Major - Reflective Statement

I won't lie, if I really wanted to I could make this reflective statement just be a list of every little detail that went wrong from premise all the way to the end, but that wouldn't be productive and would just come off as whiny, so I'm going to try to make this a comprehensive as possible and explain why I felt certain things went the way they did.

I'll start this reflective statement by explaining how the pandemic affected my project; I want to explain my thoughts on the story I settled on, before going into the characters I created, lastly I need to voice my opinions on what I ended up submitting before making my final reflection of the project as a whole.

Lockdown

Just to get this out of the way first. Did COVID-19 and the lockdown impact my project in any way? I feel it did, just not very much. Working from home has been something I have always struggled to do; even at school I was notoriously bad at doing homework; not because I can't do the work, but because I struggle to focus when I'm in the one environment that I view as my safespace.

Working from my bedroom creates big issues for me as things like my video game consoles are staring me in the face the whole time. Now, someone did suggest unplugging the games so I might focus on my work, but I would never do that because then I'd have no escape from work and that would stress me out to no end. I was relieved when we was allowed back into uni because I could return to the blue room, which I did. Over those last couple weeks at uni, I managed to do all my animation (scene, turnarounds and walk cycles) all from uni, because I can focus with little or no distractions.

Other than the issue of work environment, the fears created by the pandemic have taken a toll on my mental health which was deteriorating long before we went into lockdown, so I do not believe that the pandemic is solely responsible for this. However, I believe that it has made my situation worse, resulting in my fear of using public transport and the public in general; bearing in mind I live with vulnerable people and catching COVID my well have resulted in my worst nightmare, so this added anxiety didn't help in any way.

With that being said, I'm proud that I have produced the content that I have, given the restrictions from the lockdown. It is just a shame that I genuinely believe that I would have achieved far more had I been at uni rather than stuck in my bedroom.

The Story

Pandemic aside, I have many gripes with the story I ended up with. I want to believe that my main strength in the creative field is my story telling, I am proud of the stories I have created over the years, however, when it comes to explaining them to other people I often stumble over my own words and it becomes difficult to get my point across. I went into premise with a list of ideas and high hopes that I'd get to make one of them, all of my ideas were rejected, leaving me defeated. I know that Alan wanted me go outside of my comfort zone for more ideas, but in my opinion that didn't help. I don't know if Alan misinterpreted my ideas or if I didn't explain them properly, but what happened was I started going back down on the downward spiral mentally. It felt like the thing I actually believed I was good at had been thrown back in my face.

One of my ideas was the opening of a much grander story I've been working on since 2012, this was rejected due to it sounding too much like part of a much larger story rather than being a stand alone piece, which is true, but this actually became the basis for my final project. The original idea featured a vigilante storming into a bank and stopping a gang of bank robbers, before stealing something from the bank's vault himself. I hold quite a bit of resentment against Klepto-Man since to me he feels like a mockery of my original idea, but he works better as a stand alone, comedic, UPA style story. It feels watered down to me, and frustrates me because I was so excited for these final projects, but my motivation plummeted the longer I worked on a story that no longer felt like my own.

Despite that I am still proud of the scripts I wrote for Klepto-Man; which also plays into another issue, I put a lot more effort into the scripts than the animatic. I enjoy writing and I like building worlds and stories in words because they are easy for me to follow, this creates the conflict of this being a visual course and I struggle to turn my words and imagination into animatics. During the storyboarding and animatic stage I feel like most of the misunderstandings Alan and I had were due to me being unable to convert my ideas into clear animatics. 

I struggle with timing and I have little eye for detail, which results in clunky animatics with off timing and floaty animation. This project really has shown me what I struggle with specifically, but I have no idea how to address these issues due to them not being skill based but mental.

Towards the end of the project I flirted with the idea of scrapping the story and replacing it with a series of slapstick skits & sketches. My thought process was being dictated by events prior. One of the issues Alan kept having with my animatics was that they felt too static, while they weren't static in my imagination, I've already explained the problem there; I was also having issues with voice actors, specifically the people I spoke to suddenly stopped responding to my messages, I don't know what happened. Either way, I decided to axe talking completely, entirely scrapping my script. Because I enjoy world building, the world of Klepto-Man has been something I've been considering and I believe that the world could be wacky enough to house Looney Tunes or even ASDFmovie style skits and sketches. My idea was to create a series of gags that would lead up to Robert Banks getting the idea of robbing the bank, effectively turning the gags into a prequel of sorts, renaming the original idea to "The Misadventures of Klepto-Man: Bank's Heist", which I intended to produce later. However this idea also ended up being scraped, with me resorting to reimagining the original Klepto-Man script into being wordless. While I have planned out the entire thing in my head, getting it into Maya, became my priority before time ran out.

