Return to School

It's still the official school holidays but we were told to come to school to continue our projects. So we are starting school 1 month early.

The first week was slow. My group members were overseas, so the rest of us just played games and talked until our briefing on Thursday, 22nd September. That week I did 2 poster designs just to have more variety of posters in the environment.

This week, we got to see our supervisors, Philip and Borko. Philip looked through the animatic and designs and gave us some suggestions about it. One big concern was the design of the office building, as the design and colours made it stand out a lot. We do want it to stand out, but it did not look like an office building. Philip says the colours make it look like a casino or a place of entertainment. So I was tasked to redesign the building but to try to keep the shape similar to the current one. I only completed one sketch.

I was also trying out Toon shader on the buildings to make it look flat. I have completed converting 2 buildings to the Toon shader, so there is 2 more left to go.

I think that is all that has happened. I feel that we might be doing things slowly as we still know in the back of our minds that it's still the holidays. There is no pressure to do things. But things are catching up as the weeks go by. So that's good!

Week 16, 1 More Week left!

Most of this week was spent finishing assigments for week 17. The only thing i managed to do for CPD was the final script which is only 75% done. I am going to finish that tonight:)

I was still quite blur about how to do the research for the production bible, but I have asked my group about it and they cleared my doubts. All i have to do now is find time to actually finish it!

Haha! I dont know why i put this here but it made me happy. I guess I am excited that there is only 1 week left and then there is our Last Viva and then we are done!!!!!!!!!!! Yaaaay

Also the 4 of them are the 4 of us in 4ARC. I am Brick, of course at extreme right(i love lamp). Roxann is Ron, the one in blue, the leader. Charmaine is Brian, extreme left and Alvin is Champ.

Week 15: Acceptance

I started on the production bible this week. I just wrote down the stuff that we already know such as the premise, log line and other things about our story. But the hard part is collecting research about marketing and our competitors. So I have not touched that part yet. I have been really busy with other modules that I could not find time to do much CPD. I even used my CPD time to do other work as this week was my last IS modules lessons. So i had to prepare for a final presentation and prepare for a practical test. On top of that i had to put in hours at the gym for my fitness module. So a lot of time went to IS modules this week. I feel really bad as this week especially I probably did the least work out of all of us. Alvin was working on the new character designs, expressions and poses. Roxann and Charmaine was working on the colour script, and I literally wrote down 2 pages of words on a document.

Just to feel like i actually did more things, here is something i did 5 weeks ago that i did not post:

That's it. This is supposed to be a card. An alpha card to be scattered around in the background of the exterior. So it will be blurred a bit and I will make more versions by duplicating, changing height and width and changing the colours. And I predict that next week would not be productive for CPD as well as I have to finish all my assignments for week 17. 

These are the list of tasks that i'm assigned to:

• Finishing the first 4 chapters of the Production Bible
• Finish updating the prop designs and do the Props guide
• Edit Audio for the Animatic
• Make different versions of the Building Alpha Cards

I will try my best to start these things next week. As for the group's progress I feel like we are doing alright. Oh and we decided to finish the slides earlier and have a rehearsal a few days before the presentation as our previous presentations have been very unprofessional. 

Week 14:

Hey there! This week we had to start focusing on preparing for our final VIVA. Our storyline has been confirmed which is really good but Roxann and Alvin are planning to change some of the camera angle for some shots as they thought some were not interesting enough.

After looking at the exterior environment again, Charmaine and I felt that the building that i had modelled look out of place amongst the other buildings. So we drew some sketches trying to incorporate some of the designs of the other buildings into my building. We noticed that all the other buildings had ridges that my building did not. So I modelled a new version of my building. I UV mapped it but have not textured it as my laptop's graphic card is messed up and the colour saturation is very different from Charmaine's buildings. So i will probably texture it on the school computer and also get the right colours.

It looks quite different from the original model..... but at least it fits in better :) the frame at the right side is empty as there is going to be a poster in it. That's why there is a hole there now. 

