in terms of Quality of their content nothing stands out to me as some thing to look at and take improvements from, its Effort put in, the amount of varied research that they conduct for their projects. for example my peers evaluation format is instantly recognisable as they all use the evaluation form that is available on moodle that is basically a pre-set of  questions that they use to evaluate at the end of a project. I don’t use this out of neglect as I know the resource exists and its available to me to review at any time I just choose not to use it due to lack of effort, I looked at it once at the start of the first year then never again. when it came to evaluations I just used the same format I use off the top of my head and it has been suitable enough and worked so far but it is obviously not as strong as if I was to use this evaluation form as reference like my peers as it has some questions that i dont even consider when it comes to reflecting on my own work, so to improve my evaluation stages I will put in more effort and use the evaluation form as reference in my evaluations for the FMP. the same can be said for their research it pretty much exactly follows the visual analysis power point guide available on moodle their visual analysis will typical start by talking about the light within the image then list of the order or visual elements as they appear on the power point the main difference between my visual analysis’ and my peers is that they will analyse the whole image according to the guides visual aspects and I will only analysis the aspects of the image the are Directly relevent to what I am to trying research I wonder which method holds more merit as on one hand you have a more detailed analysis that is not entirely fit for purpose and is just wasted effort or the method that is less detailed but is entirely fit for purpose. I will ask my tutor then change my methods if the former proves to be the better method.

Also another thing I can do to improve to improve my research is to use more varied research I saw that my peers included a lot more contextual research on the how and why where as most of my research is visual analysis I tend to not focus on context unless it is going to be directly used or mentioned with in the piece as with art unless expressly told people will interpret and create their own context any way so whats the point for example some of the developed drawings of a design for a shotgun used in a peers final piece made contextual notes saying that the gun is called medusa because of some kind of relation to the way it shoots it resembles her snake hair (I personally don’t see any connection in how the way the gun shot in the animation relates to anything snake-like*Edit went back to look at his research again to make sure I fully understand what im talking about, the projectiles it shoots are attached to the gun and retract when they hit some thing still not snake-like the action is piston  like, as they only move forwards and backwards in a straight line took several attempts to notice that the projectiles return to the gun*) it doesnt mention any where in the final animation that the gun is called medusa nor does it accurately visually show any snake like behaviours so as far as the viewer is concerned it looks like a lazer shot-gun and could be called anything after knowing the context of the gun it just raises more questions, he mentions that the shot-gun is based on a hunting rifle and that you need to cock it open in order to reload but if the projectiles return to the gun what is the need to reload. its more interesting to me how he added this context to the gun than didn’t emphasize its features or even acknowledge the accuracy or purpose of his contextual research he added to the gun so what is the point of the research? the use of initial and developed sketches is some thing that my peers use that I tend to avoid purely due a the lack of effort or I dont find them to be particularly usefull when creating things 3D in nature, I have good traditional artistic abilities so I can produce decent sketches I just choose not to.

In conclusion I havent really learned anything new from my peer evaluation that I didn’t know already know my self it’s just Re-afirmeing the importance of what I already plan to do in order to improve and work towards the brief at a distinction level which is basically carry on the current workflow and ethic I have developed this year and put in the extra effort I didn’t put in last for my last FMP. I am confident in my abilities and have no concerns at this point in the project and my philosophy of not doing any more work than is needed and only work to my full potential when it’s needed still stands it’s just that this is one of the times where I will need to work at my full potential.

Idea Conception

I thought it would be a good idea to try to explain my thought process, explain how I formulate my ideas and then expand upon my Concept in a more visualised manner to better express my idea to others. I feel that my Concept I have written in the section above is… I want to say not strong but that wouldnt be correct as I feel that as  it is appropriate to how the brief is set up but it doesnt seem very descriptive even though what I have written is the basic gist of what I want to create and achieve. The way the brief is set up concerning the concept is very different to how I have worked on concepts in the past or how you would normally create a concept to pitch to a production company for example and is an example of what I have already discussed about how I disagree with how the briefs are laided out and don’t fit with my work style.

For this project to even be accepted, for you to start working on it you need to Complete the Project proposal form which requires you to do a Review of Progress and Achievement so far, a concept, then for your concept to be evaluated by the tutor to get the go ahead and start the project at which point you would start the Research stage then Production etc. the way it is set up makes no sense to me, for example for a Normal concept the way the brief describes would not be the first step when presenting it to others. first you would do the Research some initial character designs a rough draft of a script concept art then you would present this to a production company for example to receive funding to then be able to flesh it out in to a full Realised concept then start production. and because of the nature of the brief where it is open and says to basically make anything you want it is hard write a concept Because it kind of makes  the whole purpose of a Concept redundant because the whole idea of a concept is to pitch it to others convince them that it is a good idea.

I Dont need to convince my self as its my own idea and I can make what ever I want my primary target audience is ultimately me, secondarly the tutor and thats just a conformation that your idea will be stuitable for an FMP not about its content. I will make what I want to see,I don’t need to justify anything to myself becuase i think samurai and dragons are Cool. this also contradicts how I would Create concepts when I worked at a small Media Production company producing advertisements for Tv where the client would give us a Brief outlining objectives a Target audience and goals that they want to achieve. and the concepts I made for clients are much stronger in how I could Express the idea then I produced for this FMP for the Concept section above simply because there was predetermined Objectives and goals already set by the client which allowed my to put forward ideas and then be able to justify them to the client and essentially sell my concept to them as I could say for example I Want to use “X” colour theme them then justify it by saying  it relates to the company colours and promotes brand recognition and this colour would respond well with the target audience promoting them to buy “Y” product or check out “Z” social media.

hence why I thought it would be a good idea to expand upon my initial idea in a more visualised medium and explain how my idea process comes together. I am First going to do this by trying to explane about how my thought process works and then try to visually show what I see in my Head With a new method I have developed for this Fmp which I would describe as a Anotated Storyboard mind map that will be accompanied by notes as I feel this would best represent what I see in my head to a viewer.

