I’ll start off by admitting that this is going to be hard
for me. In the beginning I had high hopes for our group. We all wanted to
create something that when you look at it you could tell we did it. Now that
it’s all finished I can see my personality all over it, but it’s hard to tell
who else worked on it. I always thought that if you put a bit of yourself into
your project then it will show more life. This is what I at least tried to do
when creating all the characters and sets, I guess in a way it’s like cooking.
You have to put love into it or else it fails and no one will appreciate it.
So I guess I’ll start from the beginning, the first week of
pre production. I came in with a few ideas after having 4 months to think it
over. Though not everyone was keen on my ideas, this was ok as not every idea
is gold. Trish had some ideas, which I never really liked. Drazen and Jordan
had maybe one or two, I can’t really remember. I do know that from day one the
boys were all about animation and that didn’t bother me as I don’t like to
animate as much as I do model. Trish and I had creative differences which lead
to her working on her own. Something I should have done from the start.
We ended up getting a base for our story, though it never
went in the direction I wanted. Our producer (Mark) didn’t understand any of
our ideas, not every one thinks like me so that’s ok. I wanted something
simple, I didn’t want a story. I wanted to create something that was exciting
and looked good. This was not what we ended up with by the end of pre
production.
All throughout that semester the boys seemed to lack
interest. I had started designing the characters in 3D; I thought it would make
our lives easier later on. I was right, but I’ll explain later. I tried to get
them involved with design, ideas for shots and all that jazz. But most of the
time I got no response. I asked Drazen to design our weapons; this took him 16
weeks to complete. I asked Jordan
to design costumes and sets. He managed to design costumes (which I didn’t like
at all) but I never got set designs. It was frustrating to get anything out of
them. The conversations always lead back to League of Legends, they game they
played instead of doing work. My frustration started here. Our story boards
were so so, by the end of the semester I was bored out of my mind with our
story. 1 it was too long, and had so many costumes. 2 it was incredibly linear,
this leads to bad story telling. So I thought about it while on holiday.
I had an epiphany, why not keep all the characters, but drop
the story. Make a cinematic. I watched the latest one from LOL and it hit me.
This would get my team interested, it would be more fun. So with 1 week until
we got back to class I put together a short cinematic story board and animatic.
I was pretty proud of myself for doing all that in short notice. The boys were
keen and production began.
Now this is where things got interesting…well sort of.
Thanks to my thinking we had our characters ready for rigging and texturing.
See I told you it would be in our favour. Though I wished that in pre
production I had decided not to listen to our teacher and not add a dragon into
the mix. Not that I’m unhappy with the way he turned out. It just would have
been one less rig to create. Which would have led to more animation time. The
rigging process took far too long. I had made it so we had 2 weeks for all
aspects. This was ignored. We were told to use the advanced skeleton auto rig
for all the characters. Louis our technical support rigged the dragon and gave
to me for skinning. I was fine with that, though I got flustered with the
wings. I had no idea what joint belonged to what. But I worked it out in the
end and added some face controls and a belly jiggle control. The dragon was
ready to go in under a week. The other three rigs took a bit more time. Drazen
had managed to set up the skeleton so it was ready for skinning, which we
thought was great at the time. Due to issues with the center of the world and
such we had trouble with the faces. Even after we managed to sort all that out
the auto face rig was difficult to understand. It was taking too long for my
team to sort out. So one day while trying to find a tutorial on how to weight
paint the face joints. I decided it was taking too long and went in search of
something faster. This led me to the ‘slap on auto rig’ on creative crash. It
isn’t the best auto rig out there but it was a quick solution. My team
complained about it not having as much control as the other, but I wasn’t about
to revert back to our past problems. This was a fix and we all had to deal with
it. So I managed to rig 2 characters which also led to them being bigger in
scale. I didn’t think it would be a problem as we just scaled the other 2 rigs
up to match. The last rig was Drazen’s responsibility. Which he was fine with,
I wasn’t impressed that it took so long for the final result. We had a slight
argument about the facial rigging on the rig. I refused to create the blend
shapes as I had already picked up Jordan ’s slack. This ended with the
last rig having poorly done face shapes.
