Week 7 Blog - Animation Studio 3

Week 7 Blog

I'm a little unsure as to how this week went down overall. There were some good things accomplished but at the same time I still felt anchored to the usual flaws which got to me on Thursday and Friday.

The most important thing for me this week was no doubt the KPI as it proved to be a good reflection on my progress as a whole and out of all semesters I definitely got the most out of it this time. In my time away from studies last year I became more self relfective of my life which made the KPI more relevant to me compared to previous classes. Animation studio 1 I didn't feel much for it and Studio 2 It felt a bit empty as I was doing solo stuff, which made co-operative questions irrelevant. This time however I felt like I had alot more to work with and with the many ups and downs to come from this unit I went to town on the questions, going into as much detail as I could.

The meeting with the lecturer was also good as that allowed me to further expand into my answers and to see what his views on me were compared to how I saw myself. I've felt more confortable talking about myself to others in recent years so I find these to be good in getting my thoughts straightened out. For the most part he agreed with my self assessment and added onto various others which were certainly familiar to my mind, from my outlook on the given tasks, my general anxiety,the frustrations I've had with communication and other familiar issues I've had in the past. It felt good to talk about them with the lecturer and I found what he added to be useful to my self refletion.

I'm doing a bit better with the Nuke stuff now that we've gotten the heavy math stuff out of the way, which early on was a turn off for me for this program. I do well with this node system of connecting things together as it's visual design is pretty straightforward, only getting a bit out of hand depending on how the layout goes with the connections (which mine did get a little bit messy at one point). I also finished modelling and UVing the assets needed for our scene which thankfully didn't end up taking too long to refine.

Thursday and Friday were a bit of an off day for me though which came from two things in particular. The first being the rejection of all of my lab designs from the lecturer, which while I know these things can take time to nail down It was still demotivating to have to go back to square one on the design yet again. My patient with this rpom has started to thin and I just don't know how many more attempts I can do before I chuck my hands into the air and say "F**k it!". It also didn't help that we still don't have a ship design pinned down yet even with all the stuff we made. I fear that if Rikki keeps asking us about it and we still don't have anything to show him there we could end up putting doubt back into his mind and I would rather we avoid that at this point.

The second being my remote practice and the lack of it I did for the meeting. With the project being top priority and my roadblock from my last attempt at head designs I ended up pushing it to the side and having nothing to show for the meeting. To be honest it was embarrasing having to admit that to the group and it was the main reason I didn't even bother to go next when it was brought up. I knew this wouldn't be easy given my current skill set, troubles with motivation and my general issues with short attention spans but it did feel terrible to not give it a proper shot this time. I ended up in a bit of a slum throughout that day and I had to take the day to get my mind back in place, which thankfully I did for Saturday to resume my work and to catch up on lost time for the remote study. I decided to look for different tutorials related to that subject and have decided to check out two books that may help guide me back on track. The first book being Betty Edwards "Drawing on the right side of the brain" which has been recommended by many artists, and the second being Mark Crilley's "Mastering Manga Vol 1" which has nice step by step exercises to get me started and tackles an aesthetic style I quite like and want to do. I will give these books a good read through and see if they can get me onto the right track with what I want to accomplish.

Along with that I will also go back to the drawing board with the lab design and hopefully get some interesting designs out this time. Perhaps I could try them out with the shader to see which ones go well with it. Who knows, it might make certain designs more interesting.

Week 6 Blog - Animation Studio 3

Week 6 Blog

Well...Week 6 certainly got off to an interesting start. It's hard to describe how I feel about this week overall as it was quite a mixed bag of positive and negative aspects. Along with my usual mental thoughts its been rather odd to assess this week overall.

To start off with the positives we've definitely got Rikki on the positive now with the projects current direction. Compared to previous weeks we've definitely been on the rise with him and needless to say his latest feedback was very useful. It helped to nail down exactly what he wanted aesthetic wise for certain elements which made the week easier to tackle in terms of how to tackle the tasks. Given the team's rather nervous position on certain elements it was surprisingly nice to hear him praising them and giving us the thunbs up on them.

On the other hand it seemed like the possible fears of losing a life weren't too far fetched as we did end up losing one due to failure to confirm ship designs to show to Rikki. When the lecturer showed his designs to Rikki over the stuff we did I did feel quite off about that and with the life taken away it confirmed my suspicions. It was a shame we couldn't prevent that from happening, but at the same time with the positive reception we got from Rikki, I couldn't help but feel the loss of that life as a challenge to do better. Instead of focusing on the negative, dragging us down further, we needed to look at the positives in front of us and use that to push forward to the next phase of the project. I have to admit with the communication issues that were had on the weekend I was a bit nervous about the meeting, it certainly was one aspect that we needed to improve on as moments of waiting for feedback from others turned into a days worth of being stalled on progress as I had no idea which design to hone in on.

In fact, that was one of the biggest issues I've had at the moment. If I need feedback on any tasks I've done to see which direction to go in I've only had 2 members actively give me feedback, everyone else has been absent the whole time. I cant deny that it has been rather frustrating having to deal with this issue and at this point I've started to lose my patience, particularly with the constant tweeking i've had to do to find the style that we need. When I think surely this time I've got something that should do the job, it doesn't seem to meet the futuristic specifics we need and I jsut don't know how to get around this issue. I try to follow what Rikki has liked, the style guide and the references I can find relevent to the look and yet I just can't get a design that the team can give the thumbs up to and there's only so many times I can redo these designs before I end up going in circles. This has most likely contributed to the motivational issues I've still had here and there as I can't really put the time into something that has hit a dead end.