Firstly I would like to explane that all ideas that I formulate in my Head Are seen Animated in 2D I don’t know why this is, regardless of what medium I am working in if it is intended for live action or 3D it starts as a 2D animated sequence in my Head and then I translate it into its appropriate medium this even applies to still Traditional art or photography where the Subject is stationary and only seen from one angle for example if I were to Draw a woman from a picture reference in my mind I would see prehaps a 2-5 second animation of the subject her actions up to this point in time where the pose is captured then the follow on movements as if I have just selected one frame to draw from the entire sequence and this also allows me visualise the subject in 3D space and pan about but ultimately ending up with the same view from which the subject is captured. This is interesting to me, And makes me wonder how other people perceive things and how they generate their own ideas like if I was into writing story down as written word would my idea generation just be a narration of descriptive words in my head that I would use to Form a picture in my head or if I was into creating live action films would I picture real people or actors in my mind that then Act out the scene.

Because I visualise things in 2D animation this usually already gives me a direction of what type of Art style I want to achieve or strive for as I can then relate what I see in my head to Existing Styles of Animations I have seen then use them as reference for instance when I see my Proposed idea in my head the art style is kind of dark and dingy with harsh lines with dark muted tones Remineciant of the Animation and art styles of Afro samurai and the animated Sequence From kill bill so I already have a firm idea of sources to take Inspiration and References from, Coincidently when I was just doing some quick google searches of some of my proposed research sources when looking at who created the animated sequence from kill bill,  artist Director and Character designer Kazuto Nakazawa not previously know to me Apeared and when looking at some of his works realising that i have unknowingly already consumed a lot of his Content as just some of the Projects that he has previously worked on that I had already seen included Samurai champloo the kill bill animated sequence  Zankyo no Terror the and the music video for linkin park’s “Breaking the Habit” it may be worth looking more into him and doing an artist analysis to help develop the Art style I want to use on this project although at this point im not to sure how successfully I will be able to translate this into 3D.

Then at this stage once I have the visualisation in my head I Sort of define the details with a Rapid Bullet point like narration in my mind to go along with the animated sequence and this is where the context and continuity starts to form and I begin to translate from 2D into my chosen media and this translation will usually generate a lot of problems for me and I identify them and start to think of solutions. an Example of what my narration sounds like in my head would be: The light hits the characters face here, shadows will form here. shirt gently rustle in the wind. there Are Cherry blossom trees behind him. camera pans in from this side etc. and this adds the context and continuity for my scene as I will then expand on my bullet points into mental notes because when I say “The light hits the characters face here” I will then deduct where my light source will need to be to be able to hit his face from the correct side and cast the type of shadows I see, “shirt gently rustle in the wind” then I work out what direction the wind and how hard it is blowing to achieve the type of rustling I see in my mind, “Cherry blossom trees behind him” in my mind the cherry blossoms are in full bloom I don’t know when cherry blossoms are in season so I do a quick google search turns out they blooms in aprill-march so the scene is set around spring time this then starts to alter what I visualise in my head and adds to the continuity of my scene like for example if I envisioned my scene with snow it would be set in winter so there can’t be cherry blossoms trees in full bloom it just wouldn’t work as it conflicts with the continuity of the scene and breaks the viewers immersion. so then for example I would then decide do I want to drop the snow or the cherry blossoms from the scene. also at this stage I start to identify the problems and think of solutions like a problem I have already identified is the rustling of the clothes I know how I would draw this if I was doing 2D animation but im not sure how to best achieve this in 3D and this needs me to conduct research into techniques that I havent even learned yet.

is there an unknown modifier within 3ds max that exist that will get my desired effect or do I look into the Cloth modifier that I already know will be able to produce the results im looking for but then this raises more problems and concerns like how hard is the cloth modifier to use will I be able to learn it to a suitable level to achieve the desired effects I want and with in my time scale using the cloth modifier will also require me to look into using forces like gravity and wind within 3ds max that I havent even touched and know nothing about them, and since I have never experimented with these 2 elements I have no idea how hardware intensive they will be and how much it will affect render time for example as I am having to now render new complex simulations I havent used before. also at this stage I will start to think about sfx and the music that will accompany the animation.

All of the above is only applied to one sequence that will make up just one shot for my fully animated sequence, the basis of my idea usually stems from this one Sequence, I just Visualise and flesh out a visually interesting sequence in my mind with no narrative Structure at all with all my focus on visual elements. at this point only this one sequence exists with no narrative context. then using the theme and vague context that I have developed from one sequence I will apply that to a new sequence and do the same process I then Start to arrange these Sequences in order and start to form a narrative that I then build apon with more visualised Sequences. the Visualised sequences are not created in any particular order there is no linear progress. for example for this idea I started with a visualised sequence I thought would be the ending scene then worked backwards to  a mid-point then added another scene to the base starting visualisation that I thought would be the ending shot. then created a starting point once I have the basic narrative structure of Start, Middle and End I then just add scene as they come and slot them into position and start to form a narrative from what I have.

