This week was another time crunch, as I expect every week will be until this project is finally done! The animators are continuing to lock our shots, Josh is rendering out character passes, and textures are underway. Anthony has made some awesome headway on our shoggoth-squishing destruction simulation, and Ethan has finished storyboarding the new 3D motion graphics sequence. We’ve contacted somebody to assist with sound effects and audio balancing, ironed out the final changes in the edit, and started gathering some awesome photo reference for matte paintings.

Overall, all wheels are spinning full steam ahead. Nothing to do now but keep at it until we’re finished!

Goals for This Week: 

• Draft 1 of final presentation
• More texturing!
• Various producer stuff

What Happened: 

I’ll admit to falling behind this week, which I feel awful about since everybody on the team is working ridiculous hours to get everything animated and finished up. I haven’t missed any hard deadlines or put us behind schedule, but I’ve largely neglected the environment texturing (all due 5/10) to catch up on client / grad thesis work. I’ll be having a Mudbox Marathon this weekend to make up for lost time.

I spent my time this week beginning the hunt for usable sound effects, setting up meetings with our new audio guy (Dominic Zapalla, a film senior), creating the first draft of our presentation, and checking in on everyone to make sure our deadlines are in good shape. The presentation is still a bit rough, but since the focus was on organization of content I think we’ll be in good shape for revisions.

Total hours: 12 ish

Next Week: 

• Texture all the things
• Presentation v02
• Compositing? (depends on render status)

This week, I’ve begun final rendering of the project.  Just the character passes for now, as the environments still need to have their shaders finalized, but this works out since the character passes generally take much longer to render.  Our animators are hard at work locking down shots, and have done a great job at keeping me busy prepping files and sending them off to be rendered.  During the brief periods of time where I’m caught up with them, I’ve been workin on shaders and models for the environments.  Luckily we’re at the point in this project where many of the shaders can be recycled from similar scenes, which speeds up the process tremendously.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be doing more of the same.

What I planned to do:

Start locking shots.

What I did this week:

SO MANY THINGS.  I got about 13 shots LOCKED and ready to be rendered.  I’ve also taken some extra shots to help out the other animators so I’ve been working on those too.  I don’t have much else to say except for all I did this week was non stop polishing shots.

What I plan to do next week:

The same, polish and lock just about all of the rest of my shots.

Hours: 68

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Goals for this week:

• Lock IAC, EAC, and IT shots

What happened: 

• Continued to work on animating and locking stuff. I had to take EAC pretty much back to the drawing board, so that took an inordinate amount of time. I fell behind a little on some of my other stuff but Gabe was able to grab a couple of smaller shots to make sure that it all got done. That guy is a machine, I swear. IAC and IT got locked (needs to be officially checked one last time, but it’s pretty much there), and EAC is really close. Hoping that crits tomorrow will give me the feedback I need to lock EAC in a few hours.

Next Week: 

• Lock the rest of my shots

Total Hours: 53

Goals for this week

• Figure out the Fx

What happened.

The first thing I did was make one more tent in marvelous designer.

Then the rest of my week was

• After many different attempts I got something working.

Next Week:

More Fx work

What I planned to do:

Focus on my tent shots and get everything that wasn’t already at a first level of polish to a first level of polish.

What I did this week:

I spent most of my time wrestling with my tent interior shots.  They have proven to be my most difficult shots to work on and have needed much TLC.  I was able to get them to a level of polish that will be ready to show in class tomorrow and for Dave Mauriello to give me some good critique today.  Other than the tent stuff I tweaked some of my others shots and set up an animation schedule with Josh for when certain shots need to be LOCKED.  From there I spent a while going back through and playblasting all our shots so we can have a nice, cohesive edit to show on Tuesday.

What I plan to do next week:

First priority is getting shots locked so we can begin rendering.  I will also be helping knock out any small things that just need to get done.

Hours: 60

This week I worked with Ethan to lock down as many environments as possible (all but one are ready to be shaded and rendered), and to help the team get ready for our presentation on Tuesday.  For that, I worked with Ethan again to animate our Exterior Airplane shots.

Goals for this week

Modeling

What happened

I modeled the interior for the airplane shot. There was some confusion on the look, so I ended up doing some remodeling. In the end it all worked out.

Additionally I went back into marvelous and had some fun destroying some tents for the camp scene.

Next Week:

Help model more

Figure out whats going on with the FX.

Hours: 18

• Also, this week I spent some time making the final spooky mountain. I had some zbrush issues that caused the original mountain mesh and the spooky one to not line up anymore, but I was able to go into maya and get a working blend shape. (4 Hours)

This week was a whirling dervish of frenzied productivity. We all pulled our share of all-nighters, working tirelessly to meet our Sprint 1 objectives for the final project check-in. We’re so close to finishing everything!

The whole show is animated, but not quite locked down yet. We have roughly 1/3 of our shots locked and rendering on the farm, with plans to get the rest done by 5/10. 5/10 is also our texture deadline, after which Josh will start shading, lighting, and rendering the environments.

