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Valerie Kagehiro
Week Twenty
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For the final week of the second quarter of production, I finalized all my animation and helped out with compiling scenes together so we can start rendering right off the bat when we get back from break.
Pretty exciting to see the whole thing animated and some rendered snippets of the final look. We only have about six more weeks of production, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to knock it out and get it done in time. We're keeping in contact with sound but until we had a picture-locked animatic for them, there wasn't much they could do. Now that we have the picture-lock, we can start getting final sound in place of the temp we have grown quite accustomed to.
Password is wander
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Week 1 Wander Anchor
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Week Nineteen
This week, I finished a few more of my shots and am working towards the last few left.
We also got together this weekend to start on more environment building. I tried my hand at the grass using Houdini Hair for the first time. It was a super cool learning experience and I definitely know a lot more about Houdini and building grooms. I was able to make different grooms for different shots of the film. The heightfield we have is fairly large, so we're trying to break up everything into the smallest pieces we can to help with the rendering process.
So far so good!
Password is wander
Week Eighteen
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This week I focused on finishing some more shots. We're going to be having another meeting over the weekend to get the environment figured out so I'm trying to get my last few shots done before then or by Monday. So far so good and cloth has been coming along great. The whole team is really focused and we're accomplishing a lot. Now it's just pushing until the end of the quarter to try and get as much done as possible!
Password is wander
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Week Seventeen
This week, I've been making my way through SEQ 400. It should be fully animated by the end of this week so that's pretty exciting! I'm gradually creeping closer to having all my shots animated. We've started thinking about what other jobs I'll be starting on as soon as animation is done. We're predicting tweaks with cloth and hair will happen, but I'm assigned to help lighting pretty soon.
Week Sixteen
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This week, I pushed the last two shots of the film up in my schedule in order to hand them off to Jake, our water sim artist, sooner. It's a pretty long shot, but I'm hoping I can get it done by pairing it with two shorter shots in SEQ 400. I've gotten feedback on some of the shots I've finished the past couple of weeks so I'm hoping I can find the time to make the changes and finalize them for good this week as well.
Password is wander
Password is wander
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Week Fifteen
Over the past week, I've been getting more shots done. In a strange case of happenstance, many of the shots I worked on involved Nia falling to the ground and stumbling around. I didn't mind at all, (I found it amusing actually), but the completion of said shots was definitely an uphill battle. It was certainly a process animating Nia and the majority of the props and characters all doing wild, expressive actions at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed overcoming the obstacles involved with the shots and I learned a lot!
Another event that took place this weekend was what we, the team, dubbed "Set Dressing Day." We all sat down and were able to pretty much set dress all the rocks, bushes, mushrooms, etc. into the environment. The only thing left to do is to replace the proxy trees with the models we will be using.
Password is wander
Week Fourteen
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This week, I refined the animation on my assigned shots. I experimented a lot with getting Momma Duck's wings in nice shapes for the water shot. I think I was able to achieve most of the effect I was striving for, but the rig needs just a little bit more tweaking for the feathers closest to her body. As of right now, the most challenging part of animating her is when her wings are folding or unfolding. The transition between open to close is a little temperamental, but I'm excited to find a solution and get it working! Thanks to Althea's hard work on her rig, I should be able to get the effect I want!
Another challenge I faced was getting the action of Nia tossing the umbrella aside to a more realistic state. Before this, I was struggling with getting it to look believable and we all agreed that I should take another look at the blocking. I decided it was about time to use reference to my aid. After a few tumbles and a help of a trusty friend behind the camera, I went back to the computer with a refreshed and more confident outlook on how to proceed with the shot.
Over the course of this past week, I tried to get ahead on splining the shots due for the next two weeks. Lots of tweaking and polishing needs ot be done, but I'm feeling better about getting things at a good place overall. Hopefully I can keep the pace up and get the remainder of the shots all set!
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Week Thirteen
Password is wander
Week Twelve
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Password is wander
This week, I picked about three or four shots that I aim to finish by next week. I'm hoping with the schedule I made that I can finish seventeen shots by week 8, giving me an extra two weeks to tweak anything if I need to. Then the rest of spring quarter can be used entirely for rendering and post production.
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Week Ten
For the final week of the quarter, our team and I put together a nice reel to show at a quarterlies show. It gives a nice overview of what we were able to accomplish this quarter. I can't wait to see what we'll do next!