This is why I usually avoid the Research stage when I can or find it redundant when I have to go back and produce mind maps and initial sketches/ developed sketches as it doesn’t really feature in my creative process by the time I have a fully Realised an idea  in my mind it is already pretty refined and I feel like I am pretty much ready to start production and thus why I find recording my “research” stage such a hindrance as pretty much all of the idea conception is done mentally and once it is complete I want to start production and development right away and not waste time trying to write down how I have developed the idea in my head. Thats why if there is any initial research that I conduct the only feature that helps me is a usually mood board of references to sort of nail down the form when it comes to modeling and that’s about it and then I do more research as and when required and the research that I do conduct is mostly centered around technique or references for form. the way that all the briefs during this entire course suggest I lay out my work is just not true of my Creative process and above the Tasks and Criteria it says “Assessment Guidance: What you should aim to produce” Key Words being “Guidance” and “should” as if you were to read a lot of my evaluations over the past 2 years relate to how I can best interpret the briefs to fit my own style whilst remaining within criteria. where as I can get away with not doing hardly any research on my assignments I know I can not on the FMP This is why I do quite a long and detailed sort of introduction to my FMPS that I don’t see my Peers Do to Try and Convey to you The Reader my Thought process and motivations behind what I produce and why I Do things I do and differently from my Peer and to Also make Clear to my self my intentions, Criteria and What I need do in order to Achieve my goals, as I feel like from Last years FMP I set out with quite clear Intentions and Motivations but then Forgot some of them my self During the course of the FMP Even though I achieved a Distinction I Still Feel that wasnt 100% of my performance.

So with All that I have just Mentioned above I will now Best try to  visually Explane my Idea in more detail with the context of my thought process behind it. all though what im about to show you is storyboard like of what I envision for me scene to look like and from what camera angles it is nowhere near all of them that I picture in my head and just features the main shots in order to convey my idea better. I will develop a proper Storyboard later on including all my proposed shots. one thing about 3D which I find good is that it is easy to create storyboards as once you have created your scene you can pick and alter any camera shot you want and take screen shots of your proposed shots into a storyboard. I was told that this method was incorrect by my tutor on the Animated project when I produced a story board after I had finished modeling my scene as it doesnt show a clear route of progression from your research to final piece. and I understand what he means but I disagree under my circumstances it doesnt really apply because I am working alone on a solo project I can already see all the camera shots in my head so I dont need a story board and when the scene already exists in 3D you can pan around and find new or more interesting shots than what you might not have drawn in an initial storyboard and this method would require me to make more storyboards as they change and become irelevent and is not an effective use of my time. but then obviously I understand the need to make initial storyboards if you are working as part of a team in order to convey ideas and information to others.

 

A Top view Rough environment plan it’s mostly set on top of a cliff that over looks a valley that is framed by 2 mountains either side. the Village in the bottom left corner im undecided as of yet if I will actually have any shots of it, main concerns being time having to model a whole /part of a village that and villagers which would require rig/skin and that is a long process wouldnt play a big part visually its use is more for context for the dragons existence and its reasons for being there and a reason why it needs to be killed. my idea is just to allude to the existence of the village in a later shot mainly using audio ques the sound of fire and screams of the villagers and visuals the glow of the fire and smoke creeping up to the cliff with out actually showing the village. then most of the annotations are research topics I need to look into like what type trees grow in japan in my head I see sort of tall slender looking fir trees but I don’t know if they grow in japan and doing some research into what kind of trees grow in japan I might find something even better that would acturally make sense in the environment. the mountains I will need to experiment with their sizes to achieve the sort of composition framing I want and what aesthetic I want to give them. because from memory a documentary comes to mind where hilly/ mountainous regions are developed as rice paddy’s and they use the gravity and slop of the hills to control water levels and “herd Fish” as they were used to help develop the rice or do I go with a sort of mount fuji aesthetics some thing to look into. some visual notes about what I want my samurai character to look like afro samurai, samuria champloo, Nobunaga Hazama from hunter x hunter . I want the character to be sort of gaunt looking but with muscle definition, im having trouble sourcing the images I have seen of actual samurai’s from that times body type but from memory I remember them being quite slim with lots of muscle definition I want him to be quite stylized like afro samurai where the characters have slightly exaggerated features particularly facial features how ever I wont try to replicate an “anime” style as it quite often looks very bad and realism at my level is just full of uncanny valley that is one of the things I dislike about 3D as it is so easy to fall into.

