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Sunday 20 May 2012

Overview of my third year so far .

Im not really sure how to start this post so i am just going to talk and let it flow and see where it goes.

Right so to begin i just wanted to let you know that the films Kernel and 1890 that i have been working on for the past 7 months are now complete! I am so proud of the people that i have worked with to get the films to where they are as i feel the standard has been exceptional and i can not wait for them to be exposed to the public at festivals in the future. I honestly feel (and hope) that these films will kick start our careers and get us noticed within the industry and who knows, maybe win some awards on the way.

In the mean time i will be carrying on working with the sounds for the guys on the film 'The pasty child' as i love what they are producing and again the standard of the work is amazing. It was ashame that the film was finished for the deadline but as long as we can get it ready in time for the summer shows i cant see why it wont be as successful as the other films i have previously mentioned. Every time i see a sequence of animation for it, it makes me want to see more as it is so pretty and full of detail.

Moving on to the work that i feel i need to put up to fill in the gaps for my lack of blogging over the past month or so to give an idea of what to expect from the film 'Kernel'. In all honesty this film has taken up probably around 80% of my life recently to get the last push towards the first fully completed CGI film on the Digital animation course at Falmouth which we can now say we succeded at. The days were long and the nights even longer but seeing the film in all of its glory was definetly worth it. It was a great experience working with like minded people everyday and by basing the film in the studio the atmosphere and morale were kept at a decent level and it meant that there were no communication problems and everyone knew what they were doing and where they stood on the production at any time.

For the film '1890' i took the work as it came which was interesting as i was never sure if i was finished on it or not as i would go for weeks without being required. I enjoyed working on it as vfx and compositing animation over live action is something i havnt really given a go so it was interesting to see how the models i produced for it would be used. Needless to say i was amazed everytime what had been done with them as i wasnt expecting it to look as flawless as it did. The bright colors of the composites looked really fresh and clean and to me showed off the sport in a new light as i have always looked at extreme sports such as skate boarding and bmx etc as being quite masculine porbably due to the fact that i rarely ever see women skaters being broadcasted on TV as often as men. So by watching this film it has clearly shown to me that women are more than capable of being competetive as men and arnt the fragile characters that people may think on first impression.

Over the next week i will be:

- Gathering stills from the films i have been recently working on and putting them up on my website for people to see www.ryanmace.co.uk (still in the development stage at the moment).
- Writing my production reports on theses films (looks like iv got the ball rolling for them here).
- Completing my innovations project.
- Getting business cards printed.
- Making a showreel.
- Preparing a presentation tomorrow on what i think is required for me to become a freelance modeller and how i will find work. So social networking and contacting companies to let them know i exist etc and how i hope it will lead me into a permanent job in a studio one day working on films.

So overall not too busy then...

The following images are pieces of work i have worked on recently that i havnt had a chance to put up until now so it may look a bit odd as the films are complete but here is the last bits of work in progress from Kernel and a couple of final composited stills. I will upload a few final stills for 1890 once i have collected the image sequences as well.

These leaves were made for the second tree for Kernel which we see grow outside towards the end, i know there are some imperfections but there arnt any close ups of them so as long as they look okay from a certain distance we had no problems. They are made as a sequence like this as blend shapes were used to make them grow so each model would flow into the next, again this was all new to me but it really worked nicely in the final edit. They are nice low poly count planes with alpha channels to make them look like they do.


Same again for these aprouts, except you can already see the leaves attatched to them here in this shot. They were also grown with blend shapes and it does look really nice seeing it sprout from its seed case. Was a proud moment for me.

 
The next two images are accesories on Leonards building, some of the models were copied from the roof of Leonards shed and others made by Sebastian, a second year who was working with us. All i done for this was assign the models a location and texture/unwrap the ones that wernt taken from the shed roof, i threw in a couple of cables as well to make it look a bit more visually interesting. Was a nice and simple job with a good variation between textures yet is still effective for its purpose. 



This is where it gets exciting, saving the best till last and all that. The next three images are a taster of what to expect from the film, the shots were composited and color corrected by me, again something i had barely no experience of before now. I feel i did a good job and am happy with how they turned out, i have a few more composited shots that i will show once i gather them from a different computer.


So overall i feel my knowledge within animation has increased massively since christmas just by applying myself to parts of the production which i had never done before. I am glad i said yes and picked up new skills a long the way instead of shying away from un familiar work as it has made me more confident and capable within the 3D animation field.

I am a bit gutted that my time at uni is almost up as it has been an amazing experience for me as i have learnt so much other the past few years and i have met some truely talented friends who i hope i will get the pleasure to work with in the industry in the future.

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