I felt overall that the work done on this project so far has been successful, despite the problems that never seemed to stop surfacing throughout. I think what made it successful overall for me was gaining some footage that achieved one of the visuals that I set out to do. I think one of the biggest breakthroughs I felt was only extremely recently, after shooting the footage on Saturday, and finally feeling that this project could be continued.
Technically I was felt successful with the character animation that I did on flash. I felt that it was clear and satisfied the visuals I wanted for Lumea. Once I had started to develop some personality for her it became much easier to animate. I feel that right now her character is still only half formed, and I plan on doing some more exercises and drawings to further her.
One of the things I would like to document too would be her interactions with other people. Back on team time and space we played with the idea of visually representing emotion (http://vimeo.com/16012924) and even though the clips are very brief, they contain a lot of impact that I would like to carry over in this project.
I felt successful in regards to the projection technique because I wanted to capture a 2D character in a 3D setting and I feel that it worked. I think the setup in the footage is very basic but it could certainly be elaborated upon.
While the idea of the puppet is still appealing to me (the idea of the lights on a frame and using the silhouette on different layers of light) the actual puppet I was dissappointed with. I think that the time I had was too short for me to develop a puppet that would have achieved all the specifications I wanted. However, I did like the idea of it with light, so I will keep that in mind and possibly look for another solution to it.
I was surprised by the direction that my project turned, from working with puppets into projection. I think that I was set in the idea that it was a puppet project, but what I was really wanting to work with was light. I was also pleased that I found a way to encorporate my 2D work with my 3D work.
I was also surprised, I suppose, that my shoot managed to come together at the last minute and be able to produce footage I was comfortable in showing. I think the biggest struggles I had was that the ideas I was working with seemed to have a degree of impossibility for a student to do, with the lack of a closed set and etc. I feel like I impeded my own progress at times because I felt that the project probably wouldn't work out and pushed aside testing and building quite a bit.
My next step from here is to work out a lot regarding the set building and Lumea's character. I have a set of tasks for Lumea alone:
- do more gesture drawings
- create context within the drawings as well, such as placing her in everyday situations to determine how she would act, interactions with other people and objects, etc
- determine a situation that I might want to base a film upon
- understand what sort of context is created with her being a source of light, as opposed to a contained light, or an object with lights on top of it
I will continue to research effects regarding projection and lighting in my special effects class. For this class I will be looking at structuring the film and doing more paper animation, probably with replacement animation again.
No comments:
Post a Comment