 

The Establishing shot. This shot is very important and is integral to the narrative that im trying to achieve as it sets up important bits of context that becomes more clear in the final shots and links back to the establishing shot. the cigaret apart from being a interesting visual element with the smoke and  glowing embers it is one of biggest aspect of animations context as initially to the viewer it doesnt signify much, the character just smoking alone doesnt suggest much it as Cigarets are commonly associated as a Stress reliever, bordem, something to do when you have a break when dealing with monotonous tasks. it also gives the character a sense of carelessness/disinterest and a lax attitude as they don’t care about the health issues smoking has on them or others around them as cigaret smoke can be very offensive to non smokers and this is the emotional state I want to convey to the viewer when they look at the samurai. but what the viewers do not know at this moment in time is that it is a low-key set up for the film trope of one last smoke where a character will indulge in their vices like Smoking/drinking/ listing to a song for the last time as they know they about to meet certain peril usually in an act of sacrifice as the viewer will realise later on in the animation. this also ties into why I want the samurai to remain emotionless/disinterested to make the viewer question how the samurai could be so clam and collected when he knew that he was about to sacrifice him self and sort of rationalise it as a possibility the reason he’s able to remain so calm is because he knows whats going to happen and has accepted the consequences. I chose to use a close up shot because I don’t want to give away too much information to the viewer straight away as I want the viewer to gradually understand the context of whats going on, that a village is under attack by a dragon and to be slightly confused as the narrative becomes more apparent that bad things are happening right now so why does the samurai remain unfazed. eventually they will realise that a village on fire fails in comparison to the cause which is a giant dragon. I want the first sign trouble to be hinted at in the second shot as the initial shot will be shot from the left facing away from the village to show the samurai lighting and taking a drag on a cigarette then for it to be shot on the right side facing towards village and my idea is for the cigarette smoke to sync up with the smoke with a village to make the viewer think like “that’s way to much smoke to be coming from a Cigaret something is going on” then to confirm their suspicions the audio starts kick in fading in from what before will be serene and calm in to Crackling fire and Distressed screams and this will suggest that the audio they were previously hearing was the mental state of the samurai and it fades into real life. the same Technique Quentin Tarantino uses in Kill Bill 1 The bride VS O-Ren but in reverse, in Kill bill after the bride has killed the crazy 88 she moves in on O-Ren as she approaches the door to outside where O-ren is you can still hear the screams of the surviveing 88 which fades as she gets closer to the door then as she puts her hands on the door you can barely hear it at all then a soon as the door opens it goes silent and transitions in to a Calm serene vibe I want to reverse this and go from calm to crazy.

the biggest problem with this device of useing a cigaret is that i dont know how to get the smoke effects. currently I do not have the abilities to implement this so it will require me to learn new techniques in order to achieve this my 2 best options in order to achieve this is learning how to use partical effects in 3ds max or learning how to add it in post production in editing so I will have to do some initial research into techniques and decide which one would be the most effective in terms of time to learn it and its quality. my initial thought are that I will use the one that is the most time effective over the best quality as wasted time would be most detrimental to the project as what I plan is quite ambitious and I need to use my time as effectively as possible, also I don’t want to spend a lot of time on a technique that hasnt been taught to me during my time on the course as the brief is to effectively demonstraight what we have been taught and there is no point if I neglect the fundamentals that im being marked on over some thing that I might not be able to use effectively and im not required to use.

 

Sword pan. The Sword is an important aspect of the narrative as it basically acts as the catalyst for the samurai to be able to use such an immense attack im currently undecided about all aesthetics I want for the sword and even the context the only thing im certain on is that I want it to be Sealed as it give the sword importance and gives the context that the sword was sealed for a good reason that can fit lots of archetypes like the sword in the stone where it can only be wielded by those who are worthy or it has to be sealed because its imesne power could be dangerous otherwise etc. I have 2 current ideas First inspired by “The Warriors Way” where the sword is welded shut and the context behind this is to stop the screams of the souls that have been taken by the sword from being heard by his ninja clan who are after him because he defected so they can not find him so long as he does not draw the sword. this film is pretty old it was released in 2010 and for some reason I rememberd the breaking of the seal to be more important and visually interesting, I recently watched the film again for research and reference for this project and this was not the case in order to break the seal he just hit it with an iron in my mind I rememberd him breaking the seal with brute strength. some other issues this is that it would be quite hard to clearly visually represent the blade as being sealed by a welded seem as in the movie the reason you know this information is because a character points it out then the main character proceeds to talk about why, and this is an issue as my animation will have no speech. the second option is these paper charms that are used in japanese culture as charms and wards against curses and demons. they use this in many animes as a way to suppress evil forces or as catalysts for spells or attacks. Ao No exorcist actually uses it as a seal on a katana as a way to suppress the main characters demonic powers and the seal starts to burn away as his demon powers awaken. which would feed into the context of the katana being a cursed blade and strongly ties in with the negative effects of using the sword but im not too sure yet how im going to express this. untill I decide on a context I cant move forward with the aesthetic because just as I could make it a cursed blade I could make it a blessed blade and give it a dragon theme aesthetic and the context that this is a dragon slaying sword with the sole purpose to kill dragons with potent feed back from use rather than a cursed blade where it trades negative effects for power.

 

Sleeve Prep. this is a preparation stage for the massive attack and its context is sort of two-fold and sets up for the negative effects that will be shown on his body. the idea is that in return for the devastating attack he’s about to do the sword will drain his power/life essence causing his left arm up to his shoulder and the effected areas neck, left side of chest,back  to wither as if completely drained of life. this practice of taking one arm out of the kimono is seen in japanese archery im not entirely sure of its full context yet but I have seen videos where it is part of a ritual before shooting the bow where they perform actions in certain orders where they remove their arm from the kimono and tuck it into kimonos waist band I would assume this is to stop the long sleeves getting in the way and then they would do some prayers of some sort before taking aim and firing the bow. this is also similar to the Samurai practice of hara-kiri or Seppuku but in this ritual both arms are removed from the kimono and the samurai kneeling on the floor then stabs him self in left side of the stomach and cuts to the right side before he is then decapitated and this was usually done as a way to die honorably or as punishment for bringing shame upon themselves.

in this scene the samurai is framed by the Torii a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred to symbolise that he is sacred/good and is dealing with the profane/bad dragon. some aesthetic notes for the samurai is whether I want to have battle scars or tattoos feature on the arm/body at the very least I think I will have battle scars on him to show that he is an accomplished samurai that has seen many battles before which adds to his calm demeanor as he is no stranger to battle. and the tattoos could possibly be a prerequisite to be able to use the blade as a sort of spell enhancement that is carved into his arm in order to use the blade.

