Design Practice 2: Animation: Work Submission

My main ideas and intentions that I was trying to express in the project were:

To collect and portray a direct vision of visual styles, moods and personal interests that were inspirational to me in the past and present and reflect them into a current project. For the audience to reflect on my work and be able to find similarity’s to conventions of the horror genre, specifically through sound, lighting, props and overall mise en scene. For audiences to be drawn into a realistic environment and experience a consistently interesting journey, I wanted the viewer to feel almost mesmerized by the travelling motion of the 1st person perspective, picking up on fine details along the way. Creating a genuine 1st person perspective that would mimic that of a real life theme park ride, using camera movements to replicate emotions such as being shocked and then jumping backwards. Using the camera as tool to explore the different possibilities of a 3D world through experimentation with angles, rather than being restricting to a flat 2d world. My scare scenes were aimed at creating a spontaneous shock value by jumping out at the viewer, rather than trying to be to ‘scary’ I wanted to rely on ‘cheap thrills’. To create and eerie atmosphere by developing interesting light, I used the sun piercing down through trees to create realism and deviate away from say a generic 3 point light set up.

The methods I use to develop my ideas were: (brainstorming, , visual research, storyboards etc)

I harnessed existing haunted house rides and existing media for inspiration for the overall theme of the ride, analysing personal horror interests such as Gotham City, Dracula, Resident Evil & Tribal Cultures for lighting, composition and ideas helped construct a mood board to collaborate and future develop concepts and themes. Once I have my ideas together I pinpoint the main essence and start to sketch and storyboard possible props, action sequences, camera angles e.c.t to begin actually constructing my ideas. Once I am making the project I research different techniques and attain information through online tutorials and literature to produce desired effects or to solve particular problems, I may also look at relevant videos at this stage to further my project, such as live footage to replicate in my own work. I will also be collecting feedback, evaluating and refining in the future to develop my ideas even further and getting a higher quality outcome.

I took a risk by trying something new. (Explain):

I decided to experiment with a water reactor in 3DS max which was totally foreign to me and had not been covered in any of the university lectures. It could have gone so wrong as I had no idea how operate it and invested a lot of time developing something I was unsure about. I got the point where I was replying on this to be my main spectacle and was experiencing a lot of errors; luckily I found 1 tutorial out of 100 that fixed the problems I was having, So my risk taking did In the end pay off.

Some of the unexpected problems I had to solve while working were:

Technical problems include: Planes became invisible when I applied bitmaps to them, could not get objects to float on top of my water reactor and had a lot of computer crashes. The main unexpected problem was time restrictions, even though I began this project early on in week one, the final product will not be available till the end of module presentation and my first version was completed to close to the deadline for my liking, I mainly blame the university computers, as leaving my work to render there for 30+ hours was unachievable.

The decisions and choices I made to help solve these problems were:

For the bitmap problem I decided on this occasion to consult an animation lecturer for a solution, rather than sacrificing hours looking for a solution myself that I couldn’t find on the internet, I made use of someone’s personal knowledge. To fix my objects floating on the water issue I began searching online forums for information about how to achieve my desired effect, eventually finding a useful video which solved my problem, I’m happy I chose this approach rather than starting over. To solve my crashing problem I had to first locate the problems at their source, choosing to investigate myself rather than blame the program, I found that through my own mistakes I had not lowered the iteration on some objects, which I later corrected. For my render problems I made the decision to use my home personal computer to render, It is a much more controlled environment to work in and I was able to finally complete my work after 4 failed render attempts at university

The things I have learnt from this particular project were: (Specific examples should be cited.)

That technology always has the possibility to be unreliable; I must take this into consideration for meeting deadlines in a possible future career. I learnt many useful tricks and skills in the 3DS program, I now feel a lot more confident and experience in virtual environments, before I would have had no knowledge on reactors, particles or even motion paths. That lighting plays a huge role in the way objects are perceived in 3DS max; It is similar to film in that notion. Finally that I need to do more research, I jumped into some areas of the project to fast, and problems could have been avoided by a few extra hours of researching.

Areas for improvement , If I were to do this project again I would change or do differently:

I plan to edit this submission for the DP2 presentation, what I will do differently between then and now is firstly arrange a feedback session where I can gather ideas for refinement and improvement, Alter the camera movement to make them far less violent and much more smooth, focus more on the scare scenes and make them flow much better with the mechanics of the ride, tamper with the speed of the ride, add an extra scare scene at the end and an intro scene at the start which enters the ride through an entrance. I would have tested the integrity of a computer before attempting to render to save heaps of time, concentrate more on the lighting and finally research specific areas more in-depth.

A new project that might grow out of my experience maybe:

An animated virtual walkthrough for a client where you can explore a building with accurate modelled spaces and props.