Evaluation

Kinga Makowka

OUDF504

Evaluation

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Overall I really enjoyed this project. Right from the beginning I was really excited to be doing this and there were things that went really wrong and things that turned out amazing. But to be honest, it was the seconds best project I’ve ever done!

There are a lot of things I regret I didn’t do that I really wanted to do, but I really didn’t have time to... It might be due to me being awful with sticking to my schedules. But I really tried this time. I think where I failed myself is when I spent weeks on figuring out how to work part of Maya which I haven't used before. I spend days and days trying to find tutorials, videos written explanations I went through several forums trying to find anything that would help me and if anything it just ended up confusing me more. During this project I found out that the best way to learn something is to play around with it yourself. That way you actually figure out how things work, what attributes affect what, and it sticks in your head better because you look at 'Damp' and you immediately remember how at one point it destroyed your whole tornado because it just pushed everything down... it's like gravity in a way. I think it’s because bad memories tend to dig in deeper than the good ones. It’s like a relationship, when it ends you remember all of the bad things and why and how it happened, rather than the good things. You learn for the future, you know exactly what won’t glue and work out next time, and choose to only stick to what you know, things that will work out 100%. It’s so you don’t waste time anymore. And in any future project where I will be required to use fluids, I won’t have to spend a month on trying to figure anything out because I understand how they work, and how to make it work.

There are obviously a lot of things that went wrong throughout the process of creating this video. Mainly because I wasn’t comfortable with using the parts of software I did, or I used software that I barely used before, this being After Effects. I watched a few tutorials here and there and it didn’t take long to realize it’s pretty much Photoshop, which I am very comfortable with using, but for video. Saying that when I started it was clear and simple, till things started going wrong, out of nowhere, like things disappeared when they shouldn’t have or the masking was all wrong even though when I did it it looked fine. But once you start digging through all the options you do get to the bottom of things ( most of the time) usually it was something like I keyed the wrong effects at a wrong time or the file ended early and needed to be stretched a bit. Also there are a lot of things that went wrong with Maya even though I’m really comfortable with using it. Mainly because I haven’t used fluids before and it’s really complicated. I have got a few playblasts and screenshots for you to look at, again, on my blog. also when it came to rendering the tornado, I did end up doing it about 4-5 times. But I got something out of every bad render, I needed a lot of dust and particles in the air, that’s where those came in useful. I masked them, changed the opacity and I think it looks really good, it blends really well so I decided to use those. There’s a lot of things to be honest but you can read all about that process on my blog.

There is something I know is wrong, and I know I shouldn't have done but I couldn’t help it! I ended up not sticking to the storyboard. It’s just as I progressed through this project i liked the ideas less and less, I came to a conclusion that it might be a little too much, a little too confusing if I went with my original idea. And I thought it won’t look as good if I squish all of it in. Maybe I’d be able to do it and make it look good, but not in a minute video. Which makes me wonder how did I manage to make an animatic with it, it looked fine there and the animatic was a minute long… We live in a really weird world. Maybe once I’ve got a spare minute I’ll come back to it and complete it. I won’t worry about having to cut scenes, and sacrifice the quality of it for the sake of completing it.

During previous projects I had a little trouble with blogging about my processes, simply because once I start working on something I don’t think about going onto my blog straight away or during the process because I find it quite distracting. I mean I tried to do this before but what usually happened is that I wrote about what I just did and after I do something I usually get ideas of what to do next, during the process of writing about the first thing I completely forgot what I was going to do next. So this time around I bought a little notebook, and as I was going through the editing etc, I didn’t have to worry that I’ll forget or that I’m not connected to the internet etc. and I just noted down what I thought about it and how I’ll improve on it, took about 10 seconds each time and it let me quickly move onto the next step. Then when it came to blogging I just copied what’s in the notebook. It made this job so much easier! This is definitely something I’ll be doing for each project. Also now I have the notes of all sorts, things I don’t usually blog about like what values I had certain attributes on etc. I am able to quickly and effectively do a tutorial on maya fluids. I think it’ll be really good both because I’ll be helping others, and i might actually get my name out there if people find it useful. And it’s a win win situation if it does!

If I was to do this again I think I wouldn’t spend a month on trying to teach myself a piece of software as complicated as this. But then again looking back I’ve learned some really useful stuff,and not many people can actually do it, so when I think about it I probably would just do it exactly the same, I think this month spent on purely maya fluids was worth it. Because now I can create brilliant stuff and I’m really proud. Maybe next time I’d spend a little longer on my ideas, and think it over a lot more than I did so I don’t end up changing it again… which I doubt I always tend to change my ideas halfway. I need to find a way to change this about myself. It’s not the fact I don’t do enough research, or enough idea generation. I go through a lot of brainstorming and think about all the possibilities for a while, it just… it’s always different when you actually start doing it. I think it’s because you see and realize things you didn’t think of before. I suppose it’s just my creative process, everyone’s different and for one person it might work out a little differently than the other and you can’t really do much about it.

Now it’s past all the stressful rendering, and past all the uncertainty I look at my work and I’m quite proud of it. It’s quite breathtaking knowing how much sweat and tears went into it. You see past all the layers and layers and piles of stuff and see it as a complete sequence, it’s amazing. And just the fact I taught myself most of this stuff, it does make a difference. Achievement unlocked!