The struggle for motivation definitely hit me hard in the remote study as trying to tackle the head tutorial reminded me of the motivational issue I have when trying to learn new things like this. I watch videos relevant to it and give it a shot, the results aren't impressive and the urge to do something else increases. It's been absolutely frustrating dealing with this and today in particular it bit me hard. This issue has really got me wondering about the possibility that i might suffer from some form of ADHD (something my lecturer told me about when I talked to him about my struggles here) and having gotten a referral from my GP to see a psyciatrist I've been thinking about when I could see them to do the test to solve this mystery and given the struggles from today I can't deny I've been tempted to resolve this mystery to see if maybe I've had a mental blockage for a while now and never noticed it. Although it's hard to say and whether I have it or not I know in the end it's gonna come down to self motivation and disipline to get through this mental blockage.

After talking with Georgie last week about my current state I've been wondering if I should get into the habit of writing down my thoughts in a journal/diary, whether it would be benefitial for me or not? It could help me put my thoughts into perspective and could contribute to problem solving if I just can't figure out which direction to go on a situation.

While some tasks have been a bit hard to get into I have had success in other areas. The UVing process for the props was pretty straightforward, especially since many pieces were smal enough that I could get away with an automatic UV there. The only hiccup I had with that was the jarring UI change in 2018 Maya compared to 2017, which I find awkward to use as the toolbar that use to be above the map area is now gone and now i have to work with a clunky toolbox which isn't as intuitive as the previous design. I got through in the end but I would rather go back to what worked before.

I will have to continue to reinforce positive mindsets as week 7 comes around and witht the KPI meeting coming up I will have the chance to do some self assessment and the one on one with the lecturer will no doubt be important for this process. Hopefully I can continue to get through the tasks given and we can prevent anymore lives from being taken off.

Week 5 Blog - Animation Studio 3

Week 5 Blog

With no meeting with Rikki this week, the focus went to knocking off tasks on the trello list and with this weeks meeting we had to confront the issue that some tasks had fallen behind of schedule. With how we decide to approach this situation we could either fix this problem and keep everything on schedule or we could spiral into a downward spiral of deadlines not being met and the potential risk of losing a life on our 3 lives system. That potential damage is a worry and I won't deny that I feel a bit uncertain as to how we will go from here. One red flag that has definitely got me concerned has been the lack of communication on the slack channel this weekend. With the urgency we require, have very little feedback on my stuff to work with has left me stranded at the crossroads with the lab design not locked down while the shader testing has been messy, with no direction to go with to finding out how to get the look we need and plenty of Maya crashes from random value testings. While I was reminded of the availability of certain members for these days I was hoping that more would at least be aware of the chat rooms in case of urgent feedback but that didn't seem to be the case. I don't like the feeling of being stuck on a task when I have to wait on others to move forward as I feel like I can't contribute anything else at that point. I know it's something I can't really alter but it's something that niggles at me and makes me feel like I'm not contributing enough.

On the plus side I got my ship block outs done and ready to share and the assets assigned were finished in time. But I am concerned with the lab design and the shader testing as they have not been so smooth. When some members felt certain that we'd lose a life I didn't want to fall into that mindset as there's always a chance that it could be avoided and overall its a negative mindset to be in and would hurt morale, but I can't help but feel uncertain myself now. I think this Tuesday we'll need to do an emergency meeting to discuss the urgency of communication as that has been a major issue that cannot be ignored at this point.

On the independent study side of things I have started looking into specific tutorials on character designing related stuff and I decided to focus on specific things to start off with. To start with I went with Eye designs after watching a video talking about the best way to practice drawing, using eyes as an example, focusing on how it's best to focus on a task until you can do it efficiently rather than doing it once and then moving on without a second thought.



The above was my attempt at making eye designs on paper which turned out decently for my 1st attempt. I'll have to try this exercise out digitally as well to see how that fares and figure out which of these designs I prefer to draw. From here I think I will look for tutorials on making heads which can also be used to expand on the eye stuff as I can try drawing them at different angles.

When Tuesday comes around things will definitely go in a different direction depending on how we go with our current deadlines. Things will either even out or go all over the place and hopefully it won't be the latar.

Week 4 Blog - Animation Studio 3

Week 4 Blog

After last week left me feeling rather shakey about the project, this week has definitely been a push in the right direction. While I was a bit anxious having to present the pitch this time it went alright apart from one slide hiccup due to google drive issues. Rikki seemed to be more optimistic about our artistic direction, although he's still unsure of our technical direction. Compared to last week though we definitely have a better direction to go now and with the crucial feedback he gave us it helped with knowing what needed refining and what could be scrapped.

The ship will need to go for a redesign given the feedback to make it more like a civilian ship and the amount of crew members it will support. Reading the magazine Phil gave me helped remind me of Maya tools I haven't touched in a while and the steps of basic construction. Sometimes it's good to go back to the basics to see how things are done.

Productivity has been a bit all over the place, not helped by the dreadful heat wave which made working on my computer unpleasant and the house inspecting I still have to do. Regardless of that I have soldiered on, getting the assets list sorted, starting the new ship models and continuing with the independant studies. For the independant studies this week I continued with the exercises I started last week, focusing on the ghosting technique to build up muscle memory. Given the limited time I'll have to start looking for character drawing specific tutorials to start looking at now that I've had a workthrough of the basic drawing techniques. I plan to also try those exercises on my surface pro to see how digital drawing compares to the traditional drawing. I expect it to be a bit harder given the different surface to draw on, physical feedback and the various tools digital has to offer. With the first meeting coming up on Monday morning week 5, I will compile my progress on a powerpoint to show to the group.

The nuke stuff has still be rather mediocre with it still feeling rather heavy on the maths stuff. Perhaps last week's impressions are still rubbing off on me, or I just don't find this stuff interesting in general but regardless I'll try to continue with this stuff and see if it can gauge my interest next week.