Production Journal Shot Planning

After my 5 week milestone I have decided to start planning my shots out, I have yet to model my environment props and sets, for now I'm just using basic shapes to block out my shot. Once the animation is all completed, with the time left excluding render time, I will decided how detailed my Sets and environment props will be.

5 Week Milestone

My 5 week milestone for my Major animation was to finish off the rigs for both of my characters. I have pretty much achieved what I had set out for my 5 week milestone except for the facial expressions. I am currently working on a solution for my face expressions, I wanted to use joints to achieve the minor movements of the face and use blend shapes for the primary expression such as smile blink etc. Hopefully with a bit of luck I will be animating by the end of next week. during the 5 Weeks been having a few dramas with the rig and the JTD rigging script, nothing dramatic thou, but I honestly believe painting weights is far more painful then rigging. the reason I'm saying this is because i kept using the replace tool. A tool every teacher has told me to stay away from unless your flooding 100% with it, I guess I like learning the hard way.

I have uploaded 1 screen shot each for my characters showing the rigs and a stylized toon shaded render. I have to discuss with Jack if i decide to chose this style how would I go about rendering my back grounds and environments.

Production continues

After running into some 'rigging' difficulties, I felt it necessary to perfect my 3d models.I've been remodeling both the 'Old man' and the 'child' character, tweaking bits and pieces to add a refreshing stylized realism to my short film.

I enlarged the 'child's' head to almost 'cartoony' proportions, as it was a simple way to show off the characters youthful appearance. Have you ever noticed that a child head is massive in comparison to it's tidy body? It's a sure fire way to add a childish and innocent feel to any character, by simply enlarging the head.

Chris Borg, my well commissioned texture artist has almost finished all textures. With a few more hours spent on modeling, the typology of my characters will run so smoothly, that I will thank myself later when the task of rigging and skinning rears it's ugly head.