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Week Eleven
Over the break, I had the opportunity to get ahead on some of the animation. Below is the updated animatic with our progress thus far. I'm fairly happy with the progress I was able to make over the winter break, but there's a lot more to be done! I'm excited to get started and regroup with the team to figure out a refined battle plan for the next ten weeks. My goal is to hopefully start chugging out completed shots every week.
Later on this week, I worked on adding more poses to the blocking to make sure that I got the timing and the actions down. I also formulated a more precise plan with my team on which shots to get completed for the next several weeks. I'm hoping to make the deadlines with some great looking shots! I should still have some time to polish up at the end, but for now, we are all focusing on getting this film made!
As of right now, I' m focusing on SEQ300 S060 and SEQ700 S060 for the first part of this week, and then the other two shots later. I wanted to get my ducks swimming done as soon as possible so that our water sim artist can start experimenting with it. It's an interesting challenge balancing all these shots, but I have a good mix of short/action snippets and longer/subtle movements as well. I'm excited overall to see how things progress. Hopefully I can make some impressive looking shots across the board in a hurry for the film to wrap on time.
Password is wander
As the quarter is coming to a close, Erin and I are working hard on fixing anything and everything on the animatic to help the film flow a little better and make it interesting to watch. We've made some tweaks according to feedback we've gotten from the class and other peers.
Week Nine
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Week Eight
I made some changes to the animatic to help with the camera moves and the flow of the film. We also decided to go with a widescreen format to help everything feel cinematic and really show off the environment.
I made some changes to the animatic to help with the camera moves and the flow of the film. We also decided to go with a widescreen format to help everything feel cinematic and really show off the environment.
Week Seven
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Week Six
This week, we were able to move into the 3D animatic. Erin and I worked on getting all shots translated into 3D with temporary rigs and assets. We wanted to explore the cameras as quickly as possible.
This week, I finished two concept pieces I did of one of the shots of the frog and of Nia approaching the log. I really liked the forced perspective and I hope we can keep something similar in the final film. Not sure about how cartoony we want to go with the design of the frog, so I went a little zany to see how he would fit in. We liked the largeness of his eyes, but we'll probably tone him down to match more with the concepts of the duck and Nia.
Week Five
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Week Four
This week, I fine-tuned the animatic a little more along with the sound.
Week Three
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For today's class, I went through and modified some of the animatic, but also added some sound. Added a rough score, but will certainly change it later on. It was difficult finding scores that had the right tone and instruments used, but I think I got it in the ballpark. The chase and sad moments are a tad too dramatic, so we definitely want to tone those down.
Week Two
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In today's class, we took a look at the animatic and some of the models that had been started/improved since the last time the class saw it. We got some feedback and then immediately went into discussing the plans for what we wanted/the direction we intended to move into. There was some changes to the style of the duckling that Eugenia needed to include into the model, but most changes were minor. Tatyana started modeling the mother duck. I continued to work on the animatic, trying to piece together what is missing and what could be improved. I feel like a lot of the camera angles could be changed and made more dynamic and cinematic.
For today's class, I started to break down the parts that needed the most work for the animatic. I felt the really important section was when Nia needs to overcome her fear to correct her mistake--during the time she spends hiding behind the rock and shielding herself. Both Erin and I agreed that it goes by too quickly and there isn't a good moment where the audience can track Nia's expressions. I started drawing a couple more boards depicting the mother duck's panic and Nia's deliberation. Still working out the kinks.
I also wanted to continue to explore different camera angles and begin thinking about the color script for the film.
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Today we met with the crew to review the concept and story so far and to gain a better starting point. We also assigned roles for everyone and listed some tasks that needed to be completed on a tentative schedule for the rest of the schedule. We are hopeful that we will be able to get the majority of the rigging done this quarter which means that everything needs to be modeled. As for me, my main priority right now is to break the shots we have into defined sequences and to fill in the gaps with more boards so that an animatic can be produced.
I'm super excited to start this project with all the other amazing, talented individuals on the crew. Let's go!
Week One
In today's class, we looked over a bit of some work everyone had done between the first class and now. We started really distributing tasks between the crew, and I focused mainly on getting the shots and sequences translated into an early animatic so we could really see how things were going cinematically speaking. Below is the first rough cut of the animatic as of now.
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