Trois Petits Chats (Professional Project Review)

     A family of porcelain cats' mother dies leaving the father alone with his two kittens. Their mother caught a disease that makes the cats crack and then die. While the father cat is trying to cope with the death of his wife, his kids try to make the best of themselves by playing outside, playing with each other, and cheering up their father. While the sister cat is flying a kite with her brother, she begins to cough a lot and the doctor is called. The doctor examines her and says that she has the same disease that her mother had causing her to crack. She is sent to the hospital where she is quarantined and where she can be monitored. While at the hospital, she begins to cough a lot but the doctors are not around to help her so her dad puts his son down and rushes into the quarantined room leaving his son behind and not knowing what is going on. Her dad picks her up and he begins to crack as well. The daughter then dies and the father dies soon after leaving his son alone and without a family.

     This story was supposed to be told through emotion and interpretation meaning that everything wasn't answered in the story so you had to interpret what would answer those questions. The main theme was loneliness and sadness giving it that "awe" effect which is really good when making a short film; you want to leave the audience with that silence at the end of the film.

     An element that I would apply to my own work would be the mood of a story. Mood and sound is everything in a short film to get that emotion drawn out from the audience. Another thing I would apply to my own animations from this film were the sound effects. Sound effects can really help tell a story even though there aren't any words. An element that I have already learned that is applied to this project is the lighting. The lighting and the shadows were perfect and really help set the mood for the emotion. For example, at the end the lighting was darker giving it that sad feeling. Another good thing that was applied to this animation that I have used in my projects before was the use of color. For example, in the beginning the colors were very grey and dark to give it that sympathy feeling for the cats.

     The creator of this short animation was a complete genius. He used the lighting, texturing, animating, color, and he set the mood perfectly for the scene. The lighting was always lit nicely and the shadows were very well done. The lighting was always lit nicely to give it the mood or feeling of the scene. The texturing was great and it really fit the characters well. For example, the dad was always wearing grey or a dark color to resemble his sadness of his loss while the kids were dressed in brighter clothes to resemble how happy they were and it described their personalities. The animating was very smooth and it wasn't jerky or quick to action. The walk cycles were also done really nicely even when they were playing or running. And then lastly, the color was used nicely. The colors were always really dark when they were sad or a little brighter when they were happy. Color really helped out a lot in this short to help draw out the feeling.

     This was a fantastic animation overall. I think everything was phenomenal in every way possible. I think that the creator spent a lot of time and thought out this animation because everything was just so precise and done smoothly. The creator knew how to tell a great story too and knew how to give the audience that silence in the end. This definitely is one of my favorite short animations that I have watched.

A Beary Bad Day

The White House (Personal Project Review)

     In my last blog post, I talked about The White House that I made last semester. Well this semester I worked on the yard that the house sits on, the lighting, and the camera movements. I made all of the trees, bushes, grass, walkways, the sky, and so on. This was supposed to be a semester long project as well but I wanted to enter the entire project into eMagine so I had to double my work time and double how hard I worked. I would stay really late most nights until 10 or 11:00 but on a couple nights (mainly during the last week I was able to work on this) I had to stay at school until 4:00 in the morning. In the end though, all of the (almost) never ending work paid off.

     To make the yard, I looked at some source images of the entire yard and went from there. I thought that the entire yard was a bit too big so I had to cut about 25% of it out. For the trees and bushes, I had to take tutorials on how to make the leaves because I wanted them to look thin and realistic. The trees and bushes turned out phenomenal in the end so it was definitely worth the struggle I went through to make them.

     Along the way, I learned a couple of tools, like the nCloth tool. Also, I learned to save more often (because maya kept crashing 25% of the time), that you can be too detailed, and I learned to texture my objects better by using the bump mapping and I explored what the textures can do. On the professional side, I learned that it's okay to ask for help because I had some issues towards the end of the project that I couldn't figure out myself or couldn't find online.  For deadlines, I think I nailed it. Sure I had to stay till 10 or 11 and sometimes 3 or 4 in the morning some nights, but I did great on meeting the deadline and I even had a couple days to spare before it was due.

     As for changing and keeping things the same, I don't think I would change anything except for this one particular thing... It's the shadow on the back of the white house. I wish it was completely shaded and not have that little strip of light where it isn't shaded but I didn't know how to fix it so I had to leave it be. Other than that, I love my project the way it is and I think it looks very detailed and it is textured well. I don't think I would change a thing about my project.

     Some things I will use for my next project would be the texturing skills I got from modeling and also some of the tools that I learned along the way. If I model another building next time I will pay attention to the detail like I did with this project here. I feel like the detail that I made on this house was great and I think that paying attention to detail should be continued on when modeling an inanimate object.

     Over all, I think my project turned out great. I like how I paid attention to detail and how it turned out. I'm kind of glad that I was a (somewhat) perfectionist when it came to this project because it turned out more than what I was hoping it to be. I spent so much time on this project (about 7 months of work) and I was up at school very late just to finish this project. I think that all the hard work over the months has really paid off and has made an incredible project. I am very proud that it turned out to be better than what I thought it was going to be.

Here is the video of my work.