I feel a big sense of acheivement for finishing such a long and challenging film.
I know that without alot of hard work this film would not have made it to the end and i can speak for me and John when i say that we have give 100 percent into finishing the film to a good standard.
i feel that it is a shame that the comunication and team work has seemed to leave the film slowly through the film.
i beleive that this is such a strong part of making a project work and i think were our film began to see problems.
I was supprised to not hear any kind of thanks or appreciation from James on Friday for finishing the film with John. i don't think its fair to pick at things in the film which are clearly mistakes which have only happened due to lack of time and have been allowed to happen in the interests of finishing the film. i was skocked to think that James had thought that we deliberatly came in late in friday for hand in. This is very far from the truth as we both had been up all night compositing, re-rendering missing frames adding soundeffects fixing errors and music without a second to spare right up until we handed our film in. i came in absolutly panicked and exhauseted Friday, but also proud of what we had managed to pull together into a completed final film. i doesn't seem fair to be told my work is poor and shoddy, after all the work done to get the film handed in on time.
Saturday 14 June 2008
Friday 13 June 2008
Finally Finished!!
Its now friday night and we have handed in our film for marking. I am so relieved after working so hard to complete the film. it is even more of an achevement when a few weeks ago we were considering canceling the film due to she sheer amound of work ahed of us to complete the film. the amount of work me and john especialy have gotten through in an effort to finish the film is more than i ever thought possible! My sleeping pattern is so off now that 5 in the morning seems normal time to be working untill, i honestly can say that me and John could not have phisicaly worked harder towords the completion of this film.
That said in the last 4 days scince Tuesday i have been working on:
Me and John spent Tuesday rendering out scene 3 which was a big job as it was over 2 minutes of the film. To ensure we could get this done we had 14 computers rendering all at the same time with our files loaded onto each computer so that we could just collect the renders at the end of each day. we had to be at college all day to look after and render new shots each time one had finished, it was quite a task to work out which shots had been rendered and which ones need to be done. it involved alot of coordination between me and john to make sure all shots were rendered. i was suprised when james came in later on these days and left at about 4ish to do his PDA animations as getting all the renders done was a big task and he really should have been acting as a team and working together more so we can communicate ideas and problems. it is difficullt to communicate when we are not all together.
Raphael finaly showed up tuesday afternoon with half the animation for the old guy who has a heart attack, i was releived to here that he was going to stay with us and finish the animation so we could have it by the end of the day. (not having this would have meant a huge part of the film being cut) i was pleased with the animation he finaly gave me as all the instructions i gave him to help him create the animation seemed to go for making an animation which worked within the tight timings we had given the shots in the film. despite the instructions i still had a problem when i went to collect the animations as Raph had animated each shot in a seperate scene file. This caused great problems for me as i ideally wanted the whole sequence in one file so i could just import it in. whiat we decided in the end is that i would just have to import each animation one at a time each time i have to render a new shot of the old man. :(
i felt it was very hard to communicate with Raph and actually know if the animation would get done as it was a good few weeks after i first gave him the work and i had heard nothing from him. it was hard to know if i needed to get someone else more contactable to animate for us as it was nearing the end of the film. we had to hold back our rendering as we didnt have the animation. even being able to see some of the animation in progress would have helped so that i could tell if it would work in the film.
we encountered lots of problems during rendering over the three days , lots were caused by slow files, just because of the sheer amount of characters in the scene, we also had problems with rendering not always completing and computers crashing alot.
we were in contact with Ben Wheatley who was doing our music alot this week as we knew that he was finding it hard to create music to rough playblasts.
much of Wednesday morning was wasted for me by trying to fix the problem of a texture not loading on the heart attack man, after we narrowed it down to it being a problem wit the texture files stoped working on the model, i still dont know why this happens. i fixed the problem in end by saving them as tiffs.
Me and john went to collect the music for our film from Ben on Wednesday. I thought he had done a very good job with the music considering he had been working with areas of the film only rendered out as playblasts and at very short notice. Me and John decided that Ben should have to do the sound effects as it seemed as if the sound guy James had lined up would not be avalible to do what we wanted in the short time left as james had not bothered to contact him until the last week dispite many reminders from me and John as Ben was already working on the music for the film scince the creation of the fist animatic.
i spent thursday morning organising the many render shots we had collected into my folders so we could easily import into premiere later.