 

the Breaking of the seal is supposed to be the trigger that alerts the dragon to the samurai’s precence and draws its attention away from the village and towards the cliff . following the trope of animalistic instincts that they can sense things before humans can and is often seen in films where you will see all the animals already running away or reacting to some thing before it becomes aware to the humans. again with the sword pan notes im not sure yet what direction to go with the blade yet. im not entirely sure yet when I want the appearance or notion of the dragon to become apparent im thinking that up till this point I want the notion to be that the village is on fire but not have the viewer know why its set ablaze it could be under siege by an army and not have any overt clues as to it being a dragon till the seal breaks at which point it lets out a roar. then the next scene to be shot from the dragons pov flying up the cliff at this point still not knowing what it is at which point the next shot reveals it’s a dragon.

 

Dragon Reveal. the big reveal of the dragon I want this to be a wide shot so that you can see all/most of the dragon then have the samurai there to be a size reference to give a sense of despair to the viewer like how can a samurai expect to kill a dragon when it’s so much bigger and more powerful. still adding to the context of how can  he been so calm when he knew his opponent would be Dragon. with the audio I want to use the Tarintino kill bill technique again but this time not reversed I want the music/audio to be intense then drop to silence again as we transition from real world sound back to samurai who is still of calm mind to give a sense of great concentration for the sword slash he’s about to unleash. the im still undecided about the design of the dragon in my mind I see a sort of western style of dragon but im not sure because an asian serpent type dragon would fit in better with the japanese aesthetic im going for but they are not as visually interesting as their western counterparts as the don’t have wings and are more reminiscent of snakes and renowned as being sort of wise spiritual creatures of knowledge where as the western ones are more fire and brimstone and destruction. at this stage im leaning more towards the western one but I will make a decision after I have done some more research on dragons.

 

the sword slash. the sword slash is a grey area for me at the moment and im struggling with the context of it because the idea is that the sword will wither away the left arm and nearby by affected areas but he will be doing a 2 handed sword attack so why wouldnt it affect his right arm too? some thought I have about this is that his left arm would be the dominate one in the attack and that’s why it withers his left arm or if I decide to add a sleeve tattoo on the samurai and that is a catalyst type spell enhancment type thing and that’s why it only drains his left arm. I also don’t know what type of sword attack I want to use, I think I want to use some sort of under armed attack that slashes upwards as a posed to an over head slash as I feel like an under armed stance would be more visually interesting and I would be able to add more interesting movement as I can move the samurai whole body into the attack like compressing a spring down into a stance then releaseing all that kinetic energy as aposed to an over head attack where it’s mainly just the arms coming down above his head.

 

enviroment Shots. The environment shots are just to emphasize the scale and power of the attack so the trees in the forest all swaying back by its power losing leaves leaving a slash in the ground all to just give the viewer a sence of scale for the power just used and to also build suspense towards the next scenes. this is where I will be using the techniques in unit 12 where I will create low poly assets as I will have quite a lot of trees populating the scene and I will also use a level of detail to that the trees furthest away are the lowest amount of polys as possible and get more complex the closer they are to the camera.

 

Sword Shot. another shot to emphasize the power of the attack. the idea behind this is based on the science of meteorites and why the burn up in the atmosphere as When the meteor hits the atmosphere, the air in front of it compresses incredibly quickly. When a gas is compressed, its temperature rises. This causes the meteor to heat up so much that it glows. the idea being that he swings the sword so fast and powerful that it causes the air to compress and creat the slash that travels through the dragon and the environment. and this causes the sword to glow red-hot and hit melting temperatures and start to deform with molten metal starting to streak off it like a liquid that then starts to rapidly cool down. would be cool if I could simulate the oxidation blade as it cools down but don’t know how I would achieve this. I can’t seem to find any references mentioning or any image references from my searches about melting swords so I will prehaps look into sword smiting and the properties of metals like mercury to get some references I can apply to achieving this affect.

 

Withered arm. The Withered Arm shot is the penultimate shot. it was the initial scene that was the inspiration for the animation and the scene that is supposed to have the biggest impact where all the contextual elements come together to show the sacrifice that comes with great power. I want this scene to be reminiscent of the Netero vs Meruem from Hunter X Hunter where Netero uses all of his life/Nen force to launch a last attack and as a result his body becomes withered. I want to model this very exaggerated where his arms are just skin and bone and hints of his muscle definition I will texture this a black/ dark purple as a sort of death and decay of his arm, making his ribs and collar bones very visible and pronounced and have his chest expand and contract taking deep breaths that slow down. in a shot just before the withered effects are revealed I want a bracelet to fall off his wrist to hint towards what has happened to the viewer before they see the devastation.