We’re still confident that this will get done on time, but it’s going to take all we have to do it. Let’s get this project done!

Goals for This Week: 

• UV / texture assets
• Be mean about deadlines
• Prepare presentation for final project check-in

What Happened: 

This week went more or less as planned! We really had to crunch to get our trailer up to speed in time for the final project check-in, but we met our goal of having an animatic with all shots animated and at least 1/3 locked. I spent a lot of time working on the timeline, talking with Gabe and Josh about the status of the animatic. I also prepared the presentation for our midterm / final project check-in.

I assisted with some of the camera animation for the animatic, talked to individual team members to find time-constrained solutions for everything that needs to get done, and did my best to keep everything flowing smoothly so we can meet our deadlines. I also looked into off-site rendering solutions, sold t-shirts, made a Facebook page, redesigned our website, recruited a new audio effects guy, and did all sorts of other small miscellaneous producer tasks. I was also succesfully mean about deadlines.

I also UV’d all of our environment assets (recently finished by Ethan, Josh and Anthony). The Interior airplane scene in particular took forever, but I maximized the UV space so it should be really easy for Ethan and I to texture. All textures will be done by 5/10, so I have my work cut out for me!

Total hours: 20ish

Next Week: 

• Draft 1 of final presentation
• More texturing!
• Various producer stuff

Goals for this week:

• Finish the animation (first pass final, of course)

What happened: 

• Worked pretty much non-stop animating, almost got everything done. By Tuesday morning when we present our progress for approval to the senior show I will have my last few shots finalized. IA050 will get a final review tomorrow before being polished one last time and “locked” as a render-ready shot, and animation will never be touched again.

Next Week: 

• “Lock” all of my IAC, EAC, and IT shots

Total Hours: 58

Team Spooky back with another status report! We’re chugging along towards the final delivery date and making steady progress. There are no more storyboards allowed in our edit, and we’re excited to be wrapping up environment modeling this week!

We’ve all finally rebounded from our various illnesses and are working full steam ahead. We have a final environment geometry deadline this upcoming Friday on 4/24, so next week you can expect to see our characters interacting with real objects! Our character animation deadline is 4/26, and even at this state we’re very happy with the state of our shots. The weekly critique sessions with Dave are definitely paying off.

For our Final project delivery, we intend to show renders and comps for each of our environments, a playblasted version of the animation, and a schedule for finishing it all on time. As always, the biggest hurdle standing in our way is the inconsistency of the render farm, but we’ve been constantly bothering Westphal IT to track down all the errors and get it reliable again. As of right now, the render farm is *mostly* working… but Josh knows all the details on that end. If the farm keeps up the good work, we should have no problem getting it done on time!

Goals for this week: 

• Polished compositing for all rendered shots (BUT ACTUALLY, THOUGH)
• Get shirts printed
• Wrangle timelines

What happened: 

I realize that I’m going about this the wrong way.

For the past three weeks, my main goal has been to get our compositing up to speed. We have a master comp for our Interior Tower scene (IT140) that’s up to date and a workable version for our Exterior Mountain Pass shots, but without the most recent renders I have no way of translating this work over to the OTHER shots. The old renders are missing render passes that have proven vital for the master comp, and there’s no point in trying to replicate that look with outdated and missing assets. It’s a waste of time, and I have better things to do.

So, until our Sprint 1 deliverables are re-rendered, I’m putting a freeze on compositing. All of my efforts for the time being will be focused on cracking down on scheduling and assisting with textures and asset creation for our environments. I’m tired of beating a dead farm, so I’m reappropriating myself to environment team. After the animation is done and rendering, everyone’s’ bandwidth will be free and I’ll be able to delegate compositing to the whole team.

I spent my time this week being a pain in the butt and pushing hard deadlines, redoing our Trello and schedule, assigning tasks, designing a logo and taking t-shirt orders, taking notes at critique meetings, and doing producer-ly duties.

Hours: 14

Next week: 

• Texture assets
• Be mean about deadlines
• Prepare presentation for final project check-in

This week I focused primarily on the edit and score due to falling behind on the other credits I’m taking this term. I went through our entire cut and wrote two pages of directions and notes for our composer as well as updating our edit with the latest playblasts.I also planned out our new motion graphics sequence with Craig Whitaker. This next week I’ll be doubling down on everything and spending just about every moment in the labs working on environments. Hours Spent – 4

This week I was supposed to work on the city buildings.  I started working on them, but was distracted by (surprise!) issues with the farm.  We were experiencing really erratic render times, with identical frames taking between 20min and 20 hours.  I worked for a while on a contingency plan, cutting down render times to the point where we could render locally in a worst-case scenario.  Thankfully, though, after talking to the Drexel IT department the farm seems to be stable again.  I’ll be monitoring it in the coming weeks and submitting jobs to feel it out while wrapping up the city.

Goals for this week

• Model props, Work on the shoggoth

What I got done this week

• I modeled and uved five bottles, a knife and a small tent.