Today i recieved the PDA animations from James, just as me and John were about to leave to go and create the final premiere files. when we got back to work on it , we descovered that the files he has given us are not to the right legnth so they do not fit with the timings of the film, although he does have all the exact shot timings for the shots. as he had rendered them out as an AVI file rather than an image sequence there was nothing we could further do to extend the footage to fit. To further the problems with these PDA animations james had rendered out the movie files with backrounds rendered to them, some of these shots were to be composited and so rendering them out as video files meant that we could no longer composite for these particular shots. a little more thought and communication would have meant that these problems would never have happened, especialy when there is such little precious time left to produce a finished film. this left me and john struggling that night to do what we could to get the film looking finished. Thursdsay night before hand in was a mad rush to add in as many remaining sound effects as we could to the film i also relised late into the morning that there were no credits for the film as i thought james was doing them along with the titles, so i decided to take this on and do the credits in time for the film to be rendered. I felt i did the best i could with the fifteen minuites or so i had to work on them as we desperatly needed to start to render the final film. i knew that we would be making a better version for the degree show when credits will actually matter.
That said in the last 4 days scince Tuesday i have been working on:
- Rendering scene 3 with John and the 51 shots it consists of.
- comunication with wan though email, who was busy working on the smoke effects for two scenes in the film. also tring to contact Raphael, to check that our final piece of animation was going to be completed.
- creating updated animatics in premiere for the currently rendered frames so Ben could create the music and sound effects more acuratley than with the playblasts of the blocked charaters.
- made folder system to store all of the render shots so that we could place them organised into composition layers-added all the rendered shots to this folder.
- Rendered sky and some backround composite shots for scenes 3 and four with John
- Me and John created the premier file and imported all renders composite shots added extra sound effects, transitions and intergrated james PDA animations and i created Credits.
Me and John spent Tuesday rendering out scene 3 which was a big job as it was over 2 minutes of the film. To ensure we could get this done we had 14 computers rendering all at the same time with our files loaded onto each computer so that we could just collect the renders at the end of each day. we had to be at college all day to look after and render new shots each time one had finished, it was quite a task to work out which shots had been rendered and which ones need to be done. it involved alot of coordination between me and john to make sure all shots were rendered. i was suprised when james came in later on these days and left at about 4ish to do his PDA animations as getting all the renders done was a big task and he really should have been acting as a team and working together more so we can communicate ideas and problems. it is difficullt to communicate when we are not all together.
Raphael finaly showed up tuesday afternoon with half the animation for the old guy who has a heart attack, i was releived to here that he was going to stay with us and finish the animation so we could have it by the end of the day. (not having this would have meant a huge part of the film being cut) i was pleased with the animation he finaly gave me as all the instructions i gave him to help him create the animation seemed to go for making an animation which worked within the tight timings we had given the shots in the film. despite the instructions i still had a problem when i went to collect the animations as Raph had animated each shot in a seperate scene file. This caused great problems for me as i ideally wanted the whole sequence in one file so i could just import it in. whiat we decided in the end is that i would just have to import each animation one at a time each time i have to render a new shot of the old man. :(
i felt it was very hard to communicate with Raph and actually know if the animation would get done as it was a good few weeks after i first gave him the work and i had heard nothing from him. it was hard to know if i needed to get someone else more contactable to animate for us as it was nearing the end of the film. we had to hold back our rendering as we didnt have the animation. even being able to see some of the animation in progress would have helped so that i could tell if it would work in the film.
we encountered lots of problems during rendering over the three days , lots were caused by slow files, just because of the sheer amount of characters in the scene, we also had problems with rendering not always completing and computers crashing alot.
we were in contact with Ben Wheatley who was doing our music alot this week as we knew that he was finding it hard to create music to rough playblasts.
much of Wednesday morning was wasted for me by trying to fix the problem of a texture not loading on the heart attack man, after we narrowed it down to it being a problem wit the texture files stoped working on the model, i still dont know why this happens. i fixed the problem in end by saving them as tiffs.
Me and john went to collect the music for our film from Ben on Wednesday. I thought he had done a very good job with the music considering he had been working with areas of the film only rendered out as playblasts and at very short notice. Me and John decided that Ben should have to do the sound effects as it seemed as if the sound guy James had lined up would not be avalible to do what we wanted in the short time left as james had not bothered to contact him until the last week dispite many reminders from me and John as Ben was already working on the music for the film scince the creation of the fist animatic.
i spent thursday morning organising the many render shots we had collected into my folders so we could easily import into premiere later.
