Final Project Production Log

Final Project Production Log:

Environment- For a majority of the semester I struggled with the idea of what my environment should consist of. I wanted my characters to be in a place that looks bright and happy, however I didn’t want it to be on a street. At one point I had tons of trees surrounding my characters but it did indeed look like they were in a forest. Suddenly I realized that I can have homes [like I originally wanted] but place them on a different ground/plane which ended up being a farm. In order to make the happen I played with the plane aspects, created hills and edited grass.

Characters- My characters are the same that I used for my midterm. LoveBotBoy and LoveBotGirl were since that date rigid and animated to interact. What I like about my characters is that they are simple, however interesting to look at. If I were to complete this project again I would probably change the look of both the characters faces.

Rigging- Both my characters are indeed rigid. However for a while I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t have the look I wanted them too. Then it came to me; LoveBotBoy needed his nose rigid too so that he can become more animated. After completing that I enjoyed my project even more.

Houses- When working to make my houses I used primitives and played with the vertex of each corner to create that specific look. When I was deciding what to pick as my texture I applied a brick house look and shingle roof. I believe it contrasts nicely with the sky and clouds.

Animation- (see storyboard)

Lighting- I have a spot light and two directional lights to create the look I wanted in my animation. It took almost a week to decide just exactly what lighting I wanted because each lighting effect created a different feel for my project. I am very happy with the look that I currently have. If I was to continue with the project I would probably play with the lights more though so I can create more shadows in the background.

Cameras- I used two cameras in my project. One camera was used to move into the Earth and the second camera was used to show the animation between LoveBotGirl and LoveBotBoy. I tried working with different and unique camera angles to create a cool emotional effect. My favorite angle was definitely when LoveBotGirl is catching LoveBotBoy’s heart. If I were to do this project again I would most likely not change my camera setup but possibly try other areas and views.

Render- The size of my project caused me a lot of frustration when trying to render. My Maya program kept shutting down throughout the process and I had to start over again. After trying multiple times my friend showed me how to batch render by cameras and put my project into After Effects to create the QuickTime. I believe that was successful because Maya only crashed once when I tried rendering that way.