July 31st, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I changed the number and sequence of shots recently - after adjusting Shot08, Shot10 had to be removed, shots 09 and 11 were merged, and a new shot was introduced after shot 12. Presently my numbering system is a little skewed because of it. The edited playblast I uploaded in my last post has incorporated the new changes but it’s caused a propagation down the rest of the line and now I have to decide if I should continue with my original numbering or rename all my scene files and playblasts/renders. For the sake of organization the answer is clear it’s just such a hassle renaming files. Another major change to the short film is going from PAL 4:3 to 16:9 letterbox format. I’ve been toying with the idea since the beginning, but I wasn’t too concerned about it since I had much more pressing tasks to settle then. Now that I’ve gotten the set and characters sorted and in the midst of animating, I’ve decided that - given the way the shots are designed and the mostly-straight-lines look - the story would look better in a wider, more film-like format. Here’s a sample of what I’m talking about:
In most cases its an improvement over the original 4:3 format but at times it’s not so ideal because of the challenge of directing the audience’s eyes to the intended focus point within the wider but ’shorter’ shot. The pros outweigh the cons though so I’m sticking with the new format:
On a more positive note, I’m quite pleased to report that my animation momentum is still going strong. I’ve managed to complete shots 11 - 18 this week (1st pass only of course). At this rate I should be able to finish up the full set of shots by the end of next week and thereafter focus my attention on refining and implementing the more important changes/improvements. I should have something decent to show at the next mid-term critique session scheduled on 10/08/06.
I’ve also handed the improved block test to my sound designer on Thursday for him to draft out some basic sound effects. We’ll be doing some recording of Kid and Mr. Knox at the studio hopefully this Wednesday if all goes as planned. Another recent development concerns the music for my film. I received an e-mail a couple of weeks back from a composer who has worked on (and is working on) a couple of impressive animated short films expressing an interest in creating music for “Wait, Mister!”. I must admit it does feel like such an honour to have my humble WIP attract such interest! After discussing with my sound designer and ironing out a few concerns, I’m officially going to get the composer on board. It looks like all my audio needs are now set!
I’m still wrestling with the idea of showing you all my playblasts (which means you’ll then know what the full story is and ruin what little surprise it contains) or keeping a portion of it under wraps until the film is fully completed. Until I make up my mind I’ll hold off from uploading the last few shots. I’ll still be working on improving the first half of the film and working on the renders so I hope you still give me feedback on them (or start giving feedback!). Sorry about the secrecy. I hope you understand my reservations. In the meanwhile here are a couple more basic render tests:
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July 25th, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I’ll do a quick recap of what I did the last 7 days before laying out my plan for the rest of this week.
As you may have noticed from the title, I managed to work on a few more shots since my last update. I believe I’ve animated almost half the total number of shots. Of course not all of them are entirely finalized yet. However, I’ve edited them into the proper sequence so you can see the progress up to this point.
Download Shot01-10 v1 playblast (2.48MB Quicktime Sorenson 3)
I’ve also done some more render tests to see roughly how long each frame might take to render (average is 2 min on the PCs in the lab and 4.5 min on my notebook). More test renders:
This week’s main plan is to animate 2 new shots. I’ll also probably attempt to work out the exact passes involved in the final rendering and do more tests. Hopefully I can start rendering some proper shots sometime this week.
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July 15th, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I couldn’t resist tweaking Shot05 a little more before starting on a couple of others this week. Shot06 was supposed to be completed in 1 day and I allocated 3 days for Shot07. I must admit I’m pretty happy with my progress so far even though I know there are a lot of kinks to iron out. I think I’ve settled into my animating groove if there is such a thing. I’ve gotten some good pointers from fellow students and my tutor (Badger). Here’s hoping the momentum continues eh? Crits are welcome as usual 
Download Shot05 v2 Playblast (304kB Quicktime Sorensen 3)
Download Shot06 v1 Playblast (490kB Quicktime Sorensen 3)
Download Shot07 v1 Playblast (241kB Quicktime Sorensen 3)
I had some issues with Mr. Knox’s rig (misbehaving deformers) which caused me to lose a bit of time, but at least I’ve isolated the problem and found a workaround for now. I’m a little worried that troubleshooting problems and incorporating details (i.e. cloth and facial animation) might end up taking a significant amount of time - much more than I catered for in my schedule. I hope the 2 weeks I’ve set aside towards the end for tackling these sort of things is enough. I also suspect I’ll end up working over more than the occassional weekend. Much as I’d like to avoid it (I was planning for weekends to be rest days and/or daytrips with the family), it seems inevitable. I’d really love to fine-tune the animation as best I can before the submission deadline. Well, there is still the hope that the more I animate, the faster my workflow gets!
PS: I must remember to pace myself…
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July 8th, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
It’s the end of the 2-week break and the lab should be filling up with my fellow students from next week onwards. I’ve added the magazine that Mr. Knox will be reading at the start of the film (it’s not textured yet though) as well as the lines on the road. Here’s what the establishing shot looks like now:
Instead of finishing all the models and texture tasks this week, I spent most of the time animating what I consider one of the harder shots for a change. I figure Mr. Knox’s wallet, pockets and Kid’s dirt stains and clothing wear and tear can be set aside for another day. As for animation, I’m adopting the approach of tackling difficult shots mixed with a couple of simpler ones each week. Here’s a playblast of Shot05 that I did. I intend to tweak the cloth animation over the weekend. Tell me what you think?
Download Shot05 Playblast (485kB Quicktime Sorensen 3)
And here’s a sample render of how the shot might end up looking:
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July 2nd, 2006 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I’m still not done with the environment just yet but I thought I’d show you what I’ve got so far. It’s quite hard to be productive and focus on work when the brand new and sunlit (we finally have windows) lab we just moved into is practically empty - about 50% of my coursemates are having fun camping out on the sunny beaches of the Algarve while another 30% are back home visiting their folks for the holidays. This past few days I’ve managed to model and texture the buildings, street lamps, bus stop and bus. Regardless, I am pretty much satisfied with the way the buildings turned out, though I’ve still got to texture the road, model a few more props for Mr. Knox, and settle the final texture details for the characters themselves - particularly Kid. According to my schedule, I still have another week left before I need to fully focus on animating, but I figure if I can steal and set aside more hours for animating, the better the final result will be (in a perfect world of course). We’ll see. Anyway, enjoy the test renders!
As usual any comments and suggestions you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
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