This Blog

Is moving... to www.danshufflebotham.co.uk - I'm going to continue my professional blog on there so feel free to have a look every now and again on there. I'll try and keep it up dated. :)

Green is the LEAST of our worries...

Shot 15 -TITLE SHOT - Don't have but ready.

Shot 17 (1st Part) - Don't have but ready.

Shot 20 - Gun trigger... I can export again off my mac if not on Vanguard.

Shot 22 - Spit out and bullets in...I need to work on AE File.

Shot 23 - Jump over chair...Needs the pupils (I don't have it on my file but it is done)

Shot 25 - Bullets and Cracks (Crawl to window)

Shot 27 a and b - Through the wall shot. Sam Composite two windows.Wall you probably already have and the other one I'm not sure.

Shot 29-31 Hitman Reaction ? - Will try and do this tonight as a lot of these have been cut.

Shot 32 - Blinds shot Probably use the same composite image for shot 27b

Shot 33 - Bullets on front of building.

Shot 39 - Rendered but needs to be comped with turned down bump on target which I have rendered on mac - will take 5 mins.

Shot 40 - walk towards target? Is it CUT? Don't have it though.

Shot 46 - Hitman drags out target - Rendered I think... ?

Shot 47 - Ninja Party, To render?

BLUE FOR DAN

ORANGE FOR SAM

GREEN is the LEAST of our worries.

Shot18

Done. I hope... probably glitches a bit due to the moving camera... but I think its ok. :s

Shot18

Is a bit dodge... the way the background (exterior) moves... just a heads up.

Ooook

Rendered my shot 32 - where as well as lit it quite nicely... I hope. looks ok.. bit dodge but ok. Passable. lol

I've also fixed and re-rendered the target in 39 ready to be overlayed Monday Morning.

Nearly there

Only a week or two late...

we have the renders out....

we have the shots looking nice....

compositing pretty much there...

just need to lay it all out in order - and we have a film....

Stu and Sam need to render one shot... which is SEMI vital.

I've fixed the Bump on the target in shot 39...

I need to create a news report for the screen in AE for Shot 18

Sam/I need to Comp 27/28 ...Fake shot through the wall with the outside to be added to SHOTS worth as it pans through the wall.

Shot 32 ? ... Looking through the Blinds. Needs to be rendered I believe. I'm going to set that now.... If poss.

Details

Ninja details in a shot I animated... thought I'd show this now I have time.

Adrive appears to be down today... not sure why this has happened... right when we need it.... no more backing up it would appear on the Adrive. And it could set us back.

Also Dan Dalli said I was getting print credit - all I know is I've still only got around £5... that won't go far with 25 students on it.

This weekend

Although after submission its still important that I, and Sam (and probably all directors) stay focused and concentrate on the film. Its still not finished and we still have a lot of work to prepare for printing and the Degree Show. Yesterday I have been organising my professional website and domain name for contacts to view and e-mail :) nothing on it YET... but its all ready to get set up and get going

I now have contact@danshufflebotham.co.uk

as well as danshufflebotham@hotmail.com

and today I will be setting up my business cards to send to printing ... not sure which ones to use just yet... but I have two which I am currently looking at :)

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...

Ouch

Time is correct... its late... pulling an all nighter... yay lol

It'll hurt but it'll be worth it. Lots of Coffee ... awake awake.

There Goes Another Day

Wednesday seemed to fly by. Why am I not surprised though. The team and myself are running into a various amount of problems now... with textures, effects, and grading that we'd love to have sorted out earlier however it has come to the point where it is looking as though we will be handing in an incomplete film. All shots are animated however - some characters have been animated with NURBS eyeballs... meaning we cannot texture them with the correct textures... meaning either I will have to fix it SOMEHOW in After Effects or.... fix the eyeball problem. I am yet to try. Spencer and Stu realised Monday evening however I've been too busy doing so much else that I havn't had time to collect any of those files and have a look. Will be on it tomorrow though mind you. Have to. I don't have much time to blog now. Times are stressful.

Working on Gnomes shot... deadline tomorrow.

Had to team-blog message Spencer about the Grading beginning to turn into something which was too dark and sinister for the film we originally set out making...

