The team of people I have enlisted to help me with the project, my roommates and my friends, have been efficacious to the creation of Amazing Adventure. Einar Masson has designed the characters and the main sets, giving a solid art direction to the short. Dan Valvo and Amber Bettis have modeled Jeff and the Dragon respectively, giving the characters new life in the third dimension. Lindsay Johnson has textured Jeff, and modeled and textured the entire living room set (which looks more realistic in order to contrast with the blocky world of the game). What I have learned with working with these people is that, when put in capable and talented hands, people can create things much more refined and detailed than if you attempted to create them yourself. While I have a basic understanding of modeling and texturing, I am NOT a modeler or a texture artist. So in letting much more qualified people help me in my areas where I lack expertise, I have acquired assets that have significantly increased the overall quality of the short film. Now the pressure is on for me to animate it with the same attention to detail and quality!
I mentioned in my last post that girlfriends are happy distractions. I started dating Blyth as the semester started in the beginning of February. At first, all I wanted to do was spend my time with her, which was great, but my work suffered from my neglect. However, I have learned that dating can be a great asset while in production of a short. After explaining myself and my concerns, Blyth has become a HUGE supporter of my project, and continues to harass and/or encourage me to get the work done. It's kinda like having a personal producer! She has helped me to adjust my schedule so that I can work during the day (while she also works) and spend the evenings together. I wake up earlier and have much more motivation to work now, because the sooner I finish work for the day, the sooner I get to hang out with Blyth! Then I get to spend those relaxation hours actually relaxing, because I know in the back of my mind that I am staying up to date on my project. I am ecstatic to have this personal cheerleader help me while I work through the project, and I highly recommend everyone find somebody to be that personal cheerleader for them to help them through their own projects.
As for my work on the project, I have built several of the sets for Amazing Adventure, including but not limited to the first world, the outside castle set, and the inside castle set. I built the rig for Jeff in correlation with my rigging class from the spring semester, and he is now ready to animate. Here is a very rough walk cycle I did to test the rig:
This is an old video and the clipping issues with the rig have been fixed since then. But it's still cool to see Jeff finally in motion!
Captain Kid has been rigged in the last couple weeks, and I plan to reuse his rig for the other humanoid 8-bit characters. I am now animating my first shot, about midway through the short, where I can play with the two characters interacting with each other. So far, both rigs are holding up pretty well, but I have to make a few adjustments to weight paints to make sure every thing looks nice as I animate.
Speaking of animation, I took an animation class in the spring with Pixar animator Neth Nom, who worked with me on animation exercises to practice polishing and helping me to think of character when animating a shot. I am trying to apply what I have learned in this casual environment to the heavy deadline, much faster-paced environment of my thesis, where I need to turn out roughly one shot each week in order to finish the animation in time for the May 2014 deadline. However, my experiences with Neth have been so positive that I am continuing my studies with him this summer and into next fall as well. His professional experience will be invaluable to helping me to become a better animator, and I hope to apply as much as I can from these classes into my own thesis project.
If I manage to do a better job with these blog posts, I will continue to update my progress on my shots as I proceed with animation in Amazing Adventure.
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