 

Stone shrine. The Stone shrine shot is potentially the last shot im not entirely sure yet im not sure whether it would take away from the last scene and be underwhelming. it shows the blade implanted in the ground next to the shrine with incense lit as an offering. im not sure yet if the samurai is dead and the offering is to him or the offering is to the sword that is “dead” as it can’t be used again from being deformed the context at this point doesnt matter and ill just leave it to the viewers interpretation to whether the samurai is dead or not.

 

Time perspective

95 days

8,208,000 seconds

136,800 minutes

2280 hours

13 weeks and 4 days

26.03% of 2017

 

Initial Plan

Week 1 & 2 –  Bulk Research stage – General research, mind maps, mood boards, visual analysis, contextual Research.

Week 3 & 4 – Samurai character Production – additional research, modeling, Rigg & skin, controls setup, Textuering,

Week 5 & 6 – Dragon character Production – additional research, modeling, Rigg & skin, controls setup, Textuering,

Week 7 & 8 –  enviroment & assets Production additional research, modeling, Rigg & skin, controls setup, Textuering

Week 9 & 10 – Animation Production – additional research, Movement References, animating

Week 11 – Lighting, render setup & Partical effects – Lighting set up, render settings, test renders

Week 12 – Rendering & edditing – Rendering, editing, Sound & effects

Week 13 – 14 Contingency time & admin – Blog uploads, presentation, & Contingency

this is my initial plan i think it is a realistic and an achievable plan. it is mostly listed in order of importance with the Samurai and dragon production being the most important aspects so I put these first in case I do need extra time to complete these tasks, if I do them near the start I can adjust my plan accordingly rather than later on when there is less time to juggle around. I want these 2 to be produced at their best quality  possible as they are the main features of the animation and if time is tight it takes priority and the environment and assets can suffer less quality if need be in order of importance. I have been quite liberal with my time allocations some stages like Week 3 to 6 I think will need their full-time allocations possibly more and this is based of the time it took me to create a fully Rigged,skinned and controller setup Character minus the textureing. but others like week 11 and week 9&10 for example I don’t think I will Require the full amount of  time I have allocated them to complete these stages. but there are also outlier stages like week 11 if I decide to use Partical effects and week 12’s Rendering, I simply do not know how hardware intensive the project will be so I can’t accurately judge the amount of time it will take to render and Partical effects feeds right into that as I don’t know how to use them yet so I don’t know how long the process is to set up or if I will use them at all and how intensive it will be on the rendering stage if I do.

 

Project Action Plan and Timetable

Week 1

06/03/17

This week I created my Project proposal,mood board and concept and my initial research/introduction page to the project creating moldboard/storyboards and conducting initial research into my research topics I set up and initial plan describing what I plan to achieve each week. I then started my “Secondary” Research stage where I started to research the topics I identified as needing more research. I completed my analysis of Afro samurai a big chunk of my proposed research and started the kill bill analysis. So Far I am happy with my progress. I am pleased with the amount of work I have produced. I am motivated and using my time effectively.

 

Week 2

13/03/17

this week I havent been able to work on my Project as much as I would have liked I have received interviews for university so a lot of my time was spent researching university and Creating a portfolio for these upcoming interviews. this was unexpected I havent anticipated that this process would take so long. the short amount of time I got to work on my Research I was Doing initial Research into the Technical Aspects of the project, Watched multiple youtube videos on Partical Effects and Cloth modifier to see how viable these will be to implement into the project. collating some images for mood boards and Harvard referencing them. I am not pleased with the amount of work I have produced as this means I will now be behind schedule. I am still motivated and using my time effectively but it isnt being Directed Fully at my FMP as the university stuff is currently taking priority.

Week 3

Bulk research

20/03/17

this week I havent been able to work on my Project as much as I would have liked as I have had to attend Two interviews for university’s that were far away so it was full days of traveling. I collected more images for mood boards and Harvard referencing them. I Done some Blog admin uploading images and writing notes. I am not pleased with the amount of work I have produced as this means I will now be even more behind schedule at this stage in the project my research stage should be completed and this would be the first Week of Samurai Development. I am Starting to get slightly worried about the progress of the project as its only 3 weeks in and i am already 1 week behind schedule, using up 1 week of my contingency time already .This week my time was not effectively Used this was my least productive week so far as I was distracted by the interviews and after full days of long traveling I wasnt motivated to produce work for my FMP.

Week 4

27/03/17

his week I havent been able to work on my Project as much as I would have liked as I have had to attend another Two interviews for university’s one was far away and it interview was early in the morning so I had to travel the day before and stay the night so it consumed two days of my time the second interview was only 40 minuets aways so it wasnt as bad and not as time consuming I Continued my Research stage collecting more images for mood boards and Harvard referencing them. I Done some Blog admin uploading images and writing notes. This week my time was not as effectively Used as I would have liked this week wasent not bad as last week but it’s not as good as it could have been. At this point im now 2 whole weeks behind on the project using my whole 2 weeks of contingency time already. at this point my research is not yet at a stage that it is completed. but it is developed to a point where I can move onto the samurai production which im going prioritize over completing my research stage at this point as it is a key part of my project and after I have completed the samurai i will be in a better position to assess the state of the project to see if it will still be achievable to complete all that I projected from my initial concept. at some point i will need to return to the research to finnish up some blog admin and notes

