Evaluation

Again, much similar to last term, I was a little daunted by the prospect of doing 3-Dimensional work. I found the initial tasks rather difficult to graph, my concerns first surfaces when we were given the task to make a Mr. and Mrs. Potato head. It took me ages to get to grips with the controls in Softimage. The outcome was rather poor, at this point I was rather disheartened about the 3D process that was to come.

I have learnt various skills, the main one is how to use the Softimage interface and animate. I am extremely proud of how far I have come, I practically found it near impossible to make a good replica of Mr. and Mrs. Potato head, and now I’ve ended up with some good 3D animation, and I’ve experimented with different character walks. I have learnt how to use reference material in the most efficient way by using Premier Pro and adding effects like Timecode, and adding titles so I can easily see where the key frames are. I have learnt how to render out 3D animation, as well as exporting the final targa sequence in After Effects, which was covered in the first semester.  However, most importantly for me, it really made me look hard at how the body moves, the angles, changing of weight distribution and I believe I have come out with a solid Acting 3D film.

I found the beginning of the course least enjoyable, this was because I lacked confidence and I was too scared to really get stuck into the software. I much preferred the walk cycle and acting sequence to the ball bounces, maybe this is because I can relate more to a walk cycle and the action piece, I’m not sure. I found the rendering out rather laborious, as I had to render it at University, as I do not have Softimage on my home computer or laptop.

The highlight of this semester was the acting reference piece. I really loved carefully studying the reference material, its amazing to see how the body actually moves when doing such a simple move. I found it’s most important to get the weight distribution correct, with out this the character looks fake, and I feel it almost lacks in emotion and power.

However, overall I actually found it to be quite a rewarding experience. The more time I spent on it the easier it was for me to complete the tasks. I only started to feel slightly confident when I had made the walk-cycle; this was after the ball bounces. I really felt confident about creating the movements and creating the angles to make a realistic walk cycle. I stormed through this process, creating lots of captures to make sure it all looked correct. I found the arm movements much harder then the legs, as they seem to follow an ark motion, which took a while for me to grasp. On the whole I really enjoyed the process and I would consider it for my chosen pathway for next year.