Final Project: ANM 302 - Week 15

So, this is it, the finished final project in ANM302. It's done. Am I happy with it? Well, am I ever happy with anything I do? I would have liked to tweak the newton field of the trailer more and worked on the turbulence field too. The particle spray from the missile really should be more smokey and it should shoot out of the back of the bazooka. And, the animation of the character is stiff, but it's done. And there is always the future to rework it for the demo reel. I guess that gives me something to look forward too!

167 Hours: ANM302 – Week 14

One hundred sixty seven hours. That's how much time I have left to complete my final project. That seems like a lot of time, doesn't it? But let's back out sleep (64 hours), work/school/driving (50 hours), preparing for the day/eating (16.5 hours) which leaves 36.5 hours. Of course some of that will be taken up by working on other projects and doing a take home final exam. Why am I doing all this math when I should be working on my project? Simply because I have nothing else to share in this final blog entry. It's been a good run – I like SFX in 3D. I have pieces from the class that I want to include in my demo reel and I even think I might want to follow a career in simulations/visualizations. I don't think it gets better than that. Well, except finishing the my final project and ending this semester.

The End: ANM201 – Week 14

This is it. The final push. One last week of frantic work and it will all be over. I know I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I can really start to feel the pressure coming off simply because I can now see the end of the semester approaching. Looking back, it was not a great semester – there were WAY too may emotional lows. I even failed to complete a project. Yet, even with that having been said, I've learned a fair bit and advanced as an animator. I've figured out a new technique to use in After Effects. I've produced a couple of pieces that will wind up in my demo reel and I've made a huge head start on producing my Sophomore film. That alone has made the semester worth while. So now I'm allowing myself a brief moment of joy, before I get back to the grind of finishing my final project. I have a feeling it will be a winner.

The “Learning Maya Blues”: ANM302 – Week 13

3D animation is a funny thing to me. There are times that I really get into modeling, or skinning, or animating, or SFX but it never all happens at the same time. I always seem to start off doing whatever needs to be done with a great deal of frustration. I cannot figure out how I'm supposed to do whatever it is that I'm supposed to do because it's been so long since I did it last that I've forgotten the basics. Then, eventually, I hit my stride and blow through it only to start some new aspect of the project and run into the same wall. I'm sure it's a combination of my inexperience with Maya and the fact that it's and incredibly “deep” program (so much so that virtually everyone in the industry specializes in a particular facet). Needless to say I'm running into the situation with my final project since it requires modeling, animation, and several special effects. The thing is I like 3D animation and working with Maya...it's just that I hate it at the same time. Ah well, that's life.

Time: ANM201 – Week 13

So, last week I had a brilliant idea on how to make my animated film look and feel like I had actually hand-drawn every frame. It was seriously great. This week, however, I've had a bit of a reality check. After half implementing the technique to get the boiling hold – which is gorgeous – I realized that the time it takes to do the actual animation a few frames at a time is going to take WAY longer that I had first thought. Thus, I am back to using straight Puppet-Pin animation to get the characters to move the way I want. Hopefully the smoothness of this animation won't detract from the over all look. We'll see how it turns out.