Today i recieved the PDA animations from James, just as me and John were about to leave to go and create the final premiere files. when we got back to work on it , we descovered that the files he has given us are not to the right legnth so they do not fit with the timings of the film, although he does have all the exact shot timings for the shots. as he had rendered them out as an AVI file rather than an image sequence there was nothing we could further do to extend the footage to fit. To further the problems with these PDA animations james had rendered out the movie files with backrounds rendered to them, some of these shots were to be composited and so rendering them out as video files meant that we could no longer composite for these particular shots. a little more thought and communication would have meant that these problems would never have happened, especialy when there is such little precious time left to produce a finished film. this left me and john struggling that night to do what we could to get the film looking finished. Thursdsay night before hand in was a mad rush to add in as many remaining sound effects as we could to the film i also relised late into the morning that there were no credits for the film as i thought james was doing them along with the titles, so i decided to take this on and do the credits in time for the film to be rendered. I felt i did the best i could with the fifteen minuites or so i had to work on them as we desperatly needed to start to render the final film. i knew that we would be making a better version for the degree show when credits will actually matter.
Monday 9 June 2008
A busy week animating
This week i am glad that me and John have made our way thought rendering scene4 now that i have finished the animation for that scene. John has already rendered scene 2 and five so all we have to do now is the big scenes one and three at college where we can use the computers. we have already made qute a way rendering scene 3 out at home.
i was very proud of myself at the begginging of this week as i managed to animated 2 thirds of scene 4 animations including three characters in just two days! i realised how much more effort i would need to get the film finished, john was doing a very good job as producer reminding me just how little time we have left. obviously i knew that the quality of my work would suffer just as i did not have alot of time to spend on anything. As i had gotten all my parts of scene 4 animated it was just down to James to finish the window cleaner animation for both scene 2 and four. me and john found it frustrating recieving unfinished files such as James's window cleaner that requre work to them further to be useable in a scene. doing a animation which will be seen almost constantly in the backround should be given as a complete file with the animation working on all frames in which the chraracter will be seen or else it will be down to someone elso to have to finished the animation instead to no credit (mainly John).
on thursday i started to amimate the old lady in the film who slips over on a doille and fixes her back. John had already made a start on the animation working out her pace and walk and slip. he found it very hard to aniamte due to quite a difficult rig and character to animate.
the old lady took me 4 days to animate in total which was really long compaired to many other sequences i had animated in the film. and john disccused that if i cant finish her aniamtion in a certian time frame we should cut the character from the film as we just dont have any rime left to wait to render those sections. I agreed with this as i know that time can dissapear when animating and it would be in the interests of the film being finished.
Other things i managed to do this week include contacting josie lots and making sure that her animations are useable in the film and making sure that they are cycled of animated for all the shots in the film they will be scene in, i got josies set on making sure that the old woman playing chess continues to do so for the whole scene every time she came into shot.
i continued to keep in contact with Wan about how the effects were comming allong for the two scenes and i reveiwed his tests he showed me and comunicated what we wanted in more depth.
i also spend lots of time sending textures and scene files he needs to complete the smoke effects.
as Raphael came in on thursday i took the opertunity to really give him exact instructions for what we needed from his animation. i gave him a breakdown of each shot he needed to animate as well as timings and i also gave him a copy of the aniamtic to work from as wall as scene files with appropriate cameras to work to. i felt i needed to be this particular as we were relying on a crucial peice of animation so close to the deadline and any mistacks could not be afforded.
I spent some tinme this week such as on Friday making sure scene 4 was working smoothly ready for animation i realised earlier this week that the Jahovas Wttness had no textured teeth or moth backing dispite james modeling the character and knowing exactialy waht is intended to happen to him during animation. that several times he opens his mouth wide and the camera will end zooming into his mouth. so this is an area of modeling which could have been planed better at an earlier stage. To make this part of the scene look even half decent i had to create a mouth back piece for the Jahova so that the camera does not just zoom the the inside of his head. Adding any thing to a model after it is rigged is difficult so i was annoyed this wasent adresed at the modeling stage, where a much better job should have been made.
at this stage when it came to compiling aniamtions and scene files ror rendering there are always probles occuring, one big issue was with the Jahovas Wittness textures not loading onto the character as the texture nodes were missing in Maya. after some investigation into the problemand asking james if he had any idea why this was happening we fond the problem was that james had made an updated texture version of the caracter after it was rigged. me assuming that all the texturing work should be done before the characters are rigged took the final rigged file from Wan and animated using that file. James didn't mention to me that he had changed the character file, so i continued to use the same file i received from Wan. i dont have the time during the end of a project to check every single file i get, so all that was needed from James was better communication and perhaps to not go back and play with aspects of the film which should have been completed weeks ago.
