YanivRave

Right, It's 7 now, I've stayed up all night to finish Gareth's project, and as maya is rendering, I've decided to include some final reflections. I guess my initial worry about not having any time to animate was justified. The actual animation in the final film is somewhat shitty, it was only done in a few hours. I've decided to keep it blocked-out rather than smoothing it, as I thought the smooth version looks completely weightless. This project has been really demanding, and the final feeling is a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment;

The disappointing bit is, as mentioned earlier, the lack of animation. Also, I think the final piece doesn't look very impressive at all. Half of it looks awful - I've decided to experiment a bit with the rendering. I put in real quick some stupid effect I've regretted right after it was done. It's too late to change it though, so I'm just gonna live with it.

I think there are two main reasons as to why I didn't get to complete the task satisfactorily :

The first one is that I made a conscious decision to go really indepth with all the aspects of the project. When you do a university project, there are two aims infront of your eyes (excuse the lack of coherence, I am very tired): The first aim is the short-term one, the grade. The second aim is the long-term one: the learning bit. I've seen a lot of students that used a lot of shortcuts throughout the projects - very few vertexes on their characters, very very limited rigs, etc etc. If your character doesn't need to do much, than it's perfectly understandable that you're not gonna invest too much time in building it. I figured though, that it'd be a bit absurd to take a project that is all about building a character, and come out of it not *really* knowing how to build characters. So every step of the way, I've tried to do as thorough job as I possibly could. I've researched into what's the standard anatomy for a riggable character, and how many rows of vertexes one should have on the face, etc. I've created a texture that is not very basic, but I think looks good, and have put a rig that is very functional. Also put in more blendshapes than I needed for the 3o seconds worth of animation I had to put in. I've also put in a face gui so that itll be easy to animate

I guess I'm trying to say that I was progressing in this project, I put my aim further than just what I needed for the deadline. I've done a character that I intend to use in a longer animation in the short future. God I'm tired, I don't think I'm making sense, but I'll continue.

The downside of that is that I overdid it, if you compare the scale of the project vs the time I had. Had I been more conscious of the deadline, I should have done a simpler model, a simpler rig, etc. But I just thought that this is a great opportunity to really learn how to do all of this, and I didn't wanna miss that opportunity.

The probably bigger issue throughout this project is private life clashing with college. Between dental treatment and two part time jobs, I've found myself unable to juggle between everything successfuly, and so sacrifices had to be made. At times I'd not be in college for more than a week. I don't think there's an easy fix for this - I think my job can really help my in the future, and I do intend to keep doing it and keep putting as much effort into it. I'm slightly worried though, I'm hoping my grades would be enough to get into the 3rd year.

If anyone has trouble understanding what the animation is about, by the way - It's supposed to be the old lady coming to life, figruing out that her hand can move, and then accidentally slapping herself.