Starting a New Project

A new project my class is up-taking is animating a children's book for the purpose of giving the animated picture and the book itself to kid in the hospital. For the purpose I want to complete this project but I have a problem of keeping interest in the project and not just that I have a dislike for kids books. Personal opinion aside I will try my best especially due to me being behind on my project due to things like switching books and even getting sick for a week. Currently I have a storyboard of somewhat adequate quality, the pages of the book scanned onto a computer, The narrator's lines recorded, as well as the "script" of the book. I will start working on the actual animation soon, if time permits.

The scanned pages I will not include for I believe obvious reasons. The name of the book is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" If you feel the need you can look up the book online on other websites.

Here is my storyboard, do keep in mind I am a bad drawer and tend to cut corners to some extent:

Also to my current knowledge, without putting the audio files in a video like format I cannot upload the files to blogger for you to hear. I will try to keep my blog up to date on the latest progress on the animation.

New Project and Current Progress

Bowing of Andrew (first day of re-recording)

Project:
For our new quarter project we are to make a stop motion animation using live people. For the group I was in we decided to try and utilize the new cyclorama green screen. In the process of brainstorming we came up with the idea formed from my original idea. My previous idea was mages making objects out of thin area with paper. We modified this to just plain mages in a theater show. Currently we are not finished and our group as I would assume would take the longest. This is due to the amount of post-production involved in our animation.


Issues:

Bunny Hat Trick

We had mainly issues going through this animation. From this experience I actually have a lot more respect for when I see green screen being used in most situations. Some of the things that seem so minor can make everything go awry. These things could just be the trimming of a hat being reflective making you have to re-shoot everything to shadows and other lighting mishaps.

Stand-off Between the two of us

Content:
This is some of what we have currently, do keep in mind that we are still working on post-production right now. This is some of the editing I have done, keep in mind the background is one solid color for now till we have taken the pictures of our real background.

Video Content:

^ This is the rough version of my editing ^

^ This is the final version of my editing ^

^ This is the final version of the animation ^

Partners:
Laura's Blog Post
Jake's Blog Post
Alex's Blog Post
Andrew's Blog Post
(Will be hyper linked once they have given me the URL)

Q&A

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Conception

• What is your project? 
An animation to represent my bathroom.
• What did you want the audience to gain from your animation?
To understand how I work and progress through challenges.
• Why did you design your project that way?
Familiar with the area, all I have to do was remake it.
• What was your thought behind your project?
To help increase my skills in texturing. To learn new areas of said texturing.
• What did you use to complete your project?
Lydia.com was used for understanding all of the new texturing methods.
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Planning

• Did you run into any issues while planning your project?
Too many objects in my bathroom making somethings not end up being modeled.
• Write 3-5 sentences about your plan of execution.
I planned to model all objects relatively quickly. Afterward modeling I would texturing each object to most closely represent. Finish off with lighting and other finishing textures and models.
• What did you have to do Pre-Production/Creation?
Take reference pictures of the bathroom for closer textures and models.
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Creation

• Describe the process of making your animation.
I started modeling objects but in the process I textured some depending on difficulty of the texture. For instance the walls I gave a texture very early on since all I had to do was get the color right. After modeling and texturing most of the objects I added the lighting system.
• What parts took longer than expected? How did you compensate the extra time spent?
Some of the harder textures like the texture for the sink which happens to be used for about 80% of the metal in the bathroom.
• Did you have to go back to the conception phase to rethink your idea and replan?
No but I did have to cut out some of the objects planned like rugs and towels.
• How did you use the resources available as you worked on your project?
I barely went back to Lynda after learning most of it except for a few textures.
• What personal celebrations did you have? What part are you most proud of in your animation?
Some of the most simple things were actually my favorite. These things included the mirror the toilet and the drawers for the sink.
• Did you have to shorten your plan or where you on time the entire quarter?
I had to cut some things the main reason why is because of me being sick for about 2 weeks. Otherwise I would say I was ahead if not perfectly on time.
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Self-Critique

