Conclusion

After watching the final outcome of our film, I am really proud of what we have achieved as a group and what I have achieved individually.

As a group we worked really well together. There were moments when we snapped at each other through stress etc but nothing major and we even managed to continue our tradition of Chinese-food-Tuesday, so all was good :) I suppose the only thing we didn't manage to agree on was working style. From the 'easy-going' members own mouth, three of us were trying perfectionists whilst the fourth member wanted to work much more easy going.

Individually, I can see that I have come along way since my last project. I can now texture and use Photoshop and have learnt so many new modelling techniques. Over Christmas, myself and Dans have already set some personal projects where hopefully we will be able to develop the skills that we learnt on this one.

Enjoy the film.... when we put it up!

Sound and Rendering

After texturing had been completed, we put our machines to render at Uni while we constructed the sound together as a group. Render-wize we only had a few minor problems such as a mysterious person switching off our computers one night (we only had three for the four of us so we weren't being greedy) and Maya occasionally deciding to stop rendering random frames!

Putting sound to the piece was fun. Because there were four of us and you can only listen to sound at Uni through headphones, everyone came back to mine where there were speakers and we worked there, listening to sounds and taking it in turns to apply them to the playblasted scene. For the music, we used tracks from the Tim Burton films 'Edward Scissorhands' and 'Batman' where both tracks were composed by Danny Elfman. As the tracks were composed by the same person (genious) they blended really well together, as well as being a small tribute to my favourite director and composer.

Weeks 7+8 Texturing

Ok, finally finished texturing, which is good. We had to amend our schedule though, to allow more time. This wasn't too drastic a step as we had allowed time when we were making our timetable in case things went wrong. I think I fell behind for two reasons. Firstly, I had to learn how to texture which I had never done before, and assumed it would be quite easy. It wasn't, at first anyway. Really glad that I've come to the stage now where I can look back and wonder how I found it hard, but those first two days were really hard. BIG thank-you to the Dans, especially Dan C. Dan C went over how to texture with me every time I got stuck and taught me Photoshop. I already knew the basics of Photoshop as I had taught myself over the summer, but Dans knew it to much more detail and seeing as we were making our own textures by combining our images from Barcelona as well as web sources I had alot to catch up on. Dan R also helped when I got stuck. So it was two days of intensive Photoshop teaching for me, with added texturing lessons. The thing with me is, once it's clicked in my head, I suddenly know exactly what I'm doing and can continue from there. But I guess that's the same for everybody. I don't really know how to explain! Ah well......... The second reason I fell behind was because I didn't realise just how long it would take to texture. Me and Dan R who were doing our texturing at the same time turned out to be perfectionists. Obviously we had to take time into consideration, but we wanted our work to looks as good as we could manage it.

To begin our texturing recap lesson as well as to teach me some tricks in Photoshop, we decided to texture the ballroom wall together. We thought the above image would be fitting to match the craziness we wanted to portray about our characters. However, the more we looked at it the more it just didn't fit. We may have been 'oddballs' in our story but we weren't blind and this sort of wall would hardly match with anything.

We tried again with another texture. This one was much more fitting. The pattern of the bricks were pretty bold but the colour was more neutral so that we could generate the feel of the room with the belongings instead. Next, Me and Dan R attempted to map the floor with Dan C watching to make sure we did it right. We had always imagined a black and white checkered floor, so we decided to work with this to begin with and if we didn't like it, change it. Dan R also wanted to have a gold border around each tile. This was handy as it showed me how to do slightly more complicated techniques. After this was completed we decided it would be good to add some dirt to the floor to make the room appear more deserted. Dan C couldn't work out how to do it at the time, but he was going to speak to Jaimie (technician) later on and as Dan was in charge of most technical problems and has never let a technical problem beat him (as far as I know) I wasn't too worried, as I was pretty sure he would find the answer. Which he did.

So, texturing completely alone now.....

The first things I went about texturing were the books in the study as they seemed the easiest. In the storyboards you don't see the books clearly on the bottom shelf in the bookcase, so I didn't bother texturing the covers. It was when Dan C showed me his playblast that I realised you see the books much clearer than I expected, so I had to go about re-texturing the covers.

I experimented with making the top of the table red, instead of the brown that I had always planned on using. I changed my mind, back to my original plan once seeing this as I wanted the desk as plain as possible to make the other objects and Chester stand out. On the right is a partly finished gramophone. Making the rust on his face was a challenge, as I was combining different textures alone in Photoshop and I struggled a bit. However, after completing that object, I felt much more confident making the other textures, and after that, no other object posed as much of a problem, so I was happy.

The gramophone textured and my Christmas tree!! Urch in the background you can see my ugly face! In the whole 'painting', Dan R is with me pulling an equally hideous face, but unfortunately for me, in the final shots all you can see is my ugly mug!

The voodoo dolls.

The Ballroom:

Beginning to texture the steps...



