Less Than Two Weeks Left

 This one's going to be short and sweet since we're less than 14 days out. We've been going hard on animating the last couple weeks. I blocked this sequence.

 The shot where it's looking down on him in the time machine had a few camera options, this one below being the other option.

 Personally I like it a little less, and I'm glad we went with the other shot.

 The other couple things worked on in the past few weeks have been the holoscreen from the interior of the time machine. We came up with an idea of how to animate the typing for our intro sequence (by using OBS) and are working on Xander's idea list for what to get Emily for a present (WIP, below left). Additionally, I started work on the turnstiles from our subway shots, but due to some miscommunication with someone who wasn't here on Friday, but was evidently working on them, I am no longer focused on those, but will post them here anyway (below right).

 So, yeah. That's that. I think by the time I write another one of these we'll be done, and I'll be stressing about how I don't have a job lined up yet, or something like that. 

 Maybe that one will be on time? 

An Update (But On Time)

 Oh look I'm posting on time!

 Having redone the animatic before last post, we were all hands on deck to get it up to speed. I had nine shots over two scenes. The first seven shots are within the new animatic section, so they had to be set up, and I had to create some new geometry (which I will be adding images to to add to the story).

 Here's a blocking pass.

 And then the animatic was changed for the last time (I hope). Scenes were shifted, scenes were cut. The film is a whole 25 or so seconds shorter. And some of my shots were nerfed and then re-calculated. I blocked in these shots again, and they are seen as follows 

 I was assigned new shots to get into blocking state while Kody picks up these shots to spline and clean up. This assignment was given by Tom, and while I'm not really happy about it (I need demo reel material), it is what it is and I'll get this film done if it kills me.

 Working on the items that go in the screens of the  still. We also have a few

Okay, This Was Late Too, but We Have a Plan

 So these are due on Sundays, and it's (almost) every other Sunday, so they should really be easier to be on top of...

 Anyway, this week we had switched gears and started working on making everything 3-dimensional for the animatic. I finished up blocking for the two shots I was given, and started polishing them. The results is what follows.

 Then the next week (read: literally the next day) we switched up the animatic entirely, my shots were mostly cut, so I stopped working on them and have started my new shots by the time this posts. I went from a total of two shots to a total of nine shots (totaling 34 seconds (that's the first time I've done that math and ghuhh that's more than I want, but it's that time!)) and I need to hustle.

 So the plan is going in place. Part one: We're animating hard. This includes coming in after work on Tuesday and Thursday, and after classes on Wednesday to just... work... Part two: We may ignore homework for other courses (but to be real, I need to work on all that too, because it's my senior year, and gods I don't need to fail right now...). Part three: start working on the next post before it's due, that way it may actually be on time.

So This One Was Late

 So, I didn't think about this that much, but apparently this was due on Sunday. Which really shouldn't have surprised me, but it was due the same week as a Production Pass and that threw me off a bit. So here we go.

 I actually worked on stuff this week. However it wasn't a lot. I got half of a model mostly done (like 85%) and then had to work on other homework for courses that I also need to pass. And then on Friday I got orders to stand down on creating assets and start animating so we can get everything sort of to the same level of doneness (as it almost always should be). So it's Wednesday night, I'm sitting alone in the Icebox watching anime and getting a few shots worked on. My only problem is we reworked the scene that these shots were in, so I need to re-set the characters and cameras and (maybe) lighting.

 So... yeah... That's an update.

I Think I'm Having a Crisis (and Other Stories)

 So this was supposed to be posted on January 30th. I'm usually all for doing these, but honestly, this one kind of got away from me. So, the normal bit. What did I work on this week? We needed to get our animatic to a fairly standard place across the entirety of its runtime. And so we set out on a quest as a group. I had shots 73-76 (a total of about 340 frames. It wasn't hard, and it didn't take terribly long as I got around to us, but I felt like I had to shove aside other assignments in other classes in order to get this done.

 So, without further ado, here's my shots.

 So, anyway, that was what I was supposed to have done two weeks ago. And then I fell off of the world for a bit. I started feeling sick on February 1st, and it knocked me out for most of the week ending 2/5. My sickness took all of my energy that week and I got no work done. For this week (ending in 2/12) I did apparently (finally) contracted Covid, having a positive test on Monday. It's been a little sucky, but not nearly as  bad as being sick last week was. I wonder if last week was when I actually caught the virus and just happened to get the positive test Monday after one of my parents lost their sense of taste and we collectively went "well shit....."

