Tuesday, after some re-working and rethinking of the project.

Today most of us from our group were in college, so we got up to speed and are on the same page.

Had a chat with Jared and Alex about where we are at in terms of the group project.
Jared had some great relevant stuff to say about how the animation is looking right now.
On the day I showed jared the Camera motion path I had did the day before.
Jared was saying think about familiarity, and keeping the audience comfortable with what you are doing. Put yourself in the perspective of who will use this room, it could be a bee's P.O.V. or in this case we have fairy dust that will come from the emerging title and will fly into the scene through the window creating the mattresses.
The point he was trying to make was that we have this very fast flying around camera, and it creates a bit of a nauseating effect on the viewer, which wasn't our intention at all but regardless.

We did discuss some other options for things we could do. We originally had the idea for a time lapsing effect which we would show with the handles of a clock moving very fast and maybe the view from outside changing from night to day.
Jared did bring up our fairy tale book opening, and even though he warned us to be careful when going with cliche, was saying going with the book opening and going into the scene and then finding the same book within the scene and going through it again may create a nice animation loop effect.

And I do like this idea of the book opening, which is also the ending creating a circular animation. Also to break up the long shot of the camera flying around the room, we discussed putting extra cameras in the scene to get different angles of objects in the scene. we discussed fading them in as it has a more gradual feel as opposed to straight cut.

Also we discussed in stead of a clock maybe we could model an egg timer or hourglass, or maybe a water clock, maybe even a sun dial to show passing of time.

It maybe go to do a few different test version of the scene, one using straight magic to create the effect, another showing time and objects gradually being put into place. could be interesting.

On Tuesday Tara our modeler, I let her know the problem i was having getting the other props in shot and the bed was so big and the room so small all i could see was the bed. since then we have expanded out the size of the room. Now it seems a lot less populated with props. So maybe this would be a good opportunity for Greg or jonathan to model a few things for the scene. we do have space now to put the story book if we want to go with the fantasy circular ending.


Even though I should be feeling some anxiety right now about whether i will get all the projects done on time. I am concerned about whether or not we finished, but I just seem to be very optimistic that we will be done on time and that my fears will feel completely unfounded. I have plenty to worry about but it really isn't Getting to me.

Maybe I have just seen this kind of situation too many times to let it bother me anymore, maybe I have learnt to be pretty cool in these pressure situations. I actually think deadlines are a fantastic thing. It keeps your mind focused on doing all the work needed in the time allowed.

To add to my Optimism, we recently sent out an e-mail to sound design students , asking if they'd be interested in creating a score for our scene. the music really isn't what's being assessed here, But it is a nice bonus to have if the scene is completed. So that is a great bit of news. Also Alex showed me a more effective way of controlling the camera attached to the motion path, Also he explained the importance of nCache files. Creating new cache's so it is easier for the software to remember the loads of calculations needed to produce lots of effects. It's a very useful thing to remember, especially later when I will probably have a lot of things going on , and time to do them will be at a premium, so faster render times will be a necessity.

So what to do now. Well as we have "blown up" the princess and the pea 3D scene, I need to animate my camera again, which is fine because i could do that in half the time now, and i need to animate the mattresses. I aim to have my part done by monday, tuesday at the latest. i will need to leave it open for new things in the scene, So Rochelle will be doing a coloured version and Tara will model a book I can animate opening and taking us into the scene.

So i will be conscious of those things. I think a week to do them is enough time, I just need to be WORKING, and not distracted.