Week 5

03/04/17

This week I started the samurai development. I started modeling my samurai straight away I started by created the base mesh of the samurai as other meshes will be created of this basemesh. after the base mesh was completed I started to create the clothes for the samurai. at this point in time I am worried about whether I would be able to implement the use of the cloth modifier. as i had done some initial research into it but havent gotten to experiment with it first hand. I made the decision to drop the cloth modifier based on the time constraints and from what results I had seen my one of my peers Experimentation with the modifier they were not good and I currently don’t have the time to personaly experiment to determine for my self it will be worth it. after deciding I wasnt going to use the cloth modifier anymore I decided to make a basic bone rigg to test what the deformations would be like on the hakama(skirt) clothes I had made for my samurai as I was not sure if the just the bones for the legs would be enough for the deformations I might have to add additional bones to get the type of deformations im looking for. and if I do I will need to do some research into rigging clothes for animation. luckily the leg bones were suitable for the job they don’t work so well for any extreme wide motions but I don’t plan for my samurai to make any crazy leg motions. i had planed to have all the modeling done this week but there is still a few parts I will need to continue next week. I am pleased with the amount of work I have produced. I am getting motivated again by the project as im now getting to work on the aspects that I enjoy. This week the use of my time was effective.

Week 6

10/04/17

This week I continued the samurai development I started by modeling the remaining pieces for the samurai. after the samurai’s Geometry was all modeled I started to Create the Rigg create ik’s and controllers etc. After the rigg was complete I started to skin the First Base Samurai to the to the rigg. once this was complete I started to Create the Facial bone rigg then attached it to the main rigg and then started to skin the face to the rig. after completing the facial rigg I noticed that my weights on my skinning had all messed up. I didn’t take into account was the use of the mirror mode in the skin modifier in all past models that I have used the model has had perfect symmetry and because I had deleted parts of  my mesh to avoid clipping when I was using the mirror mode to skin the face the rest of the mesh was trying to mirror to verts that did not exist causing the parts that are not symmetry to bind to different bones. I then had to skin the whole mesh again starting from the face so I could use the symmetry mode as weighting the face is the most intensive time-consuming part of the skinning progress. then I skinned the rest of the model without the use of the skins symmetry this was a very time-consuming progress.I am okay with the amount of work I have produced. I am Slightly less motivated due to the problems I faced as it consumed more time then I had expected meaning that I will need to spend more time next week completing the samurai Development when I projected it to be completed this week again. im not to disappointed that I will have to spend extra time to complete this Stage as I did expect that I might take more time then I had projected from my plan that’s why I placed this as the second stage after the research as it’s an important element of my project that needs to get done so if it did take longer then expected I have more time to play around with to adjust my project. I was using my time this week effectively.

Week 7

samurai development finished i started by

17/04/17

This week I Finished the samurai. As I had I identified with in my initial research I initially thought I was going to have to Create rig and skin 3  separate Characters Before I Started Production on my Samurai I had inital done a google search on what the best work flow would be to create a character that has slight changes in geometry my google search didn’t turn up anything useful so I asked on a 3D forum and didn’t get much help their either apart from some useful tips for when it came to Textuering. if you apply a UVW unwrap to all the objects that will share the same texture place when you unwrap them you can place them onto of each other so that it saves time and u don’t need to 3 separate textures. once I had finished fixing the skinning I started to experiment with what would be the best way to Duplicate my rig so I can start to skin the other meshes. initially I just copied the rigg across but this didn’t work as the rigg would not behave properly it was still linked some how to the original riggs ik’s. While experimenting with duplicating the rig I then realised that I wouldnt even need 3 separate riggs i would only  need the one Rigg and I would just skin the multiple meshes to the same rigg and hide the geometry when it isnt being used. I then started to experiment with the issue of having to skin the additional meshes to the rigg. I had seen in a tutorial the use of a skin wrap modifier and how it works is that it copies the weighting information of the already skinned mesh to its self. this worked to a degree but when the skinwrap copied the information and where the meshes were the same it messed up. I thought this would be okay and it would help cut down at least some of the work in skinning the whole mesh. because you can turn the skin wrap modifier into a normal skin modifier I then thought I would be able to manually fix the problem areas. but when i turned the skin wrap in a normal skin modifier it cause all the mesh to distort. so this method was un-usable. I then decided to try to copy and past the Skin modifier on to the new mesh this worked allot better than the skin wrap but was not perfect when i had copied it to the new mesh the area of influence each vert was effecting had increased slightly to the surrounding verts or some verts where the mesh’s geometry was different had connected to opposite bones on the other side of the mesh. this was my best solution I basically had to skin the entire mesh again but it was easier than starting from scratch particularly with skinning the face which is the most time-consuming part of the skinning process as I only had to remove some weights from each vert instead of starting from scratch. the rest of the body was pretty much like skinning from scratch but its easier to rigg the body as u can easily select verts and apply the correct weights. after All the Rigging and skinning was done i started to UVW Unwrap using the technique I had learned from research this was more time-consuming that I had expected as when I unwrapped the same exact geometry from different meshes they wouldnt unwrap exactly the same so a lot of time was spend trying to get them to match up. I wasnt as effective with my time this week I didn’t get around to texturing my samurai but as im already a week over due on the samurai development I decided to leave it at the point where it just needs to be textured and come back to it at a later date if  after i have a better perspective of what I can achieve. currently as it stands im at the mid-point in the of the Project at the End of week 7  and I am Currently 3 Weeks behind. the Project has suffered major Set backs and it is only more likely to increase. At this point in time I have Started to receive offers back from my choise of  university. and this has given me a new perspective on the project. my preferred choice has given me a conditional Choise of getting a merit on this project and Gcse Math Grade 4. I did not expect the requirement for Gcse Math Grade 4. when I applied for the course it did not mention the requirement or I failed to see it. if I want to get into my prefered choice I will have to get Gcse Math Grade 4. im not that confident in my maths so I will need to devote more time to maths revision taking more time away from what I can devote the Project. which is quite devastating seeing as I am already 3 weeks behind. its clear to me that I will not be able to achieve all that I set out to achieve and at the level of quality that I would have liked with this project. my Perspective and goals for this project has changed quite drastically. initially I set out for this Project to be a True test of my abilities and to push them to the limits Thais why I chose to attempt such a ambitious project I knew going into this project that it would be full on and require a lot of commitment and motivation I didn’t expect to be so far behind at this point.