As evidenced by my submission, I only managed to produce one scene of the final idea.

The Characters

Despite the story and characters not being the same as my original story, I don't hate them. While my original character was a lot grittier, Klepto-Man is designed to be a blatant parody of Superman. After Alan introduced me to Roger Ramjet, he became the base for Klepto-Man.

In terms of how the character came out in Maya, Klepto-Man looks very close to how I had envisioned him in 2D, which is very good. His face was slightly confusing to work around, but I figured it out. The cape was my first proper exploration into ncloth. I do find it funny that there is a tutorial for the exact situation of a hero's cape on the website, so that worked out well for me.

The villain, Robert Banks, was developed to work alongside Klepto-Man's UPA inspiration. I wanted Banks to be a very stereotypical, mustache twirling villain, and I feel like I achieved this. Banks was the other character to feature ncloth, however it proved to be more complex that I'd like, but I did eventually figure it out.

The three henchmen characters, Lenny, Denny & Benny; were originally not meant to be their own individual characters, however as the story developed, so did the henchmen. I used the dynamic of slapstick trios, such as the three stooges, as a template for these characters.

Truth be told I am proud of what I have achieved with these five characters. Going straight from Jet Pack Jones as the only character I had ever modeled/rigged to designing, modelling, skinning and rigging five unique characters, I think that I have accomplished something here.

Submission

I am disappointed that I didn't get to finish my entire project by submission. However, my disappointment is overshadowed by the my pride in what I have completed. My depression has gotten much worse over the last year, resulting in entire weeks where I could barely bring myself to get out of bed, however I still managed to finish with completed characters, walk cycles and a finished scene. To me, the work I have achieved shows that I do have the know how to produce animated projects, I just need to work on refining and fixing the mess that is my time management.

However, I feel burnt out and need a break after this, so improving my skills can wait until I'm back in a better place of mind.

Minor - Reflective Statement

Looking solely at the project, without paying attention to any outside factors, I can say that I'm not too disappointed with my work in Minor. I have created five fully modeled characters and have rewritten my script to be shorter and, in my honest opinion, funnier. Granted I didn't manage to get onto rigging as soon as I would have liked, but my reasons for this a to do with elements unrelated to the project specifically.

Speaking of which, I feel like the elephant in everyone's rooms, namely the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns, has negatively impacted everyone, not just myself. I don't want to use the lockdown as an excuse for lack of work, but I cannot ignore how it has hindered both my work ethic and my mental health considerably. It was common knowledge that I was on campus nearly daily and this allowed me time away from my issues and distractions at home, obviously due to lockdown restrictions, I can no longer do this. I am by no means blaming anyone for this, I understand the severity of the situation and I know why we cannot go back to campus, it's just frustrating for me as working from home is incredibly difficult.

Before lockdown I would work on campus and my bedroom was a place for me to recharge, for lack of a better word. However due to obvious circumstances, my place of rest has now become the same place I have to do my work, and I am struggling because of it. I no longer have a place to relax, not that I even have the time to either, and I'm becoming burnt out quicker. I struggled through Minor due to at times not feeling motivated to do anything, this is a dangerous mindset that I have been in before, and I can tell you I don't like it.

My Minor project has suffered because I am suffering, I'm not as far as I would have liked to have been because I feel emotionally exhausted. I can't help but let the chaos of the outside world get to me, but this is the time we live in. I'm struggling to cope with the idea that normalcy is gone and I am struggling to adapt to the idea that I just don't get a break anymore, because there is no longer a difference between the workplace and my living quarters. I am trying desperately not to fall back into the pit of depression, but that is easier said than done.

Despite this I am proud of the things I have achieved in this project. From my understanding modelling just one character can be a daunting task, yet here I am with five completed models. Granted they are not rigged or UV'd, but this is work I can continue in due time, for the moment I am proud in myself for being able to create characters from scratch and have them come out looking as I had imagined. 

The other part of my work this project has been to my story. While I'm not super fond of my animatic, I am proud of my script. The main complaints from my original story was that it was too long and that it didn't flow well enough. This newest version is almost 2 minutes shorter than the 6 minute original and, in my opinion, it is much funnier. I have run this version of the script through a few people, to which I have received positive feedback. This greatly improved my confidence in myself and the project.

In conclusion, I feel like the current events of the world have severely, negatively impacted my work, however the work I have produced I am pleased with and am happy to move onto Major with.

Toolkit 2 - Reflective Statement

Overall Toolkit 2 went decent at best for me, I started each of the main components but only completed a few of them.

