What must be done THIS time?

NOW towards the future.

This project involves three choices, I have read through them all and while I have already decided upon my answer I would like to talk about why I didn't choose the others, I shall be talking about all three paths.

1. Game Design - "chop - shop"

The idea was to create four different models of a garage where stolen cars would be tweaked and fixed, there had to be a detail interior and three different exteriors ranging from high to low amounts of polygons. The initial problem with this idea was the fact that I already just completed a environment project. I personally am interested in improving what I could do from last time but without learning different skills, this might be all what I could do. I generally like computer games but it's not my main direction in where I want to go, though I'm happy to start there.

The project itself was fine, but I wanted to at least try something different to improve my overall techniques and to learn where my department is in. This idea was originally on hold, since I might have come back to deciding upon this. But this was not chosen upon the statement previously, I did not want to repeat this lesson so early.

2. Animation - Five second clips

The Idea behind this project is to create six different ideas of five second clips to be shown for the Nation gallery Publication, by any method of creating identity for the gallery itself. At first, I sparked with ideas of what could be done with this; quite the inspirational sign. But when I visited the website of the gallery:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

It felt that it wasn't for me. If this was a project ordered to be done then it wouldn't validate as an option, it would be compulsory. I would be fine about working on it, but I know I'm not capable for doing this quality of work at this stage. To be honest I'm quite behind on the knowledge of Maya and I don't like the future of whats to come because of it. The length of 5 second doesn't seem too difficult for this project if I did decide to continue with it, but the fact that I'm uncertain if I can capture the detail and texturing feel of the paintings to be used as national gallery symbols. I wouldn't take the risk knowing that I have a choice.

3. Character Design - London Zoo

The brief involves generating (depending on groups) characters to be used for an advertisement for the London Zoo, ranging from a generic family to a Silverback Gorilla. From the first glance I already knew this was my personal favourite out of all the choices, and and as the final brief this was already decided as my chosen project. I was a bit worried when I heard most of the students in my class have chosen to this project as well, worrying over the similaraties of design and lack of originality. I also heard talks about changing the subject matter from the London Zoo to another of the capital's primary tourist attraction; I felt even with this option it was drifting too far from the brief and I was happy about choosing this as go-ahead.

None of the choices were perfect for me to accept, but I wouldn't have a choice regardless if this my job. All the choices are in my range to attempt to be complete, but by saying "attempt" I already know, before starting that things are not going to look so bright when heading into a direction that I have not tried before, especially on a program which I'm quite "poor" at right now.

More will be said, stay in touch!

Suddenly Seymour

First post of the new project! Oh boy!
Here we go again...

Let's review the overall result and my viewings of the previous project before talking about what to follow up. To be honest, I was quite depressed and dissapointed with the previous project, despite having a positive responce for the teacher and students. It could have been so much more and the whole team was to blame, even me. The team included (other than myself):

1. Michael
2. Leonard

... yeah. TWO other people. But this can still be done, I mean the smaller the easier it would be to communicate (though this would have meant more work). Michael and Leonard were both new people to me, so this was either going to be a hit or a mess situation. Surprisingly it started quite well, we all got chatting about ideas and what to do and it seemed like I might have had a group for once that could have worked well. We decided to go with Leonard's idea about the funfair since he was quite certain it was the best idea out of the suggestions, and at the time we seemed happy about it.
The next few weeks, this is when things started to fall apart. It would be rude to blame names but frankly I'm tired of not pointing the cause of the problem. Leonard REALLY let the team down at this point, the first few days he was great, filled with ideas and suggestions... but after that he rarely attended to college, we couldn't communicate with him outside either AND when we did catch up with him, he couldn't give a care what was happening or whats the plan. Michael still wante to give him a chance but it was already the third or fourth week by this point and honestly, it wasn't worth it.
I'm sorry michael if you're reading this right now but I we are just two different people with different methods of working. I admit I did quite the few mistakes in this project including some lazyness and delaying, which I am quite willing happy to admit. But I did what I could to catch up, and while it wasn't perfect we did succeed the project. The problem was, it was just us two throughout this project WHICH I didn't have any problems with until later on, when we just had two different visions and neither of us could share them together. I generaly am not greedy, though I can slip the odd couple of times; I was happy to work with other people on a different idea. Leonard in all honestly, was the downfall of our team. So in short I'm sorry for any troubles caused throughout this time, but I just don't feel we could work again after this.

... anyway ignoring that dramatic paragraph ITs back to my overall review. The final result wasn't bad, but it could have been really great. Michael did a really great job with the animation of the wheel and the movement path of the camera; and I felt a semi-guility that he had to work on some of the final models quite late in the project; though this was linked to Leonard as well. I was quite problem of learning the interface of maya, as to today it really helped me get to grips on the tools. I can do the buildings a lot greater now, and If I only cracked Maya earlier, I might have offered a greater result. Leonard... well... yeah. The only major problem about the project was the rendering, which every team had troubles with. It didn't ruin the film but our idea of rendering the Theme Park rides in different layers took a route we wasn't expecting, it was a little out of place when playing the film. While we did use basic lighting, it worked quite well. Especially the start when all the rides turned on.
In short, I was dissapointed but our team managed to do what we were meant to do, and now it's time to move on. The next post I shall be talking about what I'm going to do with the newest project at hand. The video below is the final result of the previous project: