YEAR 1, WEEK 6 - Click - 02.23.2020
APPROACH:
I might have gotten a little lost in the reeds with learning everything I can about modeling I forgot that I needed to make myself a test animation to get acquainted with animating and lighting. this week I spent a bulk of my time making sure my models work when rigged, and funny enough they do, but my geometry (the shapes that make up the surface of my models) is really bad for animating. and I went down this rabbit hole of making a functional model that works well with animation, I forgot that this was a project mainly about learning how light works and that this isn't where the bulk of my time should be spent.
the shirt is far too many faced for something that could have been maybe 100s of faces as opposed to 1000s
while there is nothing inherently wrong with these meshes, they also aren't good for animating. these arms have a few issues with its faces coiling around the object
CHOICES:
So! after talking it over with my peers and instructor I decided to reorient was the way to go! downloading a working rig from another artist and using it for my learning process will expedite my work as well as blending 2D and 3D but using editing software to splice together my 3D renders with my non3D work instead of doing it in the 2D program itself. Thank you to Maria for pointing out tat function in 3D rendering programs.
REFERENCES:
while I'm learning I also have to learn to be less proud. a lot of the tutorials and info I'm looking into talks down to me as if I'm stupid. I know what keyframing is, and I know what motion tweening is and I don't need to be taught that, "I JUST WANT TO LEARN THE INTERFACE!" I yell at my computer at 12 am trying to figure out why my rigs legs keep exploding, and that's just because I parented them to a lamp by accident at some point. The reality of this is "this is a growth area" for me, and while the scale is scary big, I think I'm going in a direction that feels stable if a little slow. I feel dumb every time I can't do something that feels like it should be intuitive, but when I finally get to an understanding it, I think to myself "ah yes I AM a GOD of animation" as I get my character to drift from one end of the room to another with no other animation added to him.
as an exercise, I started fresh with a new model, not working on sculpting him but making sure his rig worked (also I got to understanding blend shapes and I really like them look at his face scrunch up!)
CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:
The rhetorical question of "why am I doing this, 2D is a thing and you actually know how to do that" keeps ringing in my ear, but that's comfortable and safe, and I can't venture any farther with that. really the only questions on my mind at this point are, "Do I have the time to make the thing I want to make?" and "if I don't what did I really do with the time I had?" and "what was its value." This is meant to expand my knowledge of animation and in a meaningful way but it also needs to come out with a working product, and something I would be willing to stand beside and say I did it. at the moment all my thoughts are circling around should have and could have, not much time has been spent on tiny victories.
CONCLUSION
I am learning, but the stress of having a small packaged product might have got into my head. I didn't understand the scope of animation or 3D and I failed to do what I set out to do, what I expected would take me a week took 2, and staring down the barrel of a deadline makes you face some harsh truths about your ability in a specific field. I am not a skilled animator Yet. It was a bit of a no brainer as I only had some rudimentary knowledge of animation and expecting myself to understand the pipeline right off the bat was a tad overconfident. Reorienting and reassessing that my knowledge is not 0 but also not +55% I can see potential and I should have framed this time frame not around doing it all, but doing a tiny chunk, and I feel I was told this but was too stubborn to listen. (understanding everything about a complex thing like 3D animating isn't ever going to 100%)