Production:

This week we were working with our composer to refine the music in the final version and record announcer voice over.  We had two versions of the announcers recorded, but after listening to the animation together with the audio, we felt the audio might be a little overpowering and detract from the film. Before we made our decision, we decided to gather feedback. We showed our film at the BVW Festival (without voice over)and asked guests after if they were confused or didn’t understand parts of the story. We were happy to see that nearly all guests were able to understand the story clearly without voice over. Before we made our final decision we talked with faculty to see what they thought. Most agreed that the story was clear enough without the speakers. However because the announcers did help to establish character for the creatures, we instead decided to record  voice/sounds for the creatures to reflect their personalities.

Pre-Production:

With production wrapping up, the team switched to finish creating several technical tests for the transition, scene and expressions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X33kcFjdtE4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4aWdykYzOU

This week we had our Soft opening with faculty visiting our room and offering feedback for what to focus on before finals.  We showed a scene complete render of our production animation as well as the edited live action animatic for our pre-production piece. There was a lot of helpful feedback that we worked to organize to see what to polish in these last weeks.

After softs our team met to prioritize our list of edits to make before finals and plan out our schedule preparing for the BVW festival and finals.

Post Production:

After discussed with Ruth, we decided to use the original storyboard ending. Rachel worked on the scene 14 camera path and animated the robots.

Qing worked hard on the Maya rendering.

Angela worked on the composting and did the character trails.

Ryan helped Qing to create some background models.

We will show our final video next week!!

Post Production:
Our goal for this week is to lock the timing and give the latest animatics to sound people.
Qing worked hard with Maya rendering,set up the material and lighting for each scene.
Angela worked on the water simulation for scene 6, scene 12 and scene 10. Moreover, she refined the water behavior for scene 3.
Qing and Angela worked closely to test the transition from scene 1 to scene 2. The results shows below:

Ryan kept working on the crowds for scene 13, scene 5 and scene 10:

Ryan also helped to animate the purple character for scene 12 and Angela add the fluid simulation.

Pre-Production:

This week our team also re-filmed a second time with the actors from main campus. We worked on re-shooting additional and more refined shots to capture emotion, gesture and expression. We also filmed in the green screen room to later test what an image replace might look like.

Production:

This week work continued on The Race.  Rachel returned from conference and has been working hard to complete the character animation for the remaining scenes. The motion graphics have been designed and are in the process of being integrated with the scenes. The environment and effects are coming along nicely as well. We have also been meeting with two students who will be developing our music and sound effects for the piece.

And… We have names for the characters!

Pre-Production

On Sunday our team worked with students from the school of drama to film a live action run through of the storyboard. This was useful to see the actors expressions and gestures in the story, and to help explore camera angles. Based off this footage, we will be refining the camera blocking on the storyboards. Then we will re-shoot again to get a more complete version of the animatic. Below are some stills from the actors reference footage.

• This week, Rachel left for conference and she had already finished animation scene 3, scene 13, scene 5 and scene 10.

• Qing kept working on the scene environment and set up the materials and lighting for the rendering.
• Angela developed the fireworks in Maya for scene 5 and 10. Moreover, she worked closely with Qing to determine the look for final composting.

• Ryan is preparing  the tools for animation re-targeting and finished the robot rigging for scene 14

This week was our 1/2 presentations to faculty and students. Here are a few of the things we talked about:

Pre-Production:

This is the piece we are developing to hand off to next semester, but here is our progress so far:

1. We have our script and story written and locked. We may be making small refinements to to the emotions of the characters to be more clear to the viewer. To do this we will be working with live actors to help us film the emotions and gestures of the characters.
2. Our storyboards are in progress based off of our script.  here are a few of the initial sketches

3. Additionally, we plan to create a live acted animatic, and test the transition scene to have a tech process outlined for the next team

Production:

1. We have established  our final look and feel for the completed animation and rendered out two complete scenes to show in a trailer. Below are some screen shots from the trailer showing the look of the film.

• Rachel finished scene 9 and scene 1 animation and had scene 5 and 10 animation ready for review.

Scene 9:

Scene 1:

Scene 5:

Scene 10:

• Qing locked down the material and rendering for scene 9 and solved the technical challenge for dissolving process of scene 1:

• Ryan improved the rigging further and here is the demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEPI_N9LkYM

• Angela worked on the scene 1 and scene 9 fluid simulation and researched on the composting
• Add steam (pyro simulation) to the egg

• Rachel finished the block animation of scene 12, part of the scene 13 and 14 based on the story board. Below is the playblast of the draft:

Scene 12:

Scene 13:

Scene 14:

• Moreover, She worked on the character animation for scene 1 and already finished some demo. Scene 1 has been reviewed by faculty and would be locked and rendered out next week.
• Qing detailed and locked down the environment for scene 2 and scene 12. Below shows the results:

Scene 2:

Scene 12:

• Moreover, she researched on the material and did some test rendering:

• Ryan prepared the special rigs for scene 1 which the character needs to grow from small to normal size.
• Worked on the emotional expression based on the previous emotion study
• Fixed the gimbal lock bug existing in the scene 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEe_690UK5Q&feature=youtu.be

• Angela test different different kinds of trail and locked down the final look.
• She also worked on parameters of the trail to achieve different look of far, near and middle shot

1. This week we have finished the block animation for scene 10, 5, 6 and 3.
2. For the environment , Qing designed three different paddle gate style and we chose to use the last one for our animation. 
   The environment models for Scene 9 was mostly done. The second image is the camera shot. Qing will work on the material next week
3. The blue character model was done and Ryan finished the rigs. We decided to use a separate plane to represent  iris because we could have much more control on the shape to express more emotions.
4. Angela worked on the fire simulation and results shows below:https://vimeo.com/142166157

   Because of the environment scale issue, for now the fire path moves slow and looks not natural. We have re-import the model as FBX format and scale it down. we will have final fire simulation next week