its all finished....... well not quite yet

so yesterday i handed all my work in and the same with everyone else in my class. it was ok doing my folders i just wish i had worked harder in the first term to do some more decent concept work. but i knew that the first term was always going to be my weakest as i prefer doing the 3d parts of the project rather then 2d. i also wished i could have had more compositing for my technical folder, and let me just be honest..... i would have if we got some renderd shots out that i animated!. because the only ones that got renderd was lewis, toms, and that was it so they will get higher marks becuase they got some of theres renderd.

if i had managed to get some of mine renderd then it would have helped my folder alot. this is not just me tho same with ash, muli neil and also second years aswell. Ive had some ups and downs this year with some minor personal problems which was a huge shame for it to have to happen in my final year lol..... wish it happened in the first year. however i did to be honest step up my game in the the second part. i updated my blog alot like dan told me to do. i did lots of animateing and i also made sure i was doing something at college.

i do still enjoy animating and would like to maybe go into that possibly now that i have finished, same with moddeling maybe but its still rather weakish. others in class are alot better then me at that.

i loved working with the team was great fun. i never worked with lewis or tom or muli and they but in so much effort into this project its un true. lewis always keeps going muli is like a work horse same with tom they just keep going! no matter what.

oh yeah forgot to mention the dummy project.......... well lets just say that it was a comeplete waste of my time and i could of done more work in that time for pirates project, dummy was a complete waste of time but well that history now so never mind.

jb is a lovely funny guy. just wish he stop jabbering on and just get down with whats needed and stop asking questions lol. but yes he did in the end get some work done for the pirates project.

ash did sooooo much texturing he did the entire dummy room and did alot of pirates aswell. neil did some of the best animation he has done while at ravensbourne

others needed to show up more and let the entire pirates team down which could have helped us get done for mark in but never mind i wont name names, they know who they are. but no fuss its over now..

but......... we still need to finish for the degree show. i will not stop coming into college until this project is all renderd out. the music sound story is fantastic and the shots that are lighted and renderd just show this film is to good not to finish. so hopefully people will help us in the next weeks to get it all done. we need to render our 10 shots a day to do it and we will all this time need to help light some shots.

oh yeah for my animation folder i renderd out one of my shots the bread fire one just to show what it might of looked like renderd out rather then a playblast. the final render will look alot better with all the texttures.

pirates is still easily one of the best films in the class. i havnt seen any others all fully comeplete yet however. we where the underdog group with the least strongest people and have rised above all.

i have had a great and fun 3 years at ravensbourne will be sad to see it go and not walk down its paths no more soon but its not time for me to start my next chapter in life and see where i go next.

oh and whacked team helped us aswell with advice and after effects rendering and stuff too which was nice

anyway see you all next week and hopefully this pirates will be seen in its full glory at the rsa degree show very soon.....

a bit of composoting

this week i helped mu li add in the bottles into the super market environment. the bottles will be renderd on a separate layer from the main animation. once the bottle layer is renderd we can add it onto the blank shelves in aftereffects. I have seen some initial tests of this from mu li and it does work and looks quite good i must say.

How ever when you had to many levels of bottles into a scene it just crashes maya, even on my mac it goes really slow and crashes out. I think it is because of the environment we have is really big and with so many bottles maya just cant handle it. So with this problem what i have to do is export the bottles out on there own and render them separate so that it don't crash.

hopefully today i can render out one of my final animated shots and composite it fully in after effects for one of my folders for hand in. But i cant render one of my shots until Mu li or someone..... has done the lighting. maybe ill give it a try today???

shot 22 final version

some more tweeked shots

did some slight tweeking to these shots on the friday just passed.

more animation tweaking

the breadbeard fire shot i just wanted to change his sword a bit, as i didnt like the old one where it kinda twists at the end. other then that i did not change anything else.




changed this shot a little. with his head and arms making them flutter a bit more.



changed the way his head rotates in this shot, i think it looks better now so im happy.

overall all its strange going back to my shots. and its hard making them better as im the one who did them anyway. so its sometimes hard for me to spot areas that need to be changed. when someone comes over tho like lewis or tom and tell me what needs to be adjusted then that helps a lot in making my animations better for this film.

tweeking shots 2 and patches in the air shot

today i spent my day mainly tweaking shot 2 where the guard drinks his can and throws it behind him. i think its better then what i had done originally at least. after i did that i re worked patches flying in air. i got rid of all the old mouth key frames and kept it more simple and changed the way his head moved so that it was not such massive movements but more subtle . i also flapped his feet to as hes flying through the air.

new animatic playblast done today

Lewis today spent his time making the new animatic with all the new scene playblasts. it was really good when i watched it gave me and the others in the group alot of new hope that his film has the potential to be really good and one of the best no doubt. We just need to fix some minor stuff in some of the shots, like polish of some animation mainly and it will be fine but that needs to be done this week max. we also still need to render of which we still havnt got one shot renderd out yet.

muli sent a render yesterday but it failed as the texture resolution is to high i think and that is why the render farm is crashing. i have to fix my sip shot scene which i will do Wednesday. i still dont think this film will be renderd for marking maybe half of it maybe...... But for the show we should get it all done i hope. the sound guy has the final animatic now so he can do all the sounds for it now which is really good.


i would upload the animatic on here but its in a mp4 file type so it wont work =( i could change its format but it will loose even more quality so theres no point. when the final one is renderd ill post it up here asap

shot 14

did this shot today really quickly for lewis for the sound guy. took me around 3 hours i think. its pretty good and im happy with it. so ive put it on a drive now for lewis. i am getting better with animation i think becuase ive done so many shots for this project which i am really happy about.

guard sip shot (2)

started this shot friday. its not finished tho. will try finish it of today and do shot 14 as well which was ment for pual bates to do, but hes no longer working on this project so i will do it.

