Week 1: Concept, Story boarding and Planning the experiment

Week 1: Concept, Story boarding and Planning the experiment

Time plan for the experiment

Week 1 and 2 for concept, story boarding and tests
Week 3,4 and 5 for Animatic and 3D animatic
Week 3,4,5 for 3D model Glider
Week 4 and 5 for 3D model Windmill
Week 6 for 3D texturing and UV mapping
Week 6 or 7 for 3D render
bVoice acting, music and SFX
Week 6,7 and 8 for 2D backgrounds
Week 7,8 and 9 for 2D Enviroment
Week 8 ,9 and 10 for 2D Characters
Week 10 and 11 for Rendering and fixes
Week 12 - 15 Reserved in class of problems/ set backs

Note: This is a optimistic plan. I have left 4 weeks free because I anticipate set backs and I want to give myself time to fall back on if all goes to piss.

Concept art

Concept art is going well. While I already have an idea of how I want my character to look for the rest of the story, I have no idea how I want her to look at the beginning (Aka the scene in question)

Storyboards

Process

Create concept art and storyboard.
Create a general 3D animatic.
Model the 3D objects required
Animate and render those scenes.

Need to: Investigate how to make transient background in maya.

Week4: Experiment Progress

Character, glider and windmill designs finished

Modeling has begun for windmills, Glider and robots

Storyboards still needs to be finished.

Running behind time again. So much to do, so little time.

Will try to finish the 3D models week 5 & 6.

Still trying to finish the storyboards as of Sunday.

Week 6

Experiment progress

Glider modeling still under way. Will talk to Vaughn about the cloth physics next week. Trying to keep the model somewhat simple yet still interesting. Not sure how I will make the wing compact and deploy, probably better that I just stick with a static mesh.

Week 9

Modeling going well

Running out of time

UV Editor has been remade, trying to find all the tools

Inserting cloth physics

Unhappy with metal colours, appear different in PS than in Maya

Using mesh to create UV map dupilcates

Week 11, Week 12 and break

UV mapping the models

UV mapping of the glider is taking some time. The unwrapping is playing up and takes way too long. I checked for manifold edges but the mesh is clean. Not totally sure what is going on.

Had to remap the glider and windmill, still not sure what went wrong and caused the maps I set up to break in the first place. News ones seem to be working fine.

Finished texturing the glider and windmill. Mill was WAY quicker than the glider as the glider had lots of strange nocks and corners, and there is still a lot of things I left off the model for the sack of time.

Week 13 (Break)

Finally got ncloth and nconstraits working. Maya seems to be picky about what constraint it will let me use. Will try a render test to get the wind right.

Seems that the wind setting I want is around 15 points.

Will render out the models.

Week 13

Week 13

Creating a looping animation
https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27211

Set graph to infinite
Create Pre and Post cycles


Having trouble moving the ncloth object, things are getting left behind. Vaughn seems to think it is a visual error and it shouldn't affect my model. He seems to be right so far.

Setting up two quick shots to render as I don't have the time to piss about. Using mental ray.

Glider14aug.0014 = Shot one - Frames 1 to 300

Week 10

Week 10

Georges Schwizgebil (Switzerland) - Man without a shadow 

- Paint on glass techniques
- About a man who sells his shadow to a devil-like character in exchange for wealth and a happy life. He finds out that without his shadow he is shunned and avoided.
-Transistions are done using colour and perspective
-Won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Zagreb world festival of animated films.

Run Wrake (UK)

-Made a series of short films that have been influence Len Lye, Oskar Fischinger and Jan Svankmajer
- Made Rabbit (2005) by placing imagery from old children's books/ Stickers and transforming them into a story about the consumerism's corrupting nature.

Stephen Irwin (UK)

-Made "The Black Dog's Progess" a flick boom animation which tells the depressing story of an unwanted black dog.

Regina Pessoa 

- First film "The Night" was made by engraving plaster plate.
- Made "Tragic story with Happy Ending"

Pedro Serrazina (Portugal)

-Made his first directorial debut in 1995 with Tale about the Cat and the Moon
-Also made The Eyes of the Lighthouse (2010) that is a combination of drawn animation, painting, CGI and live action for the sea

Modern Toss (UK)

-T.V series - Lo-fi adaption of Mick Bunnage and Jon Link’s surreal adult cartoons
-The Modern Toss characters first appeared on a website, then in comic books and on t-shirts and greeting cards before the first airing of the T.V show in 2006

Eyes of the Lighthouse Review 

"Eyes of the Lighthouse" is an interesting blend of 2D and CGI animation. I think if anything this short film is probably aimed at a younger audience as the story is rather simple. With that said, the animation is interesting even to an older audience. Personally I think the film would have been better if it was completely 2D as some of the CGI element, mainly the water effects, don't match up the amazing quality of the hand drawn animation. My personal favourite scene is when the father enters the cave to find the daughter's hoard of random trinkets, as I think the drawing captures the chaos and love of a young girl's hoard of personal treasures.

Overall "Eyes of the Lighthouse" is a great animated short film, especially if watching with children.