The shadows that live in the corner of your eyes: Break Time Deadline 2

YEAR 1, WEEK 10 - Click - 03.21.2020

APPROACH:

So an interesting thing happened and documentation of the events around me and how that affects my workflow feels prudent. so during the break from classes, I had to head home to visit my family and had I known now traveling was going to be a big thing I wouldn't have done it, and as I traveled how I lost some key time to work on my animation, that being said, I did get pretty far and I intend to get just a little bit father thanks to some much-needed feedback from my advisor.

CHOICES:

I've actually spent most of the break creating a home environment for work, not a lot of digital work was done as I was trying to make sure I had the power to make things work over the quarantine. Good news is I had a computer that was almost as powerful as the ones in the school's labs, bad news is it's rendering time is that of a single computer and not of 4 separate ones, which is how I was able to render so quickly before, (a fact nobody told me about 3d animation and was a cool thing to find out, a headache but still cool.)

REFERENCES:

Fun thing I found over the week was a way to render my project, while research render times and speeds and how to make that process not take as long all while working on the same computer that slows down over render times which hurts my productivity. turns out there's a free render farm out there that helps people make their animations along. I'm not sure how usable it will be over the course of the pandemic, but I'll be working with Sheepit from this point on to make sure I can work.

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

Current questions right now are based around my ideas for my second prototype project and wonder if I actually do have the processing power to make something work in VR. as I was hoping to make a small horror experience using the oculus rift and unity. I have a gaming laptop but I also don't have the most powerful one. So now I'm wondering if I should scale back and look into different project plans or maybe revisiting older ideas to make them happen.

The shadows that live in the corner of your eyes: Break Time Deadline

YEAR 1, WEEK 8 - Click - 03.21.2020

APPROACH:

This week was all about animating and rendering, and it was a bit of a slog. The process isn't what I'm used to and just going into it wasn't something I was ready for real. When rendering from blender it took a while to create the images I wanted, one cool thing about blender though, when I see something in its viewport, that's usually what I'll get in my render. still rendering out an image was something I learned was just good practice. in animating the little bits I had, I got a really good workflow going, the best thing about 3D is once you have the assets, you just have them. yeah the creation bit is a drag but if you make all of it, you're all set, just make your animation and done!

CHOICES:

I made something really cool (at least to me). I wanted to feel this sense of dread because it wasn't done, and honestly, I really do still, but I'm planning on working all break and making up for lost time. anyways I did a bit of preliminary animating and rendered out what I had, and it didn't look bad. Don't get me wrong, it still looked like a beginner's work but it's a growth area I'm looking to invest a lot in, at least on my own time. After this, I'm actually thinking about looking into AR per Shadrics pointing out that I should attempt something like that if that's something I have an interest in my thesis.

audio's bad, timing is off and there seems to be a slew of issues I thought I dealt with my first time around. But I can improve as I go that's the point of this process after all.

REFERENCES:

So I was looking into rendering capabilities of rendering in blender that was akin to Maya's Arnold. and Cycles was where I could lean into, however, in the first few seconds of this persons tutorial, Cycles is explained as a physical-based rendering interface that is great for rendering realistic-looking images, but it also can be used for higher resolution animations but this is not my target. Because of this, I have opted for just sticking to the Blenders Eevee interface.

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

The only questions I have right now is how I can do lighting and sound for this animation for the final push this week. because of that, I'm doing a final dive into tutorials for animation. I plan on learning as I go, and the high tension is both stressful and invigorating. I will make a plausibly good animation, and it will have a good sound that is my goal.

The shadows that live in the corner of your eyes: Learning from (failing) Doing

YEAR 1, WEEK 7 - Click - 03.21.2020

APPROACH:

I think that this project I've been working on was a great experience for understanding my own pipeline and issues with animation. So my approach has gone from a more idealistic outlook of how well I work in a new setting to a more realistic one. I've accepted that I cannot make an amazing animation with good 3D models I made and hand-painted textures in 5 weeks, but I can make 1/3 of a mediocre one to understand the process. This is was a learning exercise aftareall and I have learned a lot, but my ego is severely bruised. Oh well, we accept the problems reassess and readjust. this last week I've decided to work on the first scene of my animation and making sure it works before I move forward.

CHOICES:

Deciding to jettison all my work for a later date and focusing on one slice of the whole is my new decision for this project, it raises my likelihood of having a finished piece to actually look over exponentially. in the future however I plan to not spend so much time on one asset over and over again. because while I find myself enjoying the modeling process, that's not a project, just a really pretty asset. however, I do have the background for one scene and it looks pretty good all things considered.

everything looks like it's taken out an old house with dated wallpaper which is exactly what I wanted. also I was able to add controllers to a fridge and make it work like on in animation so that will help for later!

REFERENCES:

This doesn't really affect m writing now, only because I have a week left and the story is done. so instead I'll work on my writing later, bit this week was filled with more and more ways to fix the way I see horror as a genre. I've attended a talk, at the advisement of Maria, which proved to be very useful in how I orient myself in writing. I wanted to make something horror-related while sticking to story beets already established, I wasn't contributing anything just following a narrative structure already established by people before me. I was also given a book that lists out some great horror stories.

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

I've got only one question an that was can I make at least one working scene by Friday and that will be answered then and there, I've got my hopes pretty high, but considering this is the first time I've done something like this I've already done more than I ever thought I could. but I'd love for it to be so much more.