Sam

Today Sean came to me and then the group to tell us that Sam had talked to him that moring and they had diwscussed his issues.

I was shocked that his mum had phone in etc to sy stuff. I realy have gven him chances but I can't help him feeling left out or that he's worse than us if he's never in or never talking to us. I mean Sean told us that Sam showed him some sound design and that it was average, however we hadn't even heard that he ha been doing it.

I feel kind of bad as being the director is it partly my fault/ should I have tried to help him more, and I don't want to feel like it's partly my fault that he'l proboly fail the year. On the other hand he hasn't contacted anyone, asked for advice and help like everyone else and he didnt't even attnd the first semester to learn maya.

Anyway I have sent him an email of a few new tasks he could do which were finnish the sound design and make us the credits for the film (which I even wrote out for him). I unfortuntely couldn't give him anymore maya work as ther was nothing left to do.

3rd attempt head turn using a circle and triangle

Plasticene model of guys head

 

Here are some images of the plasticene model I made of the 2d guys head. I realy struggled with drawing the frames in flash so modling this realy helped my to visualise perspective and positioning of features etc.

Unit hand in

Today we had what we thought was just an updated animatic/work showing however Sean came in saying that we were getting graded, and it was an end of a unit. I wasn't very amused as I hadn't been able to improve much in terms of new animation and had to leave in the old wrong one in for the animatics timing. I was realy worried at this point because I hadn't realy got much to show and get grade on apart from the imp model, doin the animatic and a load f wrong animation. Luckily after showing them all we got told that it was going to be a group mark andthey were going to re assess it at the end ofthe year anyway. Luckily for me at this time my group had produced allot of nice work especialy Hollie and Erica's backgrounds and Martyna's amaising little town.

As the leader once again I was very pround of the group and real happy with what we have acheived. There were no bad comments atal and the lecturers were very impressed.

Pauls help

Today Paul looked at the animation I had started to do for the new head turn, and gave me advice on better ways to do it and helped with issues I was having with the drawing side of things

• He gave me advice to make the break down far more exciting by raising the characters shoulders and make the chin dip down .
• He also suggested that my current animating of the caracter I have bee concentrating too muh on the mechanics and nt on the emotions etc of the character, so I he ran through how I could do that and suggested that on the first head turn I should make it look likethe guy is boed and not raly paying attention and te as he turn its as if he is ingaged with the train.
• He suggested that I shold also add the blink into the turn has I had'nt previously done t and was't sure if I should as he's mean to be watching the train.

As wel as the animation Issues I explained how I was realy struggling with the drawng of he guy asnd working out how things should look and where they sould be etc. So he ran throgh some of my problems and helped to find solutions.

• He then said that what I needed to do was draw the guy as much as I could and get used to drawing him, finding a process of how to do it successfully every time. The suggestion was to used shapes to keep his form e.g. a circle with a triangle on the bttom for his head.
• Paul also helped me to grasp the erspective side of things which heped grasp how things should look.

Below is Pauls paper he explained things on, so I will use this and what he said to make the animation better.

Starting he 1st head turn with Hollies drawings plus a couple more

Starting new head turn

I was really struggling to get going again because of my drawing skills. I find it hard on the head turns to get the drawing right. I knew that I can animate ok most of the time once I have the Key frames and the Breakdowns in. As I was finding it hard to get the breakdown right I decided to get Hollies help as I figured it would save me allot of time.

Even though Hollie gave e the break down I still needed a bit more help as I was still struggling with where the nose, hat and mouth were and how they would look, so I asked her for a drawing in between the start and halfway to get me started ad understand the mechanics a bit better.

Feedback from Neil and Paul

In the studio today I had both Neil and Paul check out my animations and they werent to keen on the head turns atal. there were issues like

1. The neck in the wrong place at times.
2. Some of the spacing was even.
3. They wanted more anicipation.
4. Te 2nd turn had issues with its timing with the watch check and faciel movements.
5. They both realy werent a fan of the third head turn with the sigh saying the thing doesn't move right.

From this I realised I would be better off to start from scratch on all the head turns as I think the general vibe was that it wasn't working like it was.

Takning into concideration I decided to start again.

3rd turn experiment with adding stubble

2nd attampt 3 head turns

Updated task sheet for the group