Full Group Project with sound and credits

Now here's the full clip of Term 2's group project! It was the hardest, and best time of this whole program. I'll remember this fondly...

Tentacles of Terror from Anne Rufin on Vimeo.

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<p>"...used only online resource..." There are ONLY online resources for game environment lighting that doesn't cost even more money and time to order you phantom tutors!  There are no practicals because 1.) was told this unit doesn't require practicals, and 2.) school studio computers managing ITs are SLOTH at getting UDK installed, and there were only 3 weeks for this unit AS WELL AS the other one.  All in all, thanks for nothing, incomprehensible, useless tutor.  If masters degree means doing everything on my own only to get judged and marked by so called 'tutor' who's only job seems to pass down final judgement and not guide or teach, it's the same as a job.  BUT jobs pay, Masters cost.</p>

End of Group Project et all.

The Group Project ended 11 days ago, and it felt like a month ago. I should've known better than to distrust the tutors' warning that Term 2 would have been the busiest of all terms. Instead, I took on a mural design volunteer project for a local school playground, another volunteer project to do 8 illustrations for a Director flatmate's short film. These are on top of the Moving Image Theory critical essay assignment, and the MA3D Group Project. I thought it would be all be fine if I can just get the drawing stuff out of the way in the beginning before the Group Project heats up. I was naive...

Group Project didn't heat up, it Big Banged in nanoseconds after our groups formed. Long (and tearful) story short, I ended up structuring and typing the entire 2500 word essay within 20 hours. I never knew I could write that much that fast... . Then the animal murals took me 4 nights of little sleep, over 2.5 weeks to finish. Then the 8 illustrations had to be done towards the end of the Group Project, resulting in 3 nights of zero sleep and not going back to the flat except for shower (or not even). Then 7 hours sleep, then again no sleep.

By the time the group project was finished, and I was typing up the Production Report, I would open my eyes realizing I had fallen asleep, but my hands were still typing nonsense on the screen... so the Individual Hand-in definitely suffered from lack of substance.

All that said, the Group Project experience had been stressful at time during the making, but after finishing and seeing the final product, I can't be happier to have been part of this team, this project, done what I did (wish I could've done faster, thus done more variety). The animators were amazing, they knew their stuff, and translated it into 3D wonderfully within just 3 days. The character modeler really turned that 2D cartoonish style into 3D well without losing the 2D cartoon characteristic. Without going into more details and write another essay, I basically learned a lot since everything I did was new, and I remembered the beauty of working in a group project such as At Freedom's Door and this one. There are power in number, in a group that's passionate about the project and working together to make it happen. Good stuff comes out of that. That said, since it was difficult for me to hide stress whenever I got it, I hope other team members don't think I hate them or something, hahaha... because it was usually from frustration with myself - my lack of speed and skills in each tasks I was given to do.

Still can't show the actual animated video because it's supposed to be entered for BFX.

Some screenshots of stuff that's since changed, but looks kind of cool back then:

And how they look like now:

There is a Fushia dinosaur in one of the boxes that no one will ever see, but I know it's there. It's stupid, but funny.

Group Project thought

Working in a group project is like being a piece of bacon that's being pulled towards different direction at the same time by several doggies, since I tend to bound back and forth between tasks of different, non-related, natures.

...

Stop taking things away from me.

Environment progress

Some seriously simple environment that took me 6 hours to make, just these. 6 hours. Fucking sad. It's midnight and I need to do an essay.

......

I haven't been writing or updating screenshots because I've been so crushed with work there isn't even time for me to write here. I'm not exaggerating. I bought the lighting book, and the compositing book. Both are very useful from the few pages I managed to browse. I need to read and do tutorials, but I simply don't have time to do any of those. I'm constantly being moved from one task to another - bouncing between creating a lighting design, color script of the main character, coming up with an environment, light the environment, render out a presentable scene for presentation, model more environment for a 3D animatics. I can't just concentrate for 1 or 2 days on doing simply 1 task, and it's really taking an unexpected toll on my sleep as well as productivity. I didn't realize what kind of workload these will be since I never done any of them before. I thought at first this would be a great opportunity to learn lots of different things. But it's making me feel and probably look unproductive and a slacker instead. And I would hate to have my work ethics doubted.

Anyway, ranting aside, I have some time now, at 1am Saturday, Lunar New Year Eve, before going home to sleep, to post some screenshots of the second environment as well as some more color script. I don't expect to do anything for Lunar New Year this year. Should remember to call Mom.

Lighting test

Testing how to light stuff in Softimage; lighting and environment by me, animation and female, not by me:

Lighting test in XSI for group project

First time lighting stuff in 3D today, frustrating at first, but at the end this came out okay. Film is in black and white, film Noir style.

Links on lighting and pass rendering:

• http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/xsidocs/dir_lights_ApplyingaVolumicLightProperty.htm
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8QcdLmVKpI
• http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2013/en_us/userguide/index.html?url=files/passes_WhatIsaRenderPass.htm,topicNumber=d30e380622

I've been in this lab for ... 13 hours straight and counting, doing nothing but the group project. How. The. Hell. Am. I. Supposed. To. Do. ANYTHING(other assignments). Else. Like. This. And Saf said to go home at 7pm and take weekends off? What is he thinking?!

color script

I'm quite out of practice and each fully shade frame of the animatic (to design the lighting of the scene) is taking me 1 hour to do. It's taking too much time, and it's not cool. In anything now a days speed is everything, except maybe in Science Illustration field. After 3 images I had a chance to talk to Juan, and he confirmed the idea that it's more effective and efficient to start lighting with basic geometry in Softimage, and take screenshots as the "color script". Later on I might be able to replace the cubes with final building models, and the lights and cameras could stay or keep being tweaked. But these are things I eventually have to do later anyway. Will try this and see how that flies.

Director and co-director wants drawn color script before starting to set up lighting test in 3D. It's an animation thing, but I've no idea, will just have to do and see. Just put out the first batch of color script. Need to do a swatch thing by tomorrow. Also need to start MIT essay at the same time. Already lost 1 week, only 3 left. Need to take care of shadow puppetry first draft as well. this same what's-left-of-the-week.

Group Project aka Team Squid 01

I can't really post much on the group project except bits of the parts I'm responsible for, which are:

• Environment concept art
• Environment modelling and texturing
• Color script - in this case more like light study since it's in B/W
• Lighting
• Compositing
• ...and probably not anymore, but possible matt painting if need.

It's both great and potentially disastrous in that I've never done any of these before in my life. Deliciously great learning opportunities here - practically a feast! On the other hand it's going to be a lot of self-learning and a K2 of workload to overcome. Mostly likely will need to purchase a lighting book once library loan expires. Already purchased compositing book, slow delivery. What I can post is a non-revealing color script page:

MA3D MADE MSc Group Project

I was hoping to be in a group that has people from more than 1 disciplines, but I guess I didn't social enough so I didn't really know who to work with except just the people from my own disciplines. In the end I joined group with my own classmates, and then someone from MSc called to ask if I want to work on his game project, but I was already signed up with this group... . So far it looks like I'll be doing all sorts of stuff I've never done before (which is easy because I've never done any of this before): support concept art, environment modeling, lighting, camera movement, and compositing.