The demo character was tough to create, especially since I lost the model halfway through making it, but mat let me download the unmapped character model and use that since I lost the one I was working on. Honestly the most difficult part was the rigging and grouping, I kept messing up and it managed to put me back several weeks. but I finished it nonetheless and it helped me make my actual character model much faster than the first one I worked on.
The pre-production of my animation went better than expected. I made a rough storyboard from the get go, but me and my partner had two different ideas on what the story should be, but we ended up going with a slightly edited version of my story in the end. After that, my partner made the storyboard of the edited version. I had some reservations about editing the story, but I decided against speaking out about them since I wanted my partner to identify more with the project. So I let some of the changes happen. I should mention there was one of the ideas I really liked, which was the idea that both the characters should have tatoos on their faces, as to relate them to each other. I put together a two characters I thought would be simple enough to animate well. I didnt come up with a name for the cat, but the person I decided to name Lights, since that seemed most fitting for a silhouette with spotlights for eyes.
Speaking about my character, Lights.
The rigging of my character managed to frusturate me to no end. I worked for around two weeks straight on it, and by the end of it I managed to get it the right way. I had to delete some edge loops and shift some vertexes around to make it work though.
I also never got done with the rigging of the jellyfish, which is something I really wanted to do. I wanted to make the jellyfish animated for the final portion of the animation, but I ended up just making all the jellyfish static. and the model itself wasnt even finished. I couldnt figure out how to make the material inside the jellyfish so I ended up just leaving it out. Which is probably for the best, since it might have made the final scene look extremely washed out. But still, it would have been nice to see the jellyfish float like they do in the sea.
Over the course of the animation, you might notice the surrounding environment get lighter and lighter. I got this to happen because I want the beginning and the end scenes to look completely different from each other, to give the feeling that change has happened within the context of the story. I wanted it to be subtle and apparant at the same time.
When it came to finally animating the scenes, I found that it was probably the easiest part in comparison. Even with that being true, it took me a while to be able to get the animations right, and some scenes were extremely difficult to produce. Still, I'd take it any day over rigging.
Honestly for me the most difficult part of this whole process was the blogging. For those who arent aware I'm not an avid fan of writing. The entire reason I became an animator was in efforts to be able to tell stories without the use of written word. But I made it out to be much more of a problem in my own head than it actually was. I put off most of my writing for a while just so I could focus on just the animation work. I got the blogging done though, and I'm pleased with how it turned out, even though the process for it bored a hole through my head, metaphorically speaking.
As much as i'd love to put myself through this kind of hell all over again, id much rather go with a calmer workflow so I wont get so overwhelmed with the work. But that wasn't entirely my fault either. Most of my anxiety came from worrying over my partner. She was barely ever in and I could never get a really good look at how much work she had gotten done.
I had to use some of my classmates as proxy partners, helping me with recordings of myself to get reference for the scenes. Max mostly helped with that. I also wanted to get some second opinions for the final output because Constance still wasnt in. Everyone I showed said it looked really nice, but I really don't want to put out a piece of work that isnt even finished.
Constance really left me on the backburner with this project. I could tell she had other priorities so I didn't push her as much as I probably should have, but she was never in anyway. I don't hold it against her, but it dissapoints me that only half of my animation got done in the end. I might try animating it over this summer and seeing whether or not I can make something I'm proud of.
