This was a very productive week for Team FITYMI as our technical artists began cranking away at getting Scene 2 ready to render!

Luo spent the majority of the week cleaning up the animation for the entirety of the scene. We learned that the most time efficient way was not to clean up the animation on a shot-by-shot due to the fact that the motion capture cleanup needed to be done in MotionBuilder. Therefore, the entire scene would need to be cleaned up before we could make the transfer into Maya.

While Luo worked on the animation, Emily spent several days working on getting the final look of Lovers Meet. After getting feedback from the team and John, she worked on getting an animated lightpost and making sure we have a finalized look for our renders.

Wenyu also assisted by lightening up the background to help with contrast and to make sure our characters stand out from the environment.

Catherine and Brian continued conceptualizing the Sea of Stories, while at the same time Catherine continued working on music ideas. Running into some struggles with the concept, Brian and Catherine met with Brenda Bakker Harger who recommended we take a step back and think carefully about the emotions we feel from the idea of a Sea of Stories. Specifically, she talked about “animating the quote,” referring to our quote describing the sea.

Our schedule dictates we need to have Scene 2 rendered by the end of next week. Luo is going to begin working on the particle effects of our transition scene in Houdini while Emily continues to work on lighting and rendering. Next week is our last week before the team splinters due to Spring Break and GDC, so it will be a pivotal week for sure!