Individual Iterative Review 1/30/2021

Over the break, I continued my work for the capstone short Ode to Melody. I created a character design for one of the background characters. I drew a turtle, since I had drawn that for my storyboards in Preproduction for LookDev 001/002.

I had also been tasked with creating the DAC logo. There were many ideas for the logo that I created concepts and animatics for. One was to show the logo in the clouds and have music notes appear.

Another idea was to have the logo appear on a log floating in the water.

The group voted on the latter, so I designed a log with the logo based on the logs I saw at Seaside, Oregon. I will then make the model for this log and add the texture.

For this week, I did some work for one of the scenes I was assigned to animate, where Melody is carried away from the island of the stage. I filmed some live action reference for when Melody hides from the water before realizing that the stage is drifting away from the island. For this, I filmed three versions. After I filmed the first version, I looked at the animatic and decided to film something closer to that. When I showed the group, they suggested that I animate Melody hiding behind one of the scarecrows on the stage. I also filmed some reference for when Melody shakes the scarecrow before seeing the storm. I will try and finish the animation for the scene this week.

I was also tasked with animating a floating music note in one shot where Melody is sitting in her treehouse and the note touches her ear and causes it to flicker. For this, I animated five versions to meet the team’s satisfaction.

1. I animated the music note floating into the shot and then, Melody’s flickering ear would pop the note.

2. Angelica wanted the note to appear sooner, so I animated it floating in much sooner and floating up to Melody’s ear before the flickering ear would pop it.

3. Angelica explained that she wanted Melody’s flickering ear to be caused by the music note touching it, so I retimed the note in the second version to pop as soon as it touched Melody’s ear which would flicker after the pop.

4. I also retimed the first version to have music note pop sooner like Angelica wanted. She approved of this shot.

5. I then decided to have the music note pop while Melody’s was flickering.

This week, I will do more music note animation for any shot that the team assigns me.

I finally finished the UVs for the model of one of the background characters I was tasked with texturing. The group told me that it would not matter if the UVs of the different body parts overlapped each other as long as they had different materials in Maya.

So I added different materials, and UVs of the body parts appeared separately in Adobe Substance Painter.

However, the texture on the main body had some noticeable seams because I had split it into two UVs. So, I stitched them together to make the texture appear more seamlessly.

I will continue my texture work on this character this week. For this, I plan to stay true to the design, while adding some additional details to stay consistent with the other characters I have textured.

That is what I have done over the break and this past week. I will continue my work to make my group proud and to help make our capstone project the best that it can be.