Week 6

It’s Alive!

Our big achievement this Monday was creating our first demo scene! Last week we put all our effort into making this scene, as it not only provided our first look at a scene on-screen, but also allowed us to get a good feel for the workflow that will carry us through production.

Knowing that this was a very rough version, we met with our instructors for feedback. Some of the points they suggested were to use directional light rather than a spotlight to better represent the sun, as well as changing the camera angle to give the right amount of depth.

Iteration, Iteration, Iteration

With this in mind, we went back to the drawing board in terms of storyboarding, knowing where we were in the right direction and what needed to be fleshed out more. Jared and Muhammad worked on creating more visually appealing camera angles that added the necessary depth to the story, and put that into a new 2D animatic. After getting feedback on that animatic, they passed it on to Niharika to work on a first pass of a 3D version.

On the technical side, we kept on chugging with hair and wave development. With a firmer storyboard in place, we were also able to come up with a lean asset list to get an understanding of our resources.

We also met with our pre-production writer, Kate Busatto, to discuss her vision for “The Package” based on a beat sheet she provided us. We talked through how the story would play out, how dialogue would be involved, what VFX it should focus on, and how to keep things in scope. We will be working closely with Kate to create a draft of the full script in time for Halves.

This week felt like a big step in the right direction as we now had something under our belt we could use as a basis for our process on the road ahead. We also had ironed out how each shot will look, and what we can present to the faculty at Halves. While there is still a lot to be done, there’s now more confidence on the team that we can make this mermaid beautiful.