Another Problem created by James textuing so late in the project was with Grims Scyth as James only made the Texured scythe on the 5th of june. By this time i have animated all of grim and to make grim hold the corretly textured scythe meant to import the new scyth into every Grim animation and replace all the keys and re-parent the sythe to grims hand which normaly doen't work. i had managed to successfull recreate the same animation in all the scenes i had animated Grim in except for scene one as i had not yet been able to help set up that scene for rendering.
i was quite anoyed at the uneccacery trouble that not texturing something has caused as it take away a good few hours from me animating to fix stuff like this, it is anoying esspecialy as i had already anmated it with care the first time round and when you start to cut and paste aimation it doesnt always work and ruins the animation.
Monday 2 June 2008
Scene four animation started
This week i have been continuing to animate scene 3, it is an extreemly long scene and i am finding it such a struggle to animate in time to the aggreed schedual.
I emailed Raphael to see if he could do the animation of the old army man for us.
on sat i finaly finished all my animation for scene 3 and i could move on to aniamting scene 4.
By Monday i had setup the cameras and blocked ou the characters positions and timing ready for animation.
I emailed Raphael to see if he could do the animation of the old army man for us.
on sat i finaly finished all my animation for scene 3 and i could move on to aniamting scene 4.
By Monday i had setup the cameras and blocked ou the characters positions and timing ready for animation.
Monday 26 May 2008
Animation grim and the cat
This week i have been thouroghly stuck into animating scene three. it is a reallly longs scene and grim needs to be animated in just about every shot.
I have continued to keep in contact with Josie and sending her more backround animation to do for the film.
I have continued to keep in contact with Josie and sending her more backround animation to do for the film.
Monday 19 May 2008
Cat rig complete
This week i have completed the rig for the cat character i have created including paint weights and proper setup for him.
I have fixed the last bits of aniamtion for scene one and have also done all the animation for scene 2.
i have been in contact with wan about the effects we need for the film and he has also fixed some problems me and John were having with some of the rigged characters moiving very slowly
I have emailed Raphael to find out how he is getting on with the animation but no reply yet.
Spoke to Dan this week to see how my animating was going. it was decided that i should aim to get a scene completed a week to stay ontrack to completeing the film.
i aslo made sure that each time i completed a scene i made and animatic using playblasts to chech that the film is coming together ok and to be somthing more accurate which ben our sound designer can work to.
I have fixed the last bits of aniamtion for scene one and have also done all the animation for scene 2.
i have been in contact with wan about the effects we need for the film and he has also fixed some problems me and John were having with some of the rigged characters moiving very slowly
I have emailed Raphael to find out how he is getting on with the animation but no reply yet.
Spoke to Dan this week to see how my animating was going. it was decided that i should aim to get a scene completed a week to stay ontrack to completeing the film.
i aslo made sure that each time i completed a scene i made and animatic using playblasts to chech that the film is coming together ok and to be somthing more accurate which ben our sound designer can work to.
Monday 12 May 2008
Scene one animation complete
This week we have finished animating the first scene of the film. I have finished animating the Grim Reaper as he makes his way through the graveyard. doing so has reveiled a few little problems as well aas one problem which has buged me whilst animating. grim's sleves are a bit of a mess. it isalmost imposible to move or rotate the arms without the sleve deforming very badly. to make it worse thecontrols i carefully planed do nothing to help the way they deform.
i dont know wether to fix this problem before continuing or to just work with it as it is.
i feel frustrated when problems like this are out of my control as idealy the sleeves would not be modeled in this way with them already hanging dow from his wrists as it make it extreemly hard to make the model look good in any other position than the default position.
i feel that it is very important to understand the who prossess when contributing to a production. for instance the model which is intended for rigging shold not be done just to look good in the on position but had thought behind what is intended for it animation wise. i feel frustrated by this many times with James models, for example grims sleeves, its all fine making them droop nicely when the has his arms streached out to the side of him but it make it imposible for me to create a rig which can then make the sleeves look convincing once his arms are at rest by his side. its amazing how small things become big problems further down the line.
i dont know wether to fix this problem before continuing or to just work with it as it is.
i feel frustrated when problems like this are out of my control as idealy the sleeves would not be modeled in this way with them already hanging dow from his wrists as it make it extreemly hard to make the model look good in any other position than the default position.
i feel that it is very important to understand the who prossess when contributing to a production. for instance the model which is intended for rigging shold not be done just to look good in the on position but had thought behind what is intended for it animation wise. i feel frustrated by this many times with James models, for example grims sleeves, its all fine making them droop nicely when the has his arms streached out to the side of him but it make it imposible for me to create a rig which can then make the sleeves look convincing once his arms are at rest by his side. its amazing how small things become big problems further down the line.
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