Reflective statement

Reflective Stataement

 

This project has been an interesting one, as we cannot ignore the pandemic or the hectic year. My goal was to create a complete short film which I achieved. Through the pandemic it was really hard to stay connected and motivated to your work, however, I am glad I was able to get everything together in time.

Turnarounds

Creating the characters was the most fun part of the process as I got to explore many things about the characters, for instance, giving them different body language which everyone seemed to like. I knew creating three characters would be challenging and time-consuming, however, I stuck to the plan and created something I could be proud of. The scary thing about this project is being scared. You feel less motivated to continue and tempted to procrastinate with all the mistakes and redos you have to do. Although, it is true that 'many mistakes' is one of the greater lessons to learn, this is because I have achieved and learned things I never thought of by going over my mistakes over and over again till I got it right. 

Rigging process

Rigging the character was the most painful part as my characters were not human-sized forms. There were too many mistakes and so many things I had to refine to make the other 'joints' work. Joints and weighting were one of the scary processes as all of them have to work right. One of the fun parts of Maya is that no matter how long you have been using the software, there's just no way to know everything about Maya. There are many times where there are simple things I suppose to know or simple things that just don't work with one click of a button. However, rigging the character was a success, and was one of the things I had to pull through by thinking about how it would look like at the end, which paid of. 

Classroom Scene

After finished creating the film I realised rigging /creating the character was one of the parts I enjoyed most. Animating was also enjoyable but hard to get the timing right which I know could be perfected if I spent more time on it.

In conclusion, there have been many mental breakdowns, struggles, stress, however, I got there in the end. It was hard to not know how everything was going to work out, and whether you would be able to pull it off. I technically made 100 characters from having to do it over and over again to get it right. Although there may be flaws in the animation's flow I am happy I created a completed film. What I would do next time? I would have to stick to the timetable and keep going even though the destination clear. At the end of the day this project boosted my confidence and motivaiton in life, as we have to strife for the things we want to achieve and believe in yourself/ trust the process, even though it might not be how you expected, you will still arrive at your distination.