• What are three things that you can say you learned about making the project?
Learned some of the lighting effects that are in maya's mental ray and that mental ray has textures of their own which are actually are very good texturing.
• What was one issue you had while making your project?
The biggest issue either would being sick or getting some of the colors for the textures right.
• If you could redo any part what would it be? and how would you fix it?
Shower head sizing, flooring overall, and camera movements which can't be seen since I can not render right now.
• How do you feel about your work/animation? 
I feel proud but I feel like I didn't learn a ton from what I expected. I think it is just that because I am the creator it is much easier to find errors in my creation since I know of the errors myself, as well as I am quite hard on myself.
• What do you feel good about, and what do you feel needs more time?
I feel good about the toilet, lighting, and the sink overall (except for faucet). What needs more time is the flooring.
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After Class Critique

• What are two things that the class/teacher said about your animation? One Good and One Bad.
Scaling of objects seem off (specially for the shower head). Nice attention to detail like the bevel on the mirror and the lip on the sink.
• How are you going to fix the issue? Was it dealing with, keyframes, timing, ease in/out?
Going through and sizing some of the objects like the shower head.
• Are there any part of the critique that you disagree with? Why?
I was told that the metals all around the bathroom should match (being the same metal). While I had 3 different metals in the bathroom. This is due to that is what is truly in my bathroom. I don't feel like I should change what the truth is to make some metals match.
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Final Bathroom

Well the whole bathroom is finished and I would love to render it out, but Maya 2015 and OSX Mavericks, which is what our school is using, cannot use batch render. Because of this issue I cannot show you the true final product. I will attempt to render at home where I don't have the specifications to where it would lock up (that I know of). If / When I render it at home I will update this post or make a new post with the video. Overall this was interesting in the most sense. Things I have learned would be features around Mental Ray like ambient occlusion, mental ray textures, and ray trace. I might even revisit this to improve upon textures and models. There would also be much more decorations in the room.

Quick Follow Up

As said in the previous blog I have completed ahead of where I am meant to be at and such had to ignore updates for the short term to speed up work flow. This is so give a more overall look of the bathroom to show off the textures of most of the items I had in the due dates. So far I am happy with almost all textures. The textures I dislike so far are the texture for the toilet - just seems wrong; white wood texture used - not enough emphasis on the wood; and the floor texture - overall just wrong the depth of it just seems wrong, the look of the textures seems flat and or artificial, and sides don't line up where they should. Overall I like the texturing of this bathroom.

Tiny Update

I have been working very diligently to catch back up to where I wanted to be at. For this reason the blogging has been a little slow. So far the objects left to model/texture would be two more light fixtures near the tub and assorted random objects for decoration like soap, toilet paper, rugs, towels, and other objects. Here are the pictures for the toilet and the lights that are a little late. The main reason for this update being late is because I wanted to model the toilet last thinking I would need quite a bit of time for it. It was relatively quick actually. The light fixtures were actually harder to make than the toilet, specially since i had to scrap the first design for it would make it 10x harder to texture.

The Lost Blog

I am caught behind schedule yet again like last year. Last year we had snow days for almost 2 weeks. This time I was sick for around 2 weeks. I am trying to get back on track but Maya has been uncooperative so far. Anyhow I have gotten what is needed for the first blog. Another reason I am behind is I sometimes texture things before I need to. So all the pictures with have some textures to them. So far I have 1 light so far which is a mental ray physical sun and sky. More lights will be added probably in the next Blog. So far these are pictures I have. Things that have already got on my nerves are the texture for the sink. I have tried multiple times on how it should be but so far have failed quite a bit. I set it back to lambert 1 for the time being though. I like the progress on things like the tub, sink, wall separator, and a few of the textures around the room.

Random Side note it seems someone keeps eating bread over the sink. (me joking about bread crumb looking dots on the sink)