The Final Submission for Marking

Sorting out the folders was a long tedious task and took longer than I thought it would. I had always thought it would take a while to figure out what goes where and just in general - displaying a years worth of work on one disc at the end of term. Making sure it is displayed in the correct manner was essential for me. I dislike knowing that I could have just added a nice boarder to an image and the examiner been slightly more impressed. Same as the Dvd Case and presentation of the work itself. If you only hand in a blank case with a scribble on - theres a lack of presentation from the start - whereas if you hand in a finished beautifully rendered shot from the film or your own work the person marking the film will have a more positive first impression.

The folders themselves I think came out quite well. I ended up having more animation than I expected and am still working on the film so my own showreel will continue to grow. I have recently spoken to Lewis (director of Pirates) and mentioned that I would love to work on his film and help him render if I have time prior the Degree show. I'd like to see both Gnomes and Pirates finished - however I fear that one.... maybe even both may not get completed for the show which is disheartening. My Animation Folder managed to span across about 5 minutes in total of all animations - and some of them look quite nice so I'm happy with that. Prior to this year... I had not really touched animation - my first ever attempt where I'm putting effort into it is within my Character Animation submission and was the Character Rig downloaded from the net being bored sitting on a ledge. My 2D effects Folder however is not complete yet however I will have to do more this next week as bullets go though a variety of different objects - eg sofas and walls... No-one else has considered this or even pointed out that NO bullets have flown past yet which I find it doesn't really make sense without it. haha.

The Artist and Technical folder.... both of mine appear very strong in my opinion and therefore I was stumped when attempting to chose one folder to be marked on more than the others. I left out the 'main' section altogether and hopefully this will not go against me and it'll be possible to see my dedication, hard work and overall time and effort I put in on this project.

Team Whack'd

I think the team 85% of the time worked well. I think this is approximately right as we occasionally had a break down in communication - especially when it came down to the production side of things - as directors, Sam and i discussed what we would do differently within the year and I think one key point I brought up was to keep the blogs regularly updated to get regular feedback. Sam himself wasn't great at this - but he did it a lot more than other people within the class who only blog LAST MINUTE of term attempting to boost their grades. As you can probably tell as you read this I've actually grown to enjoy blogging and writing my thoughts down as I go along and I'm considering keeping a Blog for future reference when I do pieces of animation and effects. Hopefully this will keep me in contact with some of the like minded individuals that I wouldn't want to lose contact with.

A lot of people have really come into their own this year as there was the MASSIVE task of creating a variety of films. I'd like to thank a number of people who I think deserve thanks and recognition. Firstly Sam - my Co-director. Picking up on everything I miss which is great .. keeping me in check and vice versa. Secondly Ferhan - he deserves a GREAT deal of recognition on this project - from the first day he was saying 'I can't animate at all...I can't rig' He was right... he couldn't to be fair as he had never tried it before. He not only LEARNT to rig for the project, LEARNT to animate but he was willing to work on a shot over and over again until I was satisfied with it - in the end I struggled to find too many things wrong with some of them. His animation has DEFINITELY improved over the last two terms however his frame of mind was always in the right place and I personally was very grateful he was part of our team. The whole team have been good though and we all have come together to create something quite nice at the end of it.

The list continues with Simon Harvey - although at the start of the year he was wrapped up in PO/Splay research - he had little time for classmates - the closer it got to deadline Simon began help out more and more people in the class with this new techniques he's learnt from his research. He's learnt so much this year in a variety of areas and I was quite saddened to not see his name down for Best Techy Award - Simon ... you would have got my vote if its any consolation.

Finally - Tom. Tom last year - not a great competitor, nervous in Maya and worried when things went a bit wrong or the screen goes a funny colour etc.

THIS year - I hope his confidence is now booming because his animation has developed at a LIGHTNING pace and his overall knowledge of Maya has complemented this - not afraid to ask for help and has a thirst to understand methods which work has really evolved his skills into a new Uber TOM. So I take my hat off to you sir and I wish you luck in the future.

Where to go from now. Hopefully we can render those final shots and composite the FINAL film. Not entirely sure if Kai is still doing sound for us... what he had done sounds good so far... and I'm intrigued to see what the final piece will sound like. Lewis' Scores for music were wicked. He's another guy who's taken up a BIG role as director, struggled but managed to produce something to remember :) I hope you finish mate. Keep on going. Nearly there now... the end is SO close...