• Additionally I worked on the shoggoth rig. I fixed some weighting in the front of the shoggoth and I added more control to the big mouth so it can be moved around.

Next Week

• Model

Hours: 16

Goals for this week:

• Continue addressing the critique I am receiving on a weekly basis

What happened: 

• This week I’ve spent my time polishing up more animation. I’ve gone through IT100-120 and reframed/retimed/polished following the feedback I received over the past two weeks. (16 hours)

Next Week: 

• Continue updating my animations
• Make a draft of the ending spooky mountain

Addendum:

Here are the first drafts for a spooky mountain in two different shaders

Goals for this week:

• Continue to refine animation

What happened: 

• Finally got to dive into some lip-syncing, as Josh was able to lighten up the rigs for me a bit., as well as continue to refine animation. Nothing too exciting to report!

Next Week: 

• Finish all animation!

Total Hours: 17

Goal for this week:

Work on my interior tent shots.

What I got done this week:

I spent all my time working on a single shot that proved to be incredibly difficult.  It’s my shot where Dyer collapses to his knees and Danforth bumping into the table.  I’ve finally worked out all my problems with dyer’s fall so now im tackling danforth and the table but this shot will be done by monday night thankfully.

What I plan to do next week:

Finish everything that isn’t quite done or to a first level of polish yet.  By class next week all of my shots will be at their first level of polish state and then I can move into adding that final level of polish while the team renders everything.

Hours: 20

This week, several members of Team Spooky came down with another bout of the plague. It was Sick Week: Part 2, and we ended up falling behind on Environment work. Nick was understanding and let us recover instead of meeting, so next week we intend to kick this project’s butt and make some solid progress to catch up!

Animation polishing is coming along, and we’re well on our way to finishing the animation. It’s going to be tough and we’ll be working up until the very end, but we’re still confident and optimistic. The biggest hurdle in our path this week has proven to be the render farm, which is still acting erratically. Oftentimes on the same farm machine, render times will fluctuate between 8 hours and 18 minutes on almost identical frames. It should go without saying that we need the farm to be stable in order to finish our project on time. Both our team and Jura have been in near constant communication with Jay about it, and this week we plan on meeting in person to talk about the farm.

Other than that, Anthony and Pat have made some awesome progress with environmental asset modeling, our characters are finally updated, and the new renders are kicking out passes that will allow for greater flexibility in the comps.

We’ve had our sick week, and now we’re officially at the point in the project where we can spare no more mess-ups or illness. This week is going to be tough, but look forward to some awesome visuals in our next PPJs!

Goals for this week: 

• Polished compositing for all rendered shots
• Asset lists for environments
• Logo / t-shirts

What happened: 

This week largely ended up being a faiure for me. I spent roughly a week and a half bedridden with a lung infection (which I believe to be bronchitis, but my roommate had pneumonia so I’m not sure). I missed all my classes, could barely stay awake for more than a few hours, didn’t even submit PPJs on time, and composited absolutely nothing.

Now that being said, I’m FINALLY feeling better, and a week of inactivity has left me desperate to make some art. This week I fully intend to kick some ass and get back up to speed!

Next week: 

• Polished compositing for all rendered shots (BUT ACTUALLY, THOUGH)
• Get shirts printed
• Wrangle timelines

What I did: Not as much as I would have liked. I experimented with layouts for Lake’s tent and spend a while trying different solutions for lake’s tent exterior terrain. I was experimenting with v-ray snow shaders and using displacement maps to carve out parts of the snow but after several hours of trouble shooting Josh and I decided to go with an alternate solution.  I also updated the edit and tweaked the audio.

Total Hours Spent – 6

This week I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked due to a combination of sickness related to a gastrological disorder and interviewing for and then working at a design agency in center city.

This week, I was supposed to get our Sprint 1 shots rerendering on the farm with our new finalized characters and model the detailed buildings for the city scatter.  Due to issues with the farm, not many shots were rendered and I’ve reached out to IT for assistance.  I did begin modeling the city buildings though, and they’ll be done and integrated with the scatter by the end of the week.

Goals for this week:

• Finish the spooky statue with textures and detailed base
• Address all the week 1 crit and get started on the week 2 critique.

What happened: 

• I was able to address two shots with their critique and I am working on a third. I was unable to hit the five I wanted to due to a family commitment that took away my weekend. I still believe, however, that I am on track and will be able to address all my critique. (8 hours)
• I textured the statue and got all the maps transferred into maya. This went as well as I expected and I was able to get it done without much of a hitch.

Next Week: 

• Continue addressing the critique I am receiving on a weekly basis

Goals for this week:

• Continue to refine animation

What happened: 

• Not a lot of time to work this week between FJORG and some medical issues. Will have to hit the grind pretty hard next week. Kind of becoming a mantra, huh? That’s not good. My goal this upcoming week is focus on bringing individual shots to a state of polish. Bouncing around between shots to ensure everything is moving forward has made it hard for me to get into a groove with things, I think.

Next Week: 

• Continue to refine animation

Total Hours: 10