Tuesday - The Last One

This is the last Tuesday before deadline... we had the room - which was AWESOME. I thought I'd see more Pirates in considering they have .... a total of about 1 shot rendered... just good ol' Tom working hard away on almost everything. Gotta credit that guy - he's done great things this year. Today Sam, Ferhan, myself, Stu and Josh pretty much dominated our 3rd Year room which was sweet. Managed to get a fair bit done personally. I think Stu needed to be a bit more on the ball with what he's doing... I don't want to baby sit ya Stu ... get your shots rendered - find a comp and get cracking on it. Someone mentioned after (I'm not going to name names...) that he'd been playing either games or on Facebook ... everything BUT Maya/AE for about half an hour.... If you need helping out Stu ... just shout. I'd be happy to give you a hand every now and again... but you gotta grab a comp with Vanguard access... set up the lights and get those shots out for compositing. I'm happy with the progress Spencer has made... at least he's coming in but it would be slightly more helpful if he could render a few shots and find the directories that he needs rather than us pointing them out each time and setting them up... I haven't got enough time in the day to mask the entire 3min Film to the quality I would like... For the degree show I should be able to have some nice bits done to a good standard I hope . Anyway... enough blogging for now. I got Gnomes stuff to crack on with.

Also.

I've almost finished compositing my lengthly animation (character) mov together... in total so far - with three versions of each - its LONG and I keep finding bits I've tweaked and altered in other shots but I'm leaving some out as I didn't play a major part in the animation in that shot. I've been giving advice and pointers to people all throughout the project and more verbal feedback more than anything - a LOT to Ferhan as he is always in as well as Sam when he was animating, I hope it shows in their work - and in mine.

Moi Shot

Stole it from Sam... as he was taking AGES over this shot ... took a few days to do it... on and off - took me about 2 and a bit hours so far.... not looking too shabby either.

The FInal Monday

Today has been about gathering information and how to present our final films and our submissions for Grading. I was in at 8am and got a lot done in the first two hours... when people started turning up... I got less done... around 11... it was HOT HOT HOT and I couldn't concentrate with 1: people being annoying around me 2: people being distracting and 3: the heat.

I managed to composite one shot of Ferhans dynamics... I don't know if I'm happy with it yet. It was the shot of the target as he 'throws up' almost ... but actually just spitting out his drink. I shall go back to this in the morning and see if I can get it looking better with a fresh pair of eyes.

Dan Dalli told us a LOAD of info - and I'm glad I took it all down in a word doc so that I can refer back to it over the week. I have an idea for the Degree show to help the team... but this will have to wait as its still in its initial stages.

Tonight I have made progress with the Gnomes animation however am not ready to show a playblast on here just yet... that'll come tomorrow night. Matt and I have set myself a deadline for Thursday so that Matt can animate the scene as he bursts out of the Pot... I still have no idea of camera angle... front on... I know that.. but how far back.... and whats in shot.... I'm still not sure lol. I have tried to time it from the animatic however theres bound to be a slight difference ... only a few frames mind you.... but still... it may alter the WHOLE film... I joke.... but it may mean theres a pause somewhere there shouldn't be. As I said... I've tried to time it and I hope its accurate.

Right... bed now... getting up for the 8am College shift ... til 7pm leave... (maybe 7...duno might be later)

Edits

Editing other peoples work.

Its looking better from what it was I think...

still not finished.

Lighting Renders

We are now at the stage where the lights have to be tweaked in EVERY shot for the character and the camera position. Its difficult to get what we want but we are managing. Stu added in an extra 6 area lights in which most were casting shadows in order to create the correct ambience around the round... After realising this was not rendering on Vanguard... for the unknown reason ... I went in ... took out the lights and added in one extra point light and fiddled round with some of the other ones already in the scene.... and it rendered ok. :)

Lil Less Square

Another Gnomes playblast - shatter test with new... more EDGEY and less straight geometry.... obviously just a block out...