The steps without the rest of the texturing and no lighting.....

The steps fully textured in the finished room!! The stairs were one of my favourate objects when completed as I felt that they were very grand and dramatic. Also pianooooo!

My evil chair and cutlery. Dan R's original dining table was green, but when he sent me a screenshot I didn't think it went with the ballroom as it looked like a pool table. He tested it red and it went much better with our colour scheme!!

This is Dan R's chair. I finished all my texturing and went on to help complete some of his. His exterior was taking longer than he planned as he had larger objects to texture so I took care of a few of his objects. The chair being one.

The above shows brackets to support the beams that tower over the ballroom. I realised after making them and texturing them, then seeing the playblast later on that when you have a deadline you really should take more seriously into consideration what objects are going to be seen alot by the camera. Still, it was more texturing practise and I guess its detail that helps to make a good piece. Well, that's what I keep telling myself!

In the above image, you can see part of the dome that I textured. It was tricky getting the bump to work as well as I imagined because the glass was purple and blue and with the bump it looked like a massive sweet wrapper. After a while I think I managed to get the right balance between colour and bump.

My Hillbilly style porch with rocking chair and pillars. i also textured the door:

I textured the gates while Dan C textured the concrete posts. You can also see trees in the background. Me and Dan C made these from a spooky tree picture we took just before we went Zorbing in the summer. The pic is in one of my other posts- you cant miss it. Twas like it was meant to be.....

I textured Dan R's garden furnature. As this was the last thing I textured, I feel it came out the best compared to my other objects.

Our Not-so-Prince-Charming! Elisha Photoshopped the picture of our friend Prince, while I supplied the frame to keep some continuity within the different rooms!

Object Building Continued.

OK, so the modelling is finished! And to schedule, which is great. Though it was pretty close. I decided to axe the candles that I was going to place on the fireplace and some extra photoframes though, because if I wanted to keep on track I wouldn't have time to add these extra details which would hardly be noticed by the camera.

The ballroom. The screenshots make it looks a bit messy, but hopefully once textured it will look more like what I can see on the screen and in my head! Everything in the ballroom and study I moddeled myself, except for the table, Dan R built that :) He's also building the chanderleers that will be placed in here. The wall to the right looks a little bare, but that is because the stainglass windows will be there.

Ahh the pillers. Such a simple-looking design! They had to be the objects that took longest to build! Before this project I didnt know how to generate such smooth curves, I used to extrude cinlinders etc, but my friend Josh showed me how to use the CV curve tool. Using this method, I also created the banister leading up the stairs.

The stairs. These were the first things in the ballroom I attempted to model and one of my favourate features in the ballroom. I had to limit the ammount of 'Tim Burton' steps I used because Dan R felt they were too overpowering. As a compromise to making my steps more normal, I kept the banister which he thought was too 'spagetti-ish'.

You can see the grand piano above in all its former glory (ish)! I built the piano to scale using the little cylinder I had built to keep the human scale. However, when I imported it into the scene it didnt fit properly into its allocated space! Well, it did, but the space I left, once with the piano inside looked too cluttered and seemed to be too close to the steps, making it look unrealistic. I couldnt scale the piano down all together otherwise it would be out of scale with everything else in the scene. I was left with one alternative...... shrink down the back! Not so grand a grand piano any more :( On the brightside, I'm able to get away with it and have it appear to look grand as in its former days, because the camera never looks at it directly top down or from the side. In the top picture with the stairs, you can see the piano after its back has been scaled down.

The entrance to the ballroom. I like the way this turned out as it looked almost identical to my early sketch of how I imagined the door to appear. I think the reson I like this design so much is because it looks like the door should be on the otherside leading into the ballroom. Instead of looking out of place in the room, all the odd furniture etc offsets it nicely, adding to the rooms 'oddball' feel.

On the table you can just about make out the cutlery. The chlice's are pretty average in design, but the knife and fork fit more into our personalities. The knife, we decided, would be a sharpe kitchen knife whilst the fork would have little devil prongs on them.

These are the lights that are going to be placed in the ballroom and study. These were inspired by the above light we found in Barcelona. I altered the design a little to fit more into our chosen style.

My cat chair.

The Dome that goes on top of the ballroom. Yes, it looks like a nipple, well hopefully anyway. Throughout our animation there are random little things to look out for. See our group page and read about the voodoo dolls for example....















Two shots of the study. On the wall behind there will be a large stainglass window. Everything in this study I modled myself. It looks a little bare in these screenshots, but on the far wall will be the stainglass window, which hopefully will bring more character to the room.

My dead christmas tree!

I used the same stool in the study for the piano to save time. It also matched, which brought some continuity to the rooms.

What I like about the study is that there are lots of little objects everywhere that were quick to build but added extra detail to the room, such as fountain pens!

I also built a rocking chair for the front of the house to go on our American-Hillbilly porch.