 In addition to my health being awful, I've been having a lot of motivation issues exacerbated by mental health issues. On top of that, a close friend of mine has dropped off the map, and all the worst things that could possibly be are running through my brain. In order to help combat all of this in the future, I have made appointments with a psychiatrist. Hopefully with help I can curb my depression and anxiety so that this won't be an issue as we close out on the project. And to be 100% honest, I feel terrible about having not produced anything since my couple scenes. It's affected all of my classes, but this being a group project with people I actually know... Well it sucks. I've kept in contact with my group, so they understand what's up, but yeah, I'm going to need to make up for it when everything feels better

 So, yeah, going forward, I'm currently still working on scatter terrain for an environment. I'm already feeling a bit better health-wise, but now I just have to start working on that whole motivation and going to school thing...

This is the End of the Semester

 So, we're at the end of the semester and I'm struggling. This class has been fine, I don't have any complaints about it at all. The short is coming along great, but I've unfortunately been less productive in this class since my last post than I should have been. We've had 3 of these due since then, and I just didn't do them, but I have worked on a little.

 October 22nd was the due date for the animatic, and to be real that was the last thing I really worked on For this I honestly apologize to my team. I've been dealing with other classes that I slacked off in over the previous part of the semester. I am now dealing with that.

 But hey lets actually look at the animatic instead of talking about how I feel bad about stuff.

 We're about a month after this piece was due. We've animated, critiqued, and re-storyboarded and re-blocked this scene since it was due, and we're headed in a similar, but new, but mainly similar direction. 

 It doesn't really matter at the moment. The semester is almost done and we're taking a short break before getting back to work on the film. Kody and I will be finishing up the lab scene when we get back to work.

 I'm going to get back into the swing of this next semester.

Individual/Faculty Review Post

    This is a conglomeration post of all the past "What Have I Been Doing?" posts. This specifically is for the use of Brett and Howard, but I guess if you're reading this you can... also... read it...

    Yea...

    Starting from the beginning... like the very beginning. Not shown here are the four versions of the script that I drafted while the short film still had dialogue. Between Lianno, Sharah, and myself, we took the story and turned it into a manuscript, then polished it until we could bring it to a stage where we were comfortable with pumping out an animatic. Then we played with it while we worked on the animatic, and eventually we scrapped that script to go in another direction, which we're currently working on. 

    The following pictures are storyboards for the first scene that accompanied the original manuscript of the short film

This next picture (right) is an early envisioning of Xander and the time machine. Xander was still generic at the time, but the pose and positioning of the time machine really made me excited. Unfortunately anything remtely like this scene wouldn't quite fit in the new film

Based on a concept art that we saw online while we were looking for inspiration, the art to the left was a (not great) attempt at bringing Xander to life. (I'm currently in a life drawing class that I think is going to really help my character concept art).

    These pictures both above and to the right are concepts for different hairstyles, none of which we decided to go with, but were steps in the correct direction. This also will be affected by my Life Drawing class.

    Not shown are the Fall Guys version and the drill sergeant version of Xander

These next three pictures all have to do with the concept of the time machine. I had further ideas on how it should look. I'm currently in the process of figuring out how to model it, whether or not I should create the interior and exterior together, or separately. That, however, is a plan for after the meeting that goes along with this post.

Shown left is a short storyboard sequence that fits better in our current story. The idea was inspired by Brett. As Xander goes back in time, the picture of Xander and Emily that sits on his desk, along with the Metro ticket that was part of their first encounter. When he leaves, the picture changes to something else (no longer Xander and Emily, but something else) and the ticket fades away into nothing. Like back to the future, but different enough that it isn't direct plagiarism

    To the right is a reproduction of the Breakthrough Award, an award in physics and mathematics. We figured that Xander had a few science trophies awarded to him along his long journey to this point. This was created using the new tool in Maya (I believe its the helix tool?) a few times to make the interior and exterior spirals, and then duping the whole thing like 8 times, offsetting the orb to an angle, then putting it on a pedestal.

    Future planned awards for Xander are the Nobel Prize, in addition to a few other weird looking trophies. That ought to be fun

To the right (top) is a chair that Gabe made for another project. To the right (below) is a modified version of it that we'll be using in our production. I think it needs a little more tweaking, which we'll get done soon, but for now it's the referenced in model.