Excluding my issues with mental health and the lockdown (which I address in my premise reflective statement), my biggest issue this year has been the same issue from last year, my time management.

Life Drawing

I enjoyed Life Drawing, it was a nice, peaceful hour to recompose myself before moving on with main projects. Whether it was due to lockdown or not, I can't remember, but it certainly was a shame that we ran out of sessions.

Character Design

I did learn quite a bit from these lessons, not that it showed in my rushed final character bible. I was planning on reworking and finishing it, but I ran out of time.

In Lesson Animation

I think I could do with a bit more practice with moom. Preferably on an actual computer and not my MacBook, I found the "acting animation" incredibly difficult to do from home and lagged behind quite a bit. I did enjoy the lip syncing however.

Lighting and Rendering

Short and mostly easy tutorials that I had no issue doing, yet I didn't get through them all. With Mudbox's files being difficult to use on my MacBook and being genuinely concerned if rendering would even work properly, I didn't particularly want to do these tutorials at home, which obviously is now my only option.

Mudbox

Not completing all the mudbox files is honestly just poor time management on my part. Granted I did have issue with Mudbox's files on my MacBook (Specifically I have no idea where they are, Apple has a tendency to hide these things), but generally I can work my way through the tutorials, I just ran out of time. Even though I know it won't be graded I will try to complete this over the summer.

Pipeline 1

Easily the most important thing I should have done and yet here I am with next to nothing to show. I had quite a bad mindset when it came to Jetpack Jones, I was always thinking along the lines of "I've got time, I'll do it later" and when deadline came around, realisation came crashing down on my like a ton of bricks. Despite not having much completed now, I will be completing it before the start of next year, as I know how important it is to learning how to create characters; and with how my premise looks currently I have five characters I need to make, so the quicker I get on with pipeline 1, the better.

Premise - Reflective Statement

I walked into this project and the entire year of 2020 with confidence and my head held high, only for the year the metaphorically punch me in the stomach.

I was originally quite excited for the premise project as the opportunity to create my own story was one of the main reasons I came to the course, however I feel like this wasn't something I was fully able to achieve . I understand my difficulty in explaining my ideas fully, but I cannot ignore how frustrated I got when I didn't even have a foundation for my project in the first term of working on it. It was also about this time my mental health went back down the drain.

I don't want to use my depression as an excuse for the lack of work, but I will say it was a main point in my lack of motivation. Even once I finally had a beginning of a story, I failed to find the motivation to keep it going, which is why I took so long between updates.

That being said, I don't hate the work I have produced. I have quite enjoyed trying to learn the UPA style and I will continue to experiment with it over summer. The project I have finally got off of the ground here, in my opinion, is basic but can work and I'm more than happy to continue with it.

I'm just slightly annoyed that I had such high hopes for this project, only for it to crumble due to my mental health. And that's not even addressing the global pandemic sized elephant in the room.

The quarantine has ruined my work ethic. I struggle to focus at home, which is why I preferred to go into uni to work daily. Obviously this is no longer possible and my focus went out the window. Paired with my battle with mental health, this is why updates seemed to be less frequent than necessary at the end of the project.

I know in my OGR, Alan suggested I get then story planned out quickly so I have enough time to make improvements, unfortunately this was severely affected by previously mentioned issues.

Had there not been a pandemic or my mental health plummet, I would have liked to get at least another draft of the script created, I wanted to complete the animatic and I also wanted to at least started on some form of Pre-Vis. Unfortunately time was not a friend of mine this year.

Once again my biggest issue of the year was time management. I will be mentioning this in greater detail on my Toolkit 2 reflective statement.


In summary: I went into this project with high hopes, but my mental health and a planet wide pandemic kicked me down. Despite this, I still ended up with some work that I can say is at least decent, in my incredibly negative opinion.

I don't really have an excuse for my lack of stuff in terms of the careers pack outside of these same issues.

Collaboration - Reflective Statement

Going In

I had no delusions that this project would be easy, I was actually kind of daunting it. But as things started, my nerves eased a little as the team (Divine, Chelsea and I) started spitballing ideas. Our prompt was "Deleted Scenes & Outtakes from..." so we went through several ideas, including Disney films, Harry Potter and Titanic. We settled on creating outtakes for Captain America: Civil War. We also created our team branding. I suggested Boop Studios, but we ended up going with Namina Studios, as suggested by Divine.

