Wow, an update!

Yeah it’s an update! Yay! I have finished all the assets in my demo, all the texturing etc. etc. now I’m just rendering (taking forever of course *sigh*)

I have my business cards printed and my CD covers and my cd covers printed (have to go pick them up) I also bought a domain name!!! It’s www.sharonvisuals.com and it’s got nothing on it yet because I still need to build the website.  I will decide on hosting once I know how big my website is lol.

Unfortunately for me, I had printed my business cards before I bought my domain name *sigh* but I only bought 100 so I can if I want, print a new set without having wasted too much money… well no sense dwelling on what I coudl have done and focus on what I can do now!

Once again I shall get my wonderful and totally awesome friends from the New Media to help me work out the coding in css etc.

The good thing is that I printed my dvd covers with the domain name! I went to the school copy centre for that… I got one high quality copy then xeroxed the rest for 1/2 the price woot!  There’s not too much deterioration so it makes me happy lol Unfortunately I forgot my flash drive at the copy centre and they close at 3:30 grr.  I suppose lack of sleep is a very bad thing… and I have been lacking sleep this past few weeks because I’ve been workign so hard on my demo.

On more news, I have an idea for my next demo that I want to get started on now but can’t for 2 reasons… one, I’m still working on this demo and second, I want to model my friends from back home in Victoria and well, I’m not back home in Victoria until after Industry Night.  One thing at a time! That’s what I have to keep telling myself.

I have also bought some pocket folder things for my 2D artwork stills =D so I will have a totally awesome looking setupat industry night hehe

-Sharon

So close yet so far…

Wow what a cliche title I’ve put up *sigh*

So I’ve been to more industry night meetings.  Radical as a venue is out of the question because of how it got bought out and they are having a big change etc.

My demo!  Alright my demo… previs almost finalized… my production teacher wants to ’spend more time to the room’ because it IS my main piece.  Alright, I can do that, add one more camera shot…

I actually realized that I’ve got more done on my demo than I originally thought but I’m still a long way off.  I shall continue to try!!! I wanted to put up screenshots of the girl (she’s finished! well… except for the hair/bonnet)  but I must continue to work on my dresser and the ’small bookshelf’ and all the props on top like a washbasin and the chamberpot under the bed heh.

-sharon

updates!!!

Well I don’t have any screenshots at the moment but I’ve pretty much finished as much as I would like to have done on the girl character… her hair… I’m debating whether or not to put her in a bonnet but the teacher said he’d do a class on modelling hair after we finish vehicle modelling.

By the way, vehicle modelling is tough because I spent the past month and a half looking for good carriage references!!! I had to go to the library for good pictures of carriages and it seems that everybody wants to take pictures from one pov… the mostly side view but angled towards the fron’t for a nice 3/4 *sigh* and even most of the pictures I asked my sister to take of the actual horse-drawn carriages in Victoria were like that!  I spent a good part of my monday calling different museums to find out whether or not they had carriages and yesterday I finally got a response! The New Westminister museum has a stage coach! Exactly what I need! I’m heading there on Sunday to take pictures and draw pictures.

My demo reel? Well I have finalized my camera shots for sure, I have a decent amount of time (40 seconds thereabouts) My friend Billy from the New Media program made me an awesome looking business card (I shall have to get it printed as soon as possible!) and the music for my demo reel… I know I want Debussy to fit both the time period and the setting but I’m still deciding between Valse Romantique and Arabesque 1.

I can hardly believe it’s the end of July now! I planned on having all my models and texturing done by the end of August so that I can show my teachers, have stuff tweaked and also have all of September to render.

-Sharon

Stylization

So now I’ve decided that I’m going to stylize my characters to avoid stressing about falling into the uncanny valley.  I’ve run this decision by the program head and one of my teachers.  The program head thinks that if I’m going to stylize then I must have solid designs in 2 weeks or go back to my original ‘realistic’ approach.

I sketched designs between classes and now I have about a … hrm… I say, 80% solid model for the girl and a maybe 30% solid model for the soldier… I showed my production teacher my models and he gave me input and wanted me to look at Asterix characters and French animation for inspiration.

Now we’re doing scheduling.

-Sharon

EA Tour

Whew! Taking a small break from doing some homework (lighting that haunted hallway now lol) and going to talk about the tour of EA sports I was on this early afternoon with the rest of the class.  So many of us (40 thereabouts) we were split into 2 groups and were taken around EA to see the facilities mostly heh.  There was a gym with weights and treadmills etc. a basketball court, they have a LOT of arcades! Old arcade games hehe and we got to see their old motion-capture building and also their soccer field and then we had a small presentation by one of the employees.

Seems that it’s not exactly animation they are looking for right now (good news for me!).  It’s modeling and, here’s the awesome bit, concept artists!!! That’s EXACTLY what I want to do!  Although I have yet to put any of my artwork up here … hm… I should get onto that, putting up some old 2D work and making some new ones too!