The thing I would do differently about this situation is
that I would have just rigged all the characters with the same auto rig, or
just create a rig ourselves. Too much time was lost due to this step, time we
did not have. Causing me to make the decision of dropping the first 30 seconds
of our animation. This was the majority of our action. My team was not happy
with this, but they soon came to realize that it was unavoidable. I constantly
think that if I had of just done everything myself I wouldn’t have been in the
messes I was in.
The next step was getting all the sets ready to start
animation. I was pretty confident that my style was a good way to approach
this. My team had no opinions on my choices, which was sort of irritating as I
would have loved some help. When I managed to get the bases for all the sets
done I passed them on and had the boys start animating. This was not my field
and so I continued on with all other aspects of the production. I found some
great tutorials on lighting, and even one on creating rays of light in mental
ray. I wanted to use it for the forest dash sequence but decided to cancel that
as it would take too long to sort out.
We ended up using cloth for our hair and parts of clothing.
I really wanted to give it a try. The initial set up wasn’t hard to grasp at
first, but we had trouble while animating with it. In some scenes it is obvious
that the cloth was whacky. But this was still a new area to tread and I am glad
I got to do it. Mostly because when it did work it looks awesome.
Animation was taking a long time, time we had lost due to
rigging. I was getting anxious and trying to keep my team motivated. Though it
ended in me nagging like an old house wife. There were times when I just wanted
to pack up and quit. I was being ignored by my team and this stressed me out.
Which led to them getting annoyed. It was a vicious circle, and just kept
spiralling. I ended up having to step in and do some animation, which isn’t the
best but at least it was done. I told my team that ‘THEY’ would need to clean
it up come render time. The only time we agreed on something was when someone
said the word ‘coffee’. If not for coffee this film would not have been made.
Rendering time came round and things were looking bad. I had
been away for 4 days and left my team to render scenes in my absence. This did
not happen. I found out when I returned as I had no phone connection or
internet. This made me angry. I managed to render all my scenes before I went
away. All I got was ‘we were busy’ (playing games) I went into full panic mode
and decided enough was enough. Bitch Amy was coming out (excuse my language) I
ordered them to give my everything by Saturday, this however did not happen. My
team complained that they had so much to do, and not enough time. Mind you I
still had effects and credits to figure out.
I also had to get in touch with the guy from the audio department. None
of which my team helped with. This all led to a massive argument where we all
ambushed each other. I was told to get off my high horse and well a lot of
other things were said that I won’t repeat. I just told them that without me
they wouldn’t have a film. I don’t mean to sound cocky but this is the truth.
We managed to get everything rendered by Sunday morning with
the help of Stuart Charlton, who set up a massive render farm over 30
computers. It was impressive. I think if he didn’t help us out we would have
been screwed. I am grateful to him and his awesomeness. So with all the scenes
rendered and given to me for editing I was ready to start. From 10 am on Sunday
until about 6.30 pm I was glued to my computer screen. Adding depth of field to
all scenes and putting them in order. By the end I was tired. And who wouldn’t
be after that amount of time. I edited the entire film with credits on my own.
My team did not protest (why would they) as they got to finish a day early.
When I went to line the audio up with the film I noticed the new version is
heaps longer. This had me worried at first. I contacted the audio guy and he
wasn’t too happy. He had to start again with all the syncing and couldn’t
understand why. I apologized so many times but it just wasn’t enough. I am
still waiting for the final audio today. I hope it gets done in time for the
showcase as I want everyone to see my film.
In the end I am kind of disappointed in the final result. So
many things I wanted to show didn’t get shown. My team also changed all the
camera angles which made it lose the impact I was going for. But these things
happen. It’s a student film after all. It’s rare for students to create
something amazing. I was just hoping to be one of the rare. The things I would
do differently is I would work alone, find some one to do my animation who is
good at keeping to a deadline, a higher level of work ethic and most
importantly passionate about the industry.
Not people who prioritising gaming in their personal time. I would also drop the cloth, and use the same rig
for all characters. This would make my life easier and I would possibly come
out with a better result.
So this is my last post about this project. I am so thankful
it is over and I hope that you enjoyed my journey as much as I did (no
seriously I did) though it was stressful at times.