I think in total i will have done 9 or 10 shots for this project. i am happy with the amount i did. they all ranged in hardness, but i think i coped well with them and got them all done in a good time frame for lewis. lewis needs all the playblasts and maya files so that he can put them all together in premier for the sound guy for monday.

How ever i have a horrid feeling that not everyone will upload all there complete shots for lewis today and will put the project over schedule and the sound guy wont have all the work needed to make the most of his work. We still havnt really renderd any of our shots. i think weve renderd one shot lol which might need to be renderd again i think.

other groups are realiseing that other groups are all rendering now for the marking and other people around college are using render farm and clogging it up. i not sure if we can render all work for marking but maybe we can before the final show in june. would of been nice to have an extra month or two on this project and it would of been alot better and not rushed like its going now. but we must!! start rendering some shots next week.

i not even sure jb has done the melon dodge shot with his dynamics and that needs to be ready as its an important shot. dean aswell we need him to finish the pull out shot from the cardboard :s

shot 22 guard drive off

Did this work yesterday, it makes me laugh and i am happy with it and lewis has ok'd it which is good.

NOTE- TOM did all the first part of this shot, i only did the last bit when the guard turns around and drives of out of scene. tom has this shot again and is gunna add in his other part when hes jiggling a bit on the chair after being electrocuted. also tom will hopefully polish of some of my work with the hands and maybe face

patches flying out from cannon

did this shot yesterday. I am leaving this for the moment how it is. Lewis can sort out the final camera angle and stuff. This was not a hard shot to do just annoying because my graph editor kept bugging out so i couldn't edit the curves =(

patches shooting out of the cannon

started this shot on monday. its way to fast. but this is just an early test so far. i gave lewis all my animation play blasts so far so that he could put it together with the rest of the play blasts, so that lewis could send it to the sound guy to get the final sounds done. All this week i am finishing of my animation shots, not sure how many i have left i might have to check. but i would like to go back to some of my shots and possibly polish them of a bit. Or so some other work to fil up my 3 folders.

Breadbeard fire finished

finished this on friday at the end of the day. i am happy with this now and so is lewis and the rest. if i get time to come back to this shot before we render i might change the path of the sword. but at this time i just dont have enough time.

This week coming i am working on more shots. patches coming out of the cannon is my next shot, so i will update the blog on monday on how i am getting on with this shot.

breadbeard_fire final

finished this shot today. its taken me two college working days. I am happy with it, just need to see what Lewis thinks of it. With a bigger resolution this looks a lot better!.

New guard animation

^^ this shot is finished now and final



this shot is work in progress

progress update

well its bank holiday Monday today today and the college is closed. =(. But work continues on, so its the 3rd of may. only a few weeks left now i think its just under 4 weeks left til the deadline. all characters have been textured now. breadbeard is rigged and all that is left to rig now is walker. Tom and mu li left him last as hes not in many shots so was a good idea to leave him last. Now ill be honest with people looking on my blog. we honestly need to have this project renderd out by the 22nd of may at the latest!!! other wise we wont get enough time to make his film look good in after effects or get all the sounds at the best they can be. I am honestly so worried that we wont get this renderd out til the last minute and the final look of the film suffers because of it. No people are working very hard on this project at the moment and i am sure in these final weeks people will be fireing on all guns. lewis has been working exremely hard and has been doing parts of the project that he was never ment to have done. Some people still have not been turning up which is a shame as we really need everyone to be in to give all there input. we have the advantage that we have most people working on this project yet we dont utalise our group properly and its not well organized. Tom has done some really nice animation tho aswell as neil, hes working very hard. I just really dont want to his this project fall flat on its face. The story and characters and artwork is so nice and easily the best by no means. I said to lewis that we sould just make this film really fun and make the audience that watched it really happy. And lets be honest if our project never gets finished then its going to make the show even more boring. Gnomes project and red rock also im worried that they might finish but not up to the stanard that they also wanted. so it wont be nice if no one gets the projects looking ready and finished for the show as it would be such a shame. =(. So hopefully the pirates team can pull together these last weeks and really make this film good. also forgot to add jb has been doing a nice job with the electrocution shots.

new work

This is the shot after the first guard reach. he trying to reach the cerail box on top of the plinth. But he cant reach it without his grabber which is in the next shot. I am fairly pleased with this just need to add in a slight pause when he first reached out.




this is more or less the final version of this shot. might add some movement in his shoulders tho but might add that in when the rest of my shots are completed for this project.

Next up this week is finish of my shots still hopefully will start the breadbeard shots as they are very important to this film and so i will need to work on it well and to a high standard of finish.