Week 24: Progress, and A Few Other Things

This post is unfortunately much later than I wanted it to be. I've been swamped the past few weeks working on completing all of my layout shots (more on that later) and completing animations for my other capstone project and I didn't have much of a chance to update as I was busy working.

However, this also came delayed as this past week was filled with many emotions due to a significant event that happened suddenly in my family, that has left me rather devastated and hasn't given me much energy to work on my projects, much less write all about it here. I've gained the strength to write about my progress so far today. While I don't normally become too personal in this blog to keep the focus on my work and progress, I think it's important to acknowledge that things happen in all of our lives that we can't control or prevent, and they can affect us and our work deeply. It doesn't mean we don't still enjoy the work, or that there's anything wrong with us. These things can and will happen to all of us, and it's important to deal with our feelings and focus on our mental health, which I've been trying to do for the past few days. I've begun to pick up working a bit here and there, and it's become a bit of a welcome distraction, though other times it's hard to sit and work when my mind is filled with so many other thoughts. But we eventually gain the strength to keep going, though it may take some time.

Either way, I wanted to make sure to document these big moments and feelings during my process, because it's part of who I am and they will likely influence my work going forward. These moments are important to remember in our lives, and we deserve time to be human and have our priorities elsewhere.

I'm still very pleased with the progress I've made so far! I've largely finished my layout shots in both 2D and 3D, save for some minor polish and adding some pauses in action here and there, along with resolving some minor technical issues in terms of camera tracking and the like. From here on out, I can start working with my skinned rigs and polishing animations, which I'm very excited about! This film has come such a long way, and a year ago I probably wouldn't have imagined all this progress.

I created an update to my original animatic for a few purposes: one, to see how the timing of my film has worked out with all the shots I've added/removed since I made the original animatic. Two, so that my lovely friend who's been working on the sound for the film can have a better sense of the timing and how the shots feel emotionally, and work that into the music. And three, to see if there's anything missing from the film and that all the shots work well and make sense now that they're all placed together as they will in the film. However, the animatic is now filled with all of my completed layout shots, which is a great feeling!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwopjgHQKHA

All in all, it's pretty complete. I still have to polish everything and add a few more frames for some of my 2D shots and add all of my facial animations, but the layouts are largely completed, which I'm very proud of!

My 2D flashback shots are a bit different from what I had originally- after getting some critiques on it a few weeks ago, it was suggested I do an ABC-ABC-ABC storytelling method, alternating between the shaman telling a story in the fire, Arne and Signe growing up, and the Wolf growing in strength with them. Overall I did really like that suggestion so I worked it in (though my execution still needs a bit of work). I still need to figure out what I'm going to put in the fire, as I'd originally planned for only one shot with that, but I'm thinking of working a prophecy-style story into it which should look pretty cool! All in all, we're getting there. I'm still not at full steam like I was before, but I'm still working my way there and I'm still progressing, however slowly.