-Sharon

Industry now…

Well in Animation class last Friday, the teacher said that the current trends of industry is that they are looking for animation… now I’m not too too bad at animation it’s just not my first choice of career.

I figured that once I finished my modeling reel, I can add some more animation and therefore have 2 reels, one to show off the modeling and another to show off the animation. I already have some idea of how I would like my characters to interact in the ‘animation’ part.

Also a few weeks ago I downloaded the ‘andy’ rig for animation class since it had more human proportions.  The hips are ‘broken’ and the arms are a bit funny, and the head is a bit big but all in all it’s WAY more proportioned than generi or bloke.

Personally I prefer generi’s controls and after talking to my animation instructor about the rigs, he said that with andy I’m produced my best animation so far.  I think my original theory about my needing human proportions on my rig to animate well was right… also it may be because I think andy is a more aesthetically pleasing rig so I’m happier working with it.

When I talked about andy’s disproportionate head ‘getting in the way’ my instructor said that I should stop thinking in terms of ‘the head is big and in the way’ and start thinking in terms of ‘this is what the movement is sort of like and now how can I make the rig do something similar’

-sharon

Scheduling

So I wrote a schedule in my planner of all my projects and what I was going to do on them every day.  I liek this, instead of just ‘project due on this date’ I have ‘unwrap, add simple textures’ or ‘do simple lights’ and ‘block in this part of animation’ and I feel so much more organized!

I have also done a rough previs and colour scheme for class and it has been approved by both my portfolio teacher and my 3D Design teacher so I’m going to use it!  Analogous colour scheme and I just made a professional email account on gmail.

Now I’m going to send my info and color scheme to my good friend Mimi in the New Media program and she shall help me design my business card! *jumps for joy and dances*

-Sharon

title… title.. always needing a title here?

Sometimes I just can’t think of a title to put up there!

Anyways, last week I was thinking of finishing my presentation project for career prep class with Liam right away and present tomorrow, Monday, since I would like to get it over with… but after some thinking and Liam talking to Katie and other stuff like that, we decided “why rush when we have 3 weeks to finish it?” and well, we aren’t going to present tomorrow…

Then on Tuesday I think we start the Compositing ‘half class in, half class out’ thing with Mac.

I have created a schedule for myself from the most important assignments to the least important assignments! First, my previs and colour scheme which I believe is due on Wednesday. I planned out all my camera shots on paper, now I just have to do them!

Then I’ve got an animation fight/dance sequence due Friday.

Next, I need to unwrap and texture my junkyard for texturing class and then I must unwrap, texture, light and render the candles scene for my production class.

Then there is also the character I must do for my design class! I need to make a proper character sheet for the soldier uniform and start working on it.

Oh yeah! also on Friday I helped Max from the other class make the boobs on his model. It was my first attempt at making boobs and I think I did a swell job =) All that drawing and knowing that boobs are ‘tear shaped’ and point ’slightly to the side’ since women breast-feed and all was all helpful because real women don’t have boobs that stick straight out like Austin Powers fem-bots…

One more thing! Russel, the program head, said that my colour scheme should be more muted because in Regency everything is gaudy, the furniture, the decorations etc. so the colour scheme should be muted to balance everything.

-Sharon

industry night and demo starting

Industry night last Wednesday was interesting.  The industry people were pretty much ‘concealing’ themselves among the crowd.  A lot of the class didn’t show up o industry night though… but there were a lot more animators than here in this class.

Devon’s demo reel was really popular and I think Morgan’s demo really turned out looking good (of course he still wans to work on it and actually get the entire story in).  I collected a copy of all my friends’ demos at the end of the night.

During the evening I collected EVERYONES’ business card so I could study the designs.  Overall the New Media and Design students had WAY nicer business cards (well that’s obvious, that’s what THEIR expertise is!) I’m going to get some of my friends in the New Media program to help me with mine =D

I helped Simon make his business card although I haven’t had time to scan it yet… (been totally on and off sick this past week *sigh)

On Saturday I managed to make Morgan’s head which I plan on using for my demo reel!  But I am not happy with this head… so I’m going to make it again! The more I make Morgan’s head, the better I’m going to get at making Morgan’s head.

-Sharon

animation and more wordpress troubles…

I just found a ‘draft’ post that I hadn’t actually posted yet… from 2-3 weeks ago!  Aw man, I seem to be having tonnes of trouble with wordpress *sigh

Well anyways, with my hard drive suddenly deciding to corrupt itself and losing all my work I seem to have been having less and less time…

Well I had to redo the pre-vis for project portfolio class and the head for design class and the junkyard for texturing class and also the animation for animation class… well the blocking in was due this week.  I got an extension for the head.

Well, I’ll be working real hard this weekend for sure.

I’m glad I”m making friends with the kids in the New Media program  hehe, now I know people who can help me out with making business cards and a website!

Animation is getting easier and easier and now that I learned how to do ‘blocking in’ and ‘previs’ properly it’s all good!

-Sharon