The Negotiated Project module has given me an insight into the animation industry way of working, along with this it has allowed me to test myself and learn the full production of an 3D animation movie.
Starting off right at the beginning brainstorming was the birth of everything created for this module. Coming up with different ideas and testing them against my skillset and capabilities allowed me to narrow down thoughts and pinpoint what I could create. Next came the initial designs where I visualised on paper what I wanted to create and my ideas towards the characters and scene.
The first presentation came with the mini pitch where I presented my idea to my course mates to see if anyone was interested in helping. Unfortunately for me no one from my year joined my group so I was left alone working on my idea. I had thoughts of joining another 3D group as I knew my workload would be high, but I decided against it as I wanted to see how far my idea could go.
My next developments came with re-creating my drawn visualisations onto the 3D software ‘Autodesk Maya’. This section was one of the hardest as I had to model and rig the characters I had though up. Nearly giving up again I powered through the character stage and managed to complete a working character. Creating my initial animatic with this composing of screenshots from within the software the scene and characters were very basic at this point.
Moving on I redeveloped my character to a higher standard as my skills in rigging had improved since the first edition. I created a much cleaner design and started to individualise the characters from each other. I also reached out to a sound design student to gather a music track and the effects for this animation.
Alongside this in the background I was constantly working on my audience facing project company called ‘Tier Z Creations’. This consisted of social media sites where I showed off sections of my work progression. This ran alongside my production bible where I filled in the relevant sections of design as I progressed forward.
After the Christmas Holidays there was another chance to present to the second-year animation students. I nearly brushed this off as I thought I could handle the work on my own from now. I decided against this in the end as I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to take. Thankfully, I did as 5 students joined me with the project.
From here I re-created my animatic and showed differed 3D production stages throughout so that the audience could see the progression. I came back to this later and added the title cards and some sound that I had received for my project.
Writing the briefs for the students was a new experience for me as I had never done this before. I set 2 of them off with a short animation task. 1 would help edit, another 1 would create the title cards for me and the final 1 student would assist in creating props for the scene.
They finished their work at different intervals, so I added their changes and updates once received, and once I had everything back it was time to animate the final piece.
I had to enter a super organised mindset for this next section as it required multiple Maya files and assets. I segregated my scenes from each other and set up the different Maya files ready to animate on. The environment on each of these scenes changed as the camera angles were different and certain props weren’t needed. This helped with the size management of the documents.
When animating an issue, I ran into a lot was that Maya crashed and I lost a good amount of my work and time, so I had to always remind myself and remember to save quite often to prevent this from happening.
Rendering took a long time but thankfully it all got done without any issues. Finally, editing the scene together with the different clips and title cards and music seemed quite easy in comparison to what I have been through with this module.
The teaser trailer was the final part to complete and this had all the titles that were provided by one of my second-year assistants, along with clips from the full animation. This task was carried out by another one of my second-year assistants. It was all brought together in a typical trailer format along with a section of the soundtrack for the animation. To change the audio a little so the audience could differentiate the trailer to the full animation I chose a section of it from the middle of the animation and slowed it down to about 60%-70% to change how the audio played. After exporting it and playing it back I feel as though it works well and captures the effect for the trailer which I was looking for.
This module has taught me so much and allowed me to build up my presentation skills alongside getting used to working with other years and courses within the University. Sticking to my plan and continuing to work on my project gave me a higher workload but it was all worth it once completed. The introduction to managing a group was an incredible experience and I am glad that interest was shown in my project.
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