For this section of the development stage we decided to work separately on cameras as it would save time for the actual animating section of the project. Here are some sneak previews of whats to come-
Rendered by Patrick-
Rendered by me- 2 are missing the sky this is because it wasn’t added yet, the two above have the sky painted by Patrick.
Unfortunately I was unable to get anymore renders as machine was not coping well with the pressure.
The screenshots below are the scenes that I was assigned to animate-
I started in order of my scenes which can be seen above, so that means that I started with the Kite below is my first test that I did once I got the hang of what I was doing to be honest its not that good but I was working out how to control the rig so there was a lot of Q&A before I really got the hang of what I was trying to produce.
Below is the playblast-
After I got the hang of the rig and after many questions to the group on what needed to be changed, to me constantly asking questions on what needs to be changed to improve the final film so I thought I would save a vast amount of time on fixing the problems immediately so we could move on.
Below is the more recent playblast-
Final Playblast of my scene-
Some Stills from my scene-
I believe the bottom one to be the final position of the balloon also the kite was relocated so that it fit the perspective of the balloon.
Final Render-
I honestly don’t like how this rendered to me the kite looks blurry. In this scene we wanted the balloon to look slightly out of focus to create the depth of field, but in the final render it doesn’t look quite how we wanted it to be. We initially wanted to prevent this problem by testing it out before hand and it didn’t look like this, I am still unsure why it came out the way that it did. However I am the only one who feels this way as my group like it maybe its just me because it’s my work.
Next scene was the reflection within the eyes of the kite for this is was just a struggle positioning the camera as his eyes were hard to place within the view of the camera so that it would show a vast amount of his face as shown within the animatic I tried to match it as well as I could.
In this scene he doesn’t really do much except admire the kite, so I tried to give him as much emotion that I could so I mage him blink a couple times and moved his eyes slightly so that he doesn’t look dead In the eyes as this all the audience will be focused on.
This is the first playblast I did-
This is the most recent playblast I did-
Here is my final playblast of the scene above –
Here are some stills from that scene-
In this shot I was able task the groups opinions on what needs fixed to me your group are able to see the imperfections that you don’t so its always nice to get there opinions on what could be changed within the scene.
Final Render Reflection-
Next scene of mine was the trapped scene here what I attempted to demonstrate the feelings within the eyes and body of feeling fed up with his current situation.
The first playblast-
Recent Playblast-
The more final playblast of my scene-
For this scene I asked Mateja for her opinion what needed to be changed or improved upon and her suggestions were really helpful, to be honest working with Mateja has been a great learning experience and I would of loved to work with her again In the future but unfortunately she has to go home to Croatia.
Stills of this scene with lighting-
Here I was playing around with the lighting to see how dark we wanted the inside to feel. A more recent still will be added.
Final Render Trapped-
Recent stills-
Final Stills-
Animated Short-
Reflection-
Looking back at the camera work I was slightly nervous as this is an area in Maya I haven’t experienced before but looking back through my work I’m happy with what I have produced. I think my scenes reflect the animatic well as I tried to achieve the shots as well as I could hopefully that can be seen in my work.
Also I think animating within the room together really helped the process and also keeping in constant contact on what looks good and what doesn’t really helped the improvement of the animation I think because we were able to constantly help each other through problems and also give advice on how to improve a scene really made a difference in what the final scenes had looked like.
Overall I really loved working on this team and would be more than happy to work with them in the future.
Shannon Murray - University of Ulster Animation 