Also my group is starting to do colour scripts which i did not really help in that as I am not good with colours but i also felt that I was not contributing much which is probably true. There was quite a few Whats app conversation in the 4arc group that i did not take part in as i was doing other work. But my IS modules are going to finish on Friday, week 15. Then i have my Fridays free for like 3 weeks. So i felt really useless. The only way i can match the level of work they are doing is by doing more admin work. Which works as I am doing the first 4 chapters of the Production Bible. I also have to clean up the props and do the props guide which is easy. And also do sound editing. I hope that we can finish in time. We have only 2 more weeks until Week 18 and we have not started on our Proof Of Concept.

Oh well....

Week 13: Bargaining

Prologue

viva....why you do this to us.....

Chapter 1: The Night Before

Surprise surprise, I stayed up all night again. But i didn't need to as I only stayed up to compile all the storyboards onto the slides. My OCD got the better of me trying to make the storyboards as neat and uniformed as possible. Hence, no sleep for me. But it was my own fault.

Chapter 2: The Morning Of

Charmaine and I were coming to school at 7.45am to combine our exterior meshes and render some still frames of the environment. Charmaine worries that we were not going to finish in time but I was calm. When you don't get the right amount of sleep, everything seems alright. But we managed to add the renders to the slides just in time. It looked decent.

Chapter 3: Viva

I was the first one to enter the Dailies room. Karen and Phil were already there. I call Charmaine to come to the Dailies room. She arrives. We prepare the slides trying to buy time for Roxann and Alvin. When they don't show up, Karen asks us to start without them. 1 minute into it, Roxann enters the room. Then it's time to show the animatic. It is with Alvin. So we show the most current one we have which has all the current changes. The Animatic ends. Roxann presents our story's characters. Alvin walks in. Needless to say, we were screwed from the start.

Chapter 4: Aftermath

At around 5.30pm, I was sitting at the lift area with Megan and Zhi Fang. Karen and Phil walked out of the A3DA doors and told us that they were pleased at the progress of all the groups. I thought they were trolling us. And then I went home. 

Epilogue

Overall, I felt that we had done a lot. Even though we had quite some more to do for the Final Viva. I am happy at where the story is at. We used to always question the story but now we hardly even think about or want to change it. Now we can focus on colour scripts and the feel and look of the story.

Acknowledgements

To the production manager, Roxann, who leads us fearlessly through this project and puts in a lot of time and effort to achieve great quality.

To the art director, Alvin, who does most of work and produces work with quality that none of us can ever achieve. 

To the 3D Supervisor Charmaine, who does a ton of quality work in a short time and still manages to have a respectable social life.

This will be my first and only 'story book' post that i write.

Good day to you

Week 12: Anger

Since we added new scenes to our story, we had to reshoot those scenes for the live action. Some of those moments were the funniest moments we had during CPD.

Viva is tomorrow!!! And we are the first group to present! Charmaine and I had started to model the interiors but we knew there was not enough time to render them. I do not think it is good that we still cannot decide whether we want bumps on the buildings or not. We are always going back and forth.

So i modelled the interior of Stanley's house and the lift interior.

Lift Interior Door

Lift Interior

Stanley's House Interior.
We only need this section of the house as it's the only part that is going to be seen.

Of course Charmaine modelled the office interior and all the props in it, thankfully cause i probably would not have been able to finish it. Oh and the Restaurant building I modelled is not going to be used because the style of it does not match the other buildings.

In terms of the story, i feel like we have finally settled on a good idea. Of course there will be minor changes here and there but the groundwork has been laid and I am happy! I really hope that our presentation tomorrow will be good as the previous one went terribly.

Week 11: Denial

School has started.

I told myself when this semester started that i would not count down the weeks until the holidays because it makes me wait for the holidays and daydream about it. But i gave in and counted and now i am looking forwards to mid august more than ever. 

This week we submitted our 3EM Assignment which was our CPD street environment. But the environment was not completed as we still did not know whether we were going to add bumps and the rendering of colours was not finalised either. This week was tiring but we also had to model the interiors which was quite a lot. 

We were trying to fix our story as we were still not really satisfied with our animatic. Alvin had the idea of seeing Stanley's reflection and wanted it to be a recurring theme in the story and he did a version where Stanley would see his reflection in a cup of coffee. I thought it was a good idea. So all of us sat down and discussed a bit more and kind of wrapped up this new idea.

I feel like I have no time to focus on my other modules as CPD is taking up a lot of time. Because I'm slow. So i think next semester will be less depressing as we only have 1 other module other than FYP to focus on.