Week 8

24/04/17

This Week I Decided to work on some outstanding projects for the course I need to do a lot of small things for my contextual unit as the bulk of it is complete but I still need to write the essay portion and then I need to Complete the Progression unit.This week was extremely unproductive I didn’t even have a lot to do but it took me all week to complete these small tasks ive lost a lot of motivation for this project .my goals and motivation for this project have changed from a “True test of my abilities and to push them to the limits” to what realistic can I salvage from this project to get the Best grade possibly while managing my time most effectively inline with my new Requirements that I have received from my university Offers. at This stage I  am going to have to cut my animation down And have it End at the point in which the The Dragon appears in front of the Samurai and I predict that the quality of the enviroment and textures will suffer as well. I have also lost a lot of motivation and passion for this project as I have come to the realisation that it will not be completed to the standard that I had initially projected which will undoubtedly effect how much my workflow going forward. going at this current time on my suggested Time schedule I am supposed to be one week into the enviroment Development. im going to move ahead and start production on my Second Character the Dragon and then I will assess again the progression of  the project and adjust my course of action accordingly.

Week 9

This Week I started Dragon Development I completed all the Geometry for the dragon during this week which is inline with my Projection this week went pretty smooth not a lot to report.my time was used effectively this week and my motivation for the project has gone up as im back to doing the part of the project i enjoy the most and the fact that the dragon turned out better than expected it’s a needed boost to my moral.

01/05/17

Week 10

08/05/17

This week I finished dragon development the dragon development after creating the rigg then skinning testing rigg etc. I then UVW unwrapped  it and left it at that point I was ahead of my time projections for the first time in the project I started to go back to the elements I needed to Revisit I started to develop the samurai texture but decided that it would take to long to develop to a standard that I would like so I decided to drop it with my Remaining time I started to develop the environment and decided that it would take to long to develop to a good standard and that the quality of the environment would rely heavily on texture and as I had decided that it wouldnt be viable with the time left I decided to drop it. this week was and effective use of my time. I was at a device point in the project at this point I could focus all my efforts into the environment and texturing my character and animation and I would have Decent Final piece but as i have spent so much time trying to catch up the current state of my blog is poor I still need to revisit my research stage to finish off the written aspects and the written aspects of my production/development take. at this point I made the decision to focus on my blog and my written side of the project as there is no point having a decent final piece if there is not written work behind it to support it. as it stands despite all the set backs I have still produced a reasonably large amount of  Quality work the quality of my 2 character I have Created is Distinction tier then after my blog is done ill do some animation as it would be a shame to spend al that time creating characters and riggs to not even animate them

Week 11

This week I Spent my time updating various parts my Blog. my time was not spent effectively this week. my motivation and drive the project is low

15/05/17

Week 12

22/05/17

This week I Spent my time updating various parts my Blog. and i started animating as my blog work was progressing really slow and i have no motivation to complete it. my time was not spent effectively this week. my motivation and drive the project is low

Animating

Week 13

29/05/17

This week I Spent my time updating various parts my Blog. and i continued animating and rendering my scene as my blog work was progressing really slow and I have no motivation to complete it my time was not spent effectively this week. my motivation and drive the project is low

week 14

05/06/17

This week I Spent my time finishing up my Blog writing my final evaluation and going over my blog with spell check. and editing my animations for my final piece my time was  spent more effectively this week as it was the last push to complete the project.

 

 

Time perspective

95 days

8,208,000 seconds

136,800 minutes

2280 hours

13 weeks and 4 day

26.03% of 2017

 

Evaluation of Concept

 

My tutor has said this is a very thorough and reasoned project concept with significant thought already given to it. I have discussed it with him, and argued my points especially about the research stage and my production method/workflow, and I will make several allowances throughout this project in order to produce work that UAL will accept.

To that end I will have a research stage, pre-production, production and post-production stage that is very much in line with industry standards that I am used to dealing with, however I will make it clear throughout and in my evaluation stage where I believe I have met UAL’s grading criteria, if not the brief structure.

We have agreed that this is an ambitious project, but that I do have the skills to achieve it if I focus on it the way I have said I will. The time plan is accurate and reliable and achievable.

I will continually evaluate this project as I go against my timetable which according to my tutor will continue to demonstrate detailed, coherent, self directed planning, engagement and commitment.

I have defined precisely what I will create, identified issues that may arise and produced potential fixes for them. I have already acquired several education books and online tutorials that cover some of the areas I am unfamiliar with especially particle effects.

I believe that this project will demonstrate my capabilities and I will achieve a Distinction and a place at university based on the strength of this project. My tutor has identified that this project will probably be a candidate for student of the year award.

 

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