Progress and work ethics

Josh has now realised how tedius this task is - setting up the lighting in each and everyshot is a mission and the texture files need to be altered in an attempt to get ANY render out at all. I'm glad he is now more ablidged to help, Sam, myself and Ferhan setting up renders. I think this is Sarahs problem she is having currently but she appears to not be listening to what I have to say which is a shame - EACH TEXTURE OF leaf being loaded is 4000x4000 meaning how ever many leaves you have (lets say 40) 40 x 1600 PIXELS = 64,000 pixels on TEXTURES on LEAVES... as well as poly count etc could really weigh down the college computers - they aren't that good.

Kai's audio I heard for the first time yesterday and I was happy with it - personally there are a couple of sounds I would alter but they will do for now. I think I would like to grab the SFX hard drive tomorrow or early next week just as a back up incase either Kai runs off out of the blue or falls ill .... or we need to alter something last minute. Stewart has nearly finished his animations now which is a load off of my mind as I was beginning to have doubts if he could do so many.

Ferhans mate from last years 3rd Year have been overseeing some of his animations while he has been working as well which is good to get some instant feedback from someone who isn't weighed down with work.

I'm still a bit worried about the textures getting shot up as Spencer is not UVing the Pirates ship which he basically said it just wont get done in time for the deadline... the idea was that as bullets come through, the room looks slightly more shot up... with holes appearing.... textures... on different objects eg... couch.... table... either way I'm going to have to see what happens early next week about this. I mentioned it to him the other day... must remember to mention it again!

I think we have finally got most the animations done now... which is good news obviously. There are a few still lingering around but they are generally the easy ones. I have done all but one now... and I am currently working on the Gnomes Explode for SV.

I had to tweak Josh's animation with the Blinds as well as the characters movement as well... its still not great but I didn't want to have to re-work the whole thing. Preview below.
Things changed - the FOOT behind moves now rather than being totally static - the fingers are animated... the blinds move/swing as they have just been dropped... the blinds break for the character to look out of.

Today

Was annoying.
I set off renders... and got a couple back. I had to re-animate a certain section of one of the shots before I could send it off to Vanguard (which has been done now) I then had to light this same scene however the texture files were messing up so much that it wouldn't even render ANYTHING.... after deleting a few of Stewarts objects and changing a few textures ... that are pretty much in darkness ANYWAY I could finally render out a few things... Mu said it was something to do with the Production Quality I was attempting to see as well as the FULL 1024x576.... rather than the preview mode and a smaller Res... Shall be trying that in future... even though it went REALLY bad pixellation and REALLY small.. I managed to start seeing alterations a lot quicker than that of what we had previously. I think the High Res textures ... some reaching 4000x4000 for a Bump map and Specular Map and then obviously Colour Map... was reaching a bit high considering they are not the focal point of the film. Yes we want it to look nice ... but we want to be able to render it as well. Obviously Spencer put a lot of effort in so when we need the high res versions we can obviously keep them in but otherwise we might need to turn them down and render them out - just so we have a finished film.
It was taking about an hour and a half PER FRAME with the high textures... turned down they reached about 15-20mins... which is about right.

It would appear

Only myself and Stewart came in today... I was struggling to cope sending off all the files on my own - as well as tweaking the lighting for them. Sam had an MOT... which takes any normal car an hour - but him all day... Because Sams car had an MOT - this meant Josh would obviously not come in as he would have to travel on his own!!! - Ferhan ... havn't a clue where he was but he did say that he couldn't make it in... so thats fair enough I suppose - he works hard so all is cool. Spencer - no sign from him today... we tried to get him to animate ... gave him shots... even though we wanted him to - we forced him to move the lil guy...he says he has done... but won't show us a preview.. anything would have been better to work with eg a BLOCK out rather than nudda.

Now he is writing on the Blog that we are all doing well and to keep it up... and for us to get all the rendering done so that he can come in and composite it together... which is a bit annoying - he is expecting us to not only animate all the shots... light them, reassign textures on Vanguard... check they are looking correct in terms of framing and cameras.... set them off to the render Farm... and then he'll come in at the end and grade them... obviously WE ... as in Sam, myself and Ferhan have to check them all or we might get the feeling that the words...'pointless me coming in today then really huh?' might pop up.... just feels a bit awkward at the moment.

The team however is working well other than that. We all have our ups and downs but I think we be doing well :)