Updatatatatate: 4/30/14

I'm actually making progress whoa? ?? ?? ?
As in all the camera-timing frames should be complete!
The only thing left to do is to occasionally animate the fluttering of wings and render. Oh lord the rendering.

This clip starts with her being tiny...

...then zoooms up the mountain to make her seem smaller and it bigger.

the "Looking Up" texture as she looks up the mountain like "wow i this is daunting, but if i don't climb it, i won't achieve my goal. welp."

makin my way downtown

this is really cute and i actually kind of like how it's coming out, despite the rough bumpiness of it all.

i caN DO THISSSS YESSSS

Oh golly gosh Update!!

I stayed up too late finishing the Fae, and I may or may not have based her design off my friend Liz.

really simple design, especially with the little dress. She's not a forest fairy, which is why she doesn't want to be in the forest probably.

she looks like paper omg

the lighting should have some interesting effects

i just need to transfer the textures to the file in the lab.
i really hope i wake up in time i apologize in advance if i do not but rest assured it was because i was working!

Final Progress: 4/28/14

i think i'll stick with this mountain texture. Also I like how the floor texture isn't actually completely flat-colored and the texture of the forest wall makes it look super huge

beautiful fairy lady wow (correct texture needs to be added)

Timing of the clips so far, just over halfway through since I'm aiming for about 3000 frames in total to fit the song. The last frames of her climbing the mountain shouldn't be too long. (Maybe I spent too much time on exposition oh man.) These are the frames I'll render out when everything is finalized. I learned how to do this from the last project!

These clips may take a little longer to render with the physical sky attribute activated, so I'll definitely give it enough time.

Final Progress: 4/23/14

The end of the semester is coming up way too quick oh god. I did some more camerawork today, moving the Fae (as I have dubbed the character) and planning out what the finer movements are. I have a document of the correct frame sets to render out, and I'm about halfway done with that.
Once I have all the camerawork done, I'll go back in and

I found a nice texture for the "forest" to make it seem like this huge thing the Fae crawled out of

Lighting with physical sky active

Working with different textures. textures are hard.

added a few more mountains on the end to create a full mountain range.

Here's a preview of the Fae starting to escape to freedom! In the beginning, she starts out alone inside her forest room. Maybe I could add in some trees leftover from the Oracle project to increase the claustrophobic feeling. Hm...

The last two projects of mine have started out with the main character all by themselves and sad. The first ended with the robot creating a friend for himself, and this one ends with the Fae completing her own adventure. They're both happy with themselves for achieving their own dreams. No one else is there to make them happy, so they decide to do the job themselves. They love themselves when there's no one else there for them.

Maybe that's the only way that works for them.

So anyways, final progression here i gO

HERE TAKE A BUNCH OF SCREENSHOTS

for scale: fae figure vs. mountain

the fae! not the final design, mind you.

the giant wall will have a forest texture on it to simulate a.. well, giant forest.

See that tiny little hole in the wall? The fairy is gonna wander out of that - behind it is a large dome, to which i will also simulate a forest using textures on the inner wall.

I'm gonna take my next vacation here. but actually needs to find a suitable texture for mountaintops.

projected final shot of what the fae has come to see. may add a city skyline orrr something about an ocean hmm mmm mmm

her first model looks like a tetris piece here lol

And I've decided that the song I want to use is An Interlude by The Decemberists. It has the right mood and timing I believe.

I might try to cut it up like I had my factory project, what with multiple camera angles. At the same time, I don't know if I have that much time, so I think I'd keep each clip larger in order to work with fewer.

((The song is 1:40, or 100 seconds long. 30 fps, 3000 frames? I can work large.))

I got thissssssss s s ss s

Welllpp

Rendered as much as I could all night. Some things still look wonky and I want to fix them but time and skill constraints, y'know.

This course is rough, man. It definitely is not for me at all. But I've known that from maybe like the third week of classes.

I want to do well on the Final, if only I can figure out how to construct it.

Final Project: Thinking thoughts and feeling feelings

I think I want to have a little 2D animated character, maybe just the black outline like in the Doodle Disaster video. I want her to be exploring a 3D landscape, something vast and beautiful, something that she wants to explore.

The narrative is that she wants to explore and see everything that there is to see in this world.. She might spot a mountain and resolve to scale it in order to watch the sunset. And she could see much more than she bargained for once she reaches her goal (maybe a city in the distance - a new dream - or a friend no, she resolves to go on this adventure on her own, as no one else is able to experience things for her. And she'll never really stop experiencing things.).

Songs that come to mind are Prelude (not as "calming" but still a lovely song) or An Interlude (the shortest one) both by The Decemberists, one of the songs in the Minecraft soundtrack, or One Summer's Day by Joe Hisaishi (or maybe a piano/music box rendition of it). Or I could use some of my friend Matt's music, because they make some pretty stuff. Even a Vitamin String Quartet song could work (Decemberists or Red Hot Chili Peppers cover?). Something calming and nearly dreamlike. The animation might not take up the entire length of the song, depending on which one I choose, but we'll see how much I put into it. Hopefully enough, whether it fills the space or not.

I'll have to make a texture for the character and use the alpha channel. (Maybe I'll use a shortcut of giving her little fairy wings to avoid trying to figure out a walk cycle heehee. Those would be separate child planes perpendicular to the main character plane. I could animate them fluttering a little instead perhaps.)

I'll storyboard this once I start to render the Factory project clips.

Inspiration is certainly there, as I believe it is with the Factory project, which is coming along just fine. Accidentally puts inner feelings and dreams into school projects oops. Is that a recommended thing to do? It certainly answers the "why" of the project. It's not just to do a thing in order to learn techniques and skills, it's also letting quieted emotions through before they can't take it anymore and start shrieking. Maybe that's what art is to me sometimes, along with all the technical knowledge to help make it look nice. Expressing myself when my words fail me and my inhibitions are stronger than me.

It will all be okay.