THE END - CONLUSION 'N' ALL

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's done. No more Pedro. The games up. Hand over the DVD. I feel a little bit sad actually. You wait all term for the finish line, and can't wait to see the final product and have a long deserved month off, but when it comes - ohhh man, what now?!

I can honestly say, hand on heart, this has been the funniest 9 weeks ever. I have cried with laughter almost everyday! I have absolutely loved working on this project, but the laughs and jokes that came with it made it. Most memories have been caught on cam for the extras on the DVD, but to name a few that didn't - wheeling Alec down the corridor, the rock photoshop file I messed up, the hare and the tortoise, crack a bottle, Tex's urghhhs, Argghhh tom, and soooo many more!

TOM
It was my first time working with you Tom, and what can I say..... "TOMMMMMMM, WHAT HAVE YOU DONEEEEEE!" Well you done alot! You were at times difficult, very defensive which we have discussed in your theropy sessions, but also incredibly helpful and dedicated to the project. You made me compramise with you ludacris suggestions on occasions lol, and doubt my own logic in cussing matches many a time, which is a verbal skill I grant you. You had to put up with alot from Alec, not so much me. We couldn't have done the project to the standard we did without you. You were also the equipment guru, Cameras, leads, USB's, backups, you sorted us out! Especially when we lost all our recordings - well played there mate. I was really impresseed with your modelling skills, and endless concept designs. You were a massive asset to the team, so well done man.

ALEC
you were alright.

As for the film itself, well......

ALEC
Nah I'm joking I've gotta do Alec aswell, although that would have been great. This term we bonded, whether he wants to admit it or not, our mums would. His maya knowledge I have to say is imense in places, I turned to him whenever I got stuck and he answered everytime, usually with the press of a button! He also has this knack of handing over the mouse to me to continue a task he has been working on, I touch it, and everything goes mental!! I have been able to do things you can't even try to do with the touch of the mouse this term! He was the brains behind the humour, in that our film included alot of wierd noises and grunts, aswell as screams - an Alec trait. I'm still not sure whether the audience will get it, but we do which is all that matters! lol. A negative - brought in roller tycoon to play in the last week of the project, the most important week! WHAT! but he got the work done so I can't complain. I have to say he's awful at cussing matches, I won everytime.

ME
As for myself, I feel I have improved alot this term. I would say I learnt more last time however because it was all new to me, whereas now, second time round I have just been slowly expanding my basic knowledge in areas. One thing I have learnt alot more about is After Effects, layers, and compositing. Maybe thats because of Gareths project asell, but mostly because our whole film had to be composited over live action footage I had to repeat process' over and over. Motion tracking, occlusion layers, time remapping, blending modes, etc. etc. I feel alot more confident in the program now. I also learnt a fair bit about rigging from the infamous Dave Ross, aswell as how bump maps, layered textures nodes actually work.

FINAL FILM

PRO's
I really really like the final outcome. I am most pleased with my animation. Especially the scene where he jumps off the rock and bounces backwards during the escape. The fact we made the characters look like they are actually on the set with the use of occlusion layers and shadows was another positive for me. I also like the fingerprints moving when the character is in motion and how they stop when they are stationary. The character designs worked well, and I feel we did capture the claymation style 80% of the time.

CON'S
I do however have quite a few negatives, which i hate to say, but I have to be honest. I don't like the way the final film lost quality. We tried rendering it as avi., mov, quicktime, mpeg, the lot, but every version seemed to loose the quality and sharpness of our fingerprint textures and make everything slightly blurry. Kind of defeated the object of why we spent all that time getting them on there. Secondly the storyline. The film has a few big errors in consistancy. The characters move from shot to shot slightly, and in one Cornelius is in a completely different pose to the previous shot! We also didn't hold for the establishing shot for long enough. Also as much as I love the humour of our film, i do not think outisde of college viewers will understand the funny noises and outburts we included such as Mcglones grunt, and Cornelius' sudden impatient outburst. He goes from calm to mad instantly. Finally the pan down from the gorilla sign to the cage in the bush was terrible, we could not figure out why the footage lagged but it did no matter what we tried. It has a nasty hand held amatuer effect which we didnt want. Ideally we would have used a tripod, but for obvious reasons this wasn't possible in the zoo. Plus the volume messes up big time on the DVD, all our audio and dialogue goes really really quiet :( Theres more negatives but I dont want to carry on lol

END
So there you have it, with another 2 weeks I think the final outcome would have been 10x better, i think we could have got it to industry standard. It's a close call between MTV cribs and "If I were a Gorilla". I'd say the gorilla project was technically better, but MTV cribs had a better narrative and flow to it. Either way I love both. Jared said it was a good thing that I had negative points about our film, it shows I always want to improve, and a good animator is never happy with their work! I can't wait for next term, Bare Bear WILL be industry standard - 3rd time lucky!