Scripting

Our idea was to create a blooper reel using the airport fight sequence from the film. With Chelsea handling concept art and Divine on storyboard, I was to write the script. I rather enjoy writing scripts, so I had no issue with doing this. However due to the rushed nature of the project I only managed to complete two drafts, before we moved into production.
You can find both scripts here: https://naminastudios.blogspot.com/2019/11/script-first-and-second-drafts.html

Modelling

Despite only having a second draft script and about a quarter of a storyboard, we had to begin modelling. I was given this task. Modelling was difficult due to my lack of practice with Maya over the last few months (An issue I will address later), however I do not think modelling went terribly. You can find my full modelling documentation here: https://tdbucaanimation.blogspot.com/2019/12/collaboration-moodleling.html
I don't mention how long I spent trying to figure out the inner-workings of a cardboard box there, but the lest time said about that waste of time, the better.

Animating

Many changes were made to our original idea before animating: Scene 4 was split in two, scene 6 was cut due to time constraints and scene 7 was cut due to requiring at least 6 different Mooms (Talk about being too ambitious). I was supposed to animate scenes 3 (Black Widow getting hit in the head by a boom mic) and 4 (Captain America and Iron Man having a slapping fight).

With scene 3 being as simple as it is, I figured that I should try to polish this scene as much as I could. I did film reference footage for this scene, but I forgot to upload it to basecamp (if you would like the footage, I still have it and can upload it).

I followed the reference footage to get an idea as to how the scene would play out. In terms of animation, I think the scene came out quite well; in terms of humour however... I think it failed because of the way that I had envisioned the scene. I find delayed reactions quite funny I played into that, but I understand that humour is subjective, so I guess it just didn't work for everyone.

Because I wanted at least one well animated scene, scene 4 got pushed to the side as scene 3 and my post-modernism essay took priority. That isn't to say there is nothing of scene 4. Reference footage of me and Katerin slapping each other exists; as does the scene file, with some beginning poses, however nothing anywhere near ready to be posted.

Editing

And lastly for this, I was the one that edited the final video. It was a bit of a rush job, using the studio ident and some of the sounds that Divine had created/gathered for the animatic. I do not think it was a complete failure at least, because I'm certain that viewers knew what was actually happening. (However it certainly isn't what I'd make public on my YouTube channel.)

Film Reviews

Even though this isn't part of the main collaboration project, I still figured it would be important to mention. With all the work going on with the main project I haven't had time to work on my reviews, weak excuse, I know. The film reviews are the type of work that should be done at home anyway, however this comes back to my issue of not being able to work from home due to my computer being utter rubbish. In my panicked state of the last few weeks, I managed to work something out to get a laptop. At the time I was heavily focusing on getting my essay written, but it has now become an opportunity for me to finally get film reviews written and toolkit 2 worked on from home. As great as that is I still only produced two half-arsed reviews in the time I had left to complete them. Not my greatest work, and I am really quite annoyed with myself about it.

Final Thoughts

To conclude: We started well, but time quickly became our biggest issue. A lot of content was either cut or unfinished and I feel like if we had more time, we would have a more complete package. Doesn't help the comic timing issue however, that was all over the place. 

Toolkit 1 Submission - Life Drawing

Reflective Statement
Not going to lie, I thoroughly enjoyed life drawing. I was unsure of it at first but it later became a way for me to relax slightly later into the year. I think my work also shows clear improvement over the year, which I am quite proud of. I believe it shows a clear building of confidence in my ability to draw. Obviously there is much more improvement to be done, but I think that my work here is a very good start.

Life Drawing Compilation by Terry Brunt on Scribd

Links to all Life Drawing Blogger pages (for large pictures):
Life Drawing Label
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9
Session 10
Session 11
Session 12
Session 13
Session 14
Session 15
Session 16

FSTS: Reflective Statement

I'm not going to lie, I'm disappointed in myself  over this project. Not in terms of the work produced, but my work ethic.
In terms of the work produced, I'm certainly pleased with what I created. On reflection, I can definitely see cracks and faults, but if I made more time I'm sure I could easily have addressed them.
In my crit feedback, Phil and Simon, noted my reliance on maya to block out environments. They told me I need to stop doing this as they feel that my work without a crutch can develop much better. I agree. Phil told me to stop using the same tools and Simon told me to stop worrying so much about perspective. I will try my hardest to resist falling back to my blocky default in favour of creating something new and, hopefully, better.

Honestly I have little excuse for my lack of work done and uploaded this term.
I need to use this coming reading week to my full advantage in order to get all toolkit work and reviews left over completed and uploaded. I know I can do it.


In Summary:

• I intend to use this coming reading week to catch up on work that should have already been done.
• I'm going to stop using maya to create perspective and instead I will just draw freely and see how that goes.
• I'm going to complete work as soon as I get it from now on so I don't end up in the situation of having a massive 'to do' list again.