Major Reflective Statement
As this project is probably the longest continuous project i have worked on so far there is a lot to reflect on not that i have completed my time on it. Firstly the nature of the project and my original reluctance to focus on characters or creature is something that was brought on through a understanding of the process and a respect for the steps involved. Now that the project is finished I am confident in my ability to reproduce these creature of any other creatures to a new level of detail and visual fidelity. I am now more confident in my ability to sculpt, rig and skin creature and character where before hand i would have been mainly confident in the modelling and sculpting. Now I'm sure I can do them and to a speed reasonable for a position in industry. This includes a new skill I learnt in Retopo.
I learnt a lot through the process on animating the characters mainly on how cycles and curves need to be shown the artistic respect similar to hand animation as its easy to think it will be simple, however i an now sure that it never is. The curves need to be times right and should really only serve to block out the animation. using this the way i did is similar to how games work but even in this media they are rigorously tuned a process I failed to consider before it was too late. I am happy with what I got from my time animating however it is a skill i will continue to peruse in hopes to become better at it.
Overall the visuals of the film i am happy with. some fast effects in after effects gave the visual style more of a grounding moving away from a super CGI look. However my failure to anticipate a jpeg Z depth pass being useless meant i lost out on focus depth within the film. Even my very brief time at the end of this project gave me a new found respect of compositing and rendering AOV's correctly as I can see the visual detail and control I lost in not using these features of the 3D pipeline.
As I missed the opportunity to work on this project during premise i have found my self wondering what the project could have looked like with another 10 or 12 week of work on it. These steps have been laid out throughout the project. however there would have been more I could do beyond these. Mainly pushing a narrative element into the shots following the script, with voice acting and sound effects, before returning and finalising the design side of the project from minor, creating the diary of my space adventure and having it as a extra element of story telling outside the screen media. However the nature of the course made me decide to focus on the visuals as such the concept art/ design element was left for more 3D Art and Animation elements.
Overall I'm happy with the work visually, and I am confident in it serving as a signposted portfolio to where i would want to work in the future. originally that was in creature at the start of this project, however moving more into generalist as I have experienced more career's based advice. Either way the project has given me a good body of work in terms of asset creation and I am not hesitant to use it in a professional environment (i.e. portfolio, interview).
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