603 Weekly Update (Week Commencing: 11/01/21)

At the end of last week, I scheduled a meeting with Stacey and the team to get a sense of where we were at. Below are the notes I took.

Link to Stacey's Project Meeting Notes (08/01)

I also made a new Gantt chart for Khoa's project. I tried to keep it as organised as possible. However, due to the amount of members in the team, verses the amount of scenes and the time we have left, there are some jobs that overlap. I did however, express to the team that if anyone becomes overwhelmed with the amount of roles they have been given, or alternatively, would prefer more tasks, to keep me informed and I can adjust accordingly. 

Link to Production Gantt Chart (Khoa)

For Khoa's project, as it is incredibly ambitious, I decided to block out the tasks in week long sections, to ensure each member of the team could keep on track. However, considering the amount of time we have left, I can't afford to do this with every project.

I spent this week redesigning a lot of the characters for Rhys' western animation. Rhys said in his original pitch that shows such as Castlevania and Attack on Titan were his main art inspiration, and what we as artists should be aiming for. So, while designing my characters, I kept the line art thin and the proportions realistic. In our third weekly session however, the lectures commented on the noticeable differences in style between character designers. They said it was obvious that different artists were responsible for different designs, and that we were nowhere near ready for production. So, I volunteered to design the remaining characters and redesign those that already exist.

I started with Marow, the protagonist, who was originally designed by Rhys. I tried to make his outfit more authentic and his proportions more realistic. I also gave him gloves to try and simplify his hands, as individual bones may be difficult to animate. There were a couple inconsistencies, such as I didn't understand why in the original design, he had hair, yet only cracks in his skull alluding to a moustache. So, I made my version bald and incorporated the features such as his hair through his human/past life design.

Next, I moved onto the bear and eagle designs, originally designed by Jason. Considering this is a western set in purgatory, I was a bit confused as to how a panda would exist in this setting, and raised this concern to Rhys. As much as I like the design, I believed a grizzly bear would better suit the setting, at least where the western imagery is concerned. So once more, I tried to keep the proportions somewhat realistic and the colours fitting to the environment.

Rhys also asked me to design Tarant, who he was originally intending on designing. He asked me to give him six arms, which strayed from my original vision of two arms and two legs, so I was worried he would be too top-heavy. As a result, I played around a little with his weight and physics.

Link to Production Gantt Chart (Stacey)

At the end of the week, I made a Gantt chart for Stacey's project. At the start of this week, there were only a couple animators on this project. Considering the amount of scenes I was animating for Khoa's project already, I began to worry about whether I could continue to work on this project. So, I messaged the animation group chat and discord asking for extra help. This wasn't the first time I had asked the class, so I wasn't hopeful. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Link to Production Gantt Chart (Rhys)

I had also started to make a Gantt chart for Rhys' project however, I also ran into a few problems here concerning the amount of shots in the storyboard. I ended up facetiming him to try and resolve these issues as we don't have nearly enough time to complete this project, which meant a lot of the scenes needed cutting. Most of the projects I'm working on have about twenty scenes each, while Rhys' had over forty. I was quite harsh and in the end, we managed to cut down the number of scenes to twenty-eight.

I'm producing four different animations, and the main problem I'm currently facing is that every time I've asked the class for extra teammates on particular projects that were understaffed, I've either heard no response, or the same people would always volunteer. Of course I'm happy with any and all help I can get however, as the members of each team are all the same people, trying to juggle four Gantt charts, when their roles are already overlapping in one animation, let alone all four, is extremely frustrating, as I know how stressed I'm feeling about it, so I don't want to overwhelm my classmates.

If there were only a handful of final films within this module, that were green-lit and chosen right at the start, then I'm confident the outcomes would be far more developed and resolved than the films we will probably end up with, as the teams would most likely have been bigger. It's concerning that whenever I've asked for help, it's always the same few people offering. I'm not sure what projects the rest of my class are working on, but they must be pretty ambitious.