Month: November 2018

There are 3 weeks left before the college closes for Christmas. As of yet, the license for V-Ray has not been resolved, neither  has the one for nuke. We can not link out personal Nuke accounts together or onto the ones in the college which means that we cant work together to composite. This is very frustrating as an issue, while it doesn’t directly affect my current work, it’s making people hesitant to work.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas! It’s going to be really nice this year. I’ve been crocheting lots of snowflakes for decorations, and other pretty chains. It’s nice and has been really really enjoyable.

Following further delays to shooting we have start to model the assets for the film. I aim to have my final versions of my 3d models finished before Christmas. It is difficult to communicate with my classmates that this is where we are supposed to be going with the work. Especially given this weeks abysmal attendance, the fact that emails and messages to the group chat are ignored.

Nonetheless I am happy to be working on my pieces! I have had a good productive weekend and look forward to furthering my progress through the week.

This week I am concerned that the film will be derailed as the director and lead modeler aren’t in. I feel like this film is potentially going to collapse and gets weaker every week.

The sculpt that I was working on has made some nice progress it’s still got lots of hours left on it, but I feel like I’ve got some good groundwork started. I can’t wait to move onto detailing the face. Alongside this I’m keeping up to speed on my character designs for the conceptual studies class, and finally reached a happy level of organisation for my professional development class.

I hope that my laptop is repaired soon. I miss being able to bring it into class when I need it.

So day three, due to weather was cancelled. I am relieved not to have to go out and shoot in the rain, but it would have been nice to have completely finished the live action portions of the work. We are aiming to shoot later in the week, but I would prefer early next week instead. We are also limited to what the actors can do.

I am finishing out some designs to hand out for approval and production tomorrow. This is going smoothly now. I feel like some of the issues I was having with the sets and designs are starting to resolve better.

My sculpting work is really not where I want it to be, it’s not behind schedule. The quality is lower then I want and I have ran out of my free trial on the software that we are using. I wish that my college provided better suggestions to us then “use the free trials over and over”

the other work I am following on for college is going well. I am not behind schedule but I haven’t don’t anything too exciting either- but that is okay as far as I am concerned. I am staying on top of what is needed.

Today was another ultimately successful day.
Personally I was very off form today. My wisdom tooth was giving me grief and hurt immensely. It was painful and distracting and I left before the end of the day because I had to go to the dental hospital.

The set was ready to go from the day before. We made the adjustments for the day and started to map out the choreography for the fight scene. The set maps started to get changed. I was not happy about this but it was ultimately okay. The actress was constantly swinging her arm through the area where a cg object was and ultimately its better we don’t create more work then is necessary.

There was a lot of issue around no one having story boarded this scene as the choreography was difficult to shoot as one of the core props was very very important, and see through.

Following this. We had the challenge of shooting another scene without storyboards. I was starting to feel annoyed about the lack of boards as I was only assigned one scene and was the only person who tried. The boards should have been done long before. I feel like shooting was rushed into especially given the trouble we had over the script.

Again the writer and producer didn’t come in and no one was able to contact him successfully. I am finding his attitude rotten and it is spreading to others. To further add to complications coming up on this course, the man who was supposed to be the lead modeler is potentially dropping out.

As far as I could percieve we had troubles shooting the shots we wanted to get and had to improvise on the day. I don’t like this but there was a firm time limit on when we could shoot. Ultimately it feels like it went well overall.

Our next day shooting is next week. I might grab the storyboards by the reins and try to set them down.However none of the shots we are going for have effects so it feels less important.

While I am happy that we got the shooting done, I think that there are many problems and issues in the class. Most of them are denied or feathered around. the lack of directness, and communication as well as denial that people are not participating is really beginning to take a tole on my motivation.

Day one of three has gone (fairly) smoothly. The wires of the lights nearly melted due to an unseen tangle in the middle of one of the extension cords. The set took a little longer to make then I had anticipated, this was also down to the white screen being an unknown dimension until the day, and then on top of that it was not as big as I had been told. this resulted in changing the design of the room as well as the shots for scene 1 the fist scene that we were filming.

I made the mistake of not printing out the storyboards the night before nad from that I made another mistake of not getting them printed on the day. This caused some delays that were my fault-but I was also distracted by the set and thankfully on of my classmates was able to storyboard on the fly. I could have done with more help managing my workload on the day.

Shooting I felt went well overall. The actress settled in and really warmed up from take to take.

I found one of my classmates very frustrating for his comments and remarks during the day. He was rude and very difficult to be around. It also created tension on the set that could have easily been avoid had he kept his mouth shut. It was also very demotivating that the writer and producer of this production left after lunch. He did not come back and no one has had any interaction with him since. I have tried to send a normal friendly message to him, as he is my friend but it seems to be a fair bit of radio silence.

I am happy with the way the sets looked today and I feel like there’s good potential for interaction between the set and cg objects. The costumes were, visually very fitting, but the actress found them cold. I did not think about the practicality of the weight of the clothing, or that we would not have access to heating. I did recommend that the actress wear an extra layer between takes and made sure that she had plenty of tea. she took the tea but did not wear the coat.

I felt that the preparation for shooting had something to be desired, but overall I am feeling happy with the quality of work that we achieved today.

So far the major complaints that were made last month have gone undealt with. However the atmosphere in college has drastically improved- or else I have grown used to it

Overall the film is going along. I am not alone feeling underwhelmed with the script. It was the source of a lot of drama over the month gone by and there are now some fairly firm divides between people. I have tried to stay out of it all and focus on my own responsibilities. While providing designs that are flexible to a volatile script. It has been a difficult time but thankfully we shoot on Monday and will be moving along and away from this conflict.

I’m really enjoying working with ZBrush. It feels like I am not progressing fast enough, but I am keeping up with the class and am enjoying working on this project. We were assigned monsters to model. It’s a great task to be focusing on. I wish that I had asked more questions in class today, but sometimes at the end of the week it is hard to speak and think clearly in the classroom. My solution to this will be to make better notes while I am working so that I can remember my progression and more importantly what I am struggling with.

I’ve spent a sizable portion of this week concentrating and working on costumes and costuming for the actors. One of the actors sent me a lot of contradicting information which is frustrating. He’s 6ft and 83 kg, but also wears a size (S) shirt. I can’t wait until shooting is over.