group work, Susan

Also I am going to include Sue in my group work for her considerable help in aftereffects. This is not a program I have used often and she was very patient in explaining it to me, especially as we had both been up for over twenty four hours rendering and compositing our work.So we were both a tad sleep deprived so her help was very much appriciated. She is also going to offer help when I animate the rest of my film.

Screen shots of lighting test

This is my set with ambient occlusion applied, I really like how it looks with this light, Although if I chose to use this I would not be using all the textures that people have made for me, and it would look slightly odd when I credit them for textures when there are none on my set. I also think it would look good if everything was occluded apart from the monkeys eyes, which are blue. I could do this by just not selecting the eyes with the ambient occlusion, or I could put the eyes on a seperate layer and render that out without ambient occlusion applyed. I will be testing this idea out soon.

Here are some images of the whole thing ambient occluded.

Extension

because of my illness I have been granted an extension for my work. I had been working on handing in a half finished film, and getting the rest finished for the degree show. I had been up for over a day rendering out my chosen scenes in the studio aswell as on my laptop, which is steadily getting worse because of the virus it has. But after over 14hours of rendering I was just putting the end credits to my work when the extension was given.
I also ambient occluded my work, as I really like the effct and I am seriously considering handing in the final finished version in ambient occlusion, As it gives a really nice soft,clay feel to the characters.

Group work, textures from Dave

Here are some screen shots of the textures Dave gave to me today through email, I have applied them to the objects on the set.

Group work, Matts background

Here is the background Matt did for me in photoshop, It is just what I wanted and the style is in keeping with what I already have from other people and myself.Im going to put the image on a plane in maya and use it for my background.

illness, a big problem

Over the last weekend I have felt unwell, and today I went to the doctors and was told I have a stomach virus. This has effected my work progress as I have been unable to concentrate on the computer for very long. The doctor also gave me a sicknote saying I am to have 7 days off uni, and that if my simptoms do not improve in the next few days, I will have to go back and be tested for swine flu. This is just a precaution the NHS are taking to prevent the spread of the virus, But because I have a temperature and a sore throat aswell my doctor advised me to come back if things were not getting any better.This makes fridays hand in incredably difficult for me to try and meet. The work I have completed so far is only half of the finished timed blockout,with camera angles and expressions something I still need to work on. James has offerd to help with camera angles and I have recieved textures from people today via emails as I have been unable to work in the studio. Currently I am hoping to finish the first half of my film, and end it were the monkey starts tapping his fingers, This way I at least get in the quad walk, reaction, jump and smash. If I manage to get through that fairly quickly, then I will try and progress further with it. I hope to explain the situation to my tutors and hope that they understand the situation and take into account that I was on schedual with my work untill I became ill.

final blockout and timings

A few days ago I finished timing all the scenes I had blocked out, The only scenes which I have been unable to do are the end scenes were the monkey pushes the boulder on screen and lifts it up to try and crack the nut. Looking back I dont think I have been unable to do this because I have not worked hard. I think that I was just to ambitious in what I thought I could accomplish in the given time. That being said, the aspect which I will have to alter is the ending, which I have not blocked out, All it will be is after the monkey has thrown the turtle away, He will sigh and shake his head at the nut sadly.So I have got over three quarters of my original story in here, and the parts that have been cut due to time restraints, I feel were not completly neccesary to the story.