~Essay Grade & Transcription compromise~

Just got my Essay grade and feedback. I got 57%, not great but actually better then I thought it would be. Chris Hunt liked my essay, but he felt that it missed something. I wrote about the impact of online sports on the youth, however my essay seemed to be biased toward it being a bad thing. However this was not my aim or intention with it at all. So he said that I should resolve this issue by making more arguement for it being good. He also said it lacks something that it is based around, and we both agree that I should base my essay around 'addiction' in general. Perhaps even turn it on its head, as addiction is generally perceived as being a bad thing, however it can be good.

Any way, I'm pretty happy I didn't fail it. I wasn't really happy with my essay at all, but this puts me at ease a little. At least with all the non stop crap with my Transcription, this essay mark will help me bump that up a little.

Now onto the Transcription. I have had to reach a work around if you will. Basically my character rigs are once again causing an issue. Both of them are. Which means they are unanimatable. I am very dissapointed with this, however I think back to my Interam and Phil advised me to focus on the two main characters, and so I will spend the time refining those characters, and produce a slide show animation of renders of them on the boat. Kinda of a storyboard slide show if you will.

Though I have had many issues and problems, I think it is important to note that I havn't given up. I have continued to try and resolve these issues, and for the most part I have done. It's just there are some weird problems in the arm rigs, causing the IK/FK to just not function. The lack of 'offset groups' cause a big issue as I am trying to constrain the actual curves instead of the curves offset group. Meaning I get some really strange results. However, I have learnt a huge amount with regard to constraints and offset groups through this, and feel my next rig will be stronger for it.

Oh, and here is a further update on the boat. I have pushed the render quality higher for these, and they are taking 10-12 minutes per frame to render. Kinda crazy really :xBasically I plan to produce my final piece as a sort of slide show animation type storyboard. So with this, comes the oppurtunity to push render quality higher, as there aren't any where near as many frames to render.

At this point I am quite proud of what I have produced there. I think my texturing is becoming even better now. I can only wish that I were at this stage 2 weeks back, then I could have gotten Alans help with the rigs and produced a nice animation with it. Though I have produced this scene and two textured and rigged characters, albeit rigged with quite a few issues. But you can't get things perfect first time!

Enjoy :)

3 comments:

tutorphil said...

Hi - you should have got a text from us today informing you that Thursday's transcription crit has been canceled and that you are to hand in your work to the baseroom before 5pm on Friday 22nd; this is because a number of students have fallen foul to the ongoing Maya problems at the uni, and creating this extra time is the fairest way to support them (and everyone else); I trust this is good news for everyone, as it means you have an additional day (and night) to finesse those areas of the project that would otherwise not be ready in time for thursday; use the time wisely, and I look forward to seeing you on Friday. See you soon, Phil

Jon Stewart said...

I'm not sure one extra day will allow me too get the animations done. However It will allow me to refine certain parts a bit more.
Thanks Phil.

Jon Stewart said...

Also, does this mean there won't be a presentation in front of the class, or will it just be in front of you or what?

About Me

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I am a video game artist at Dovetail games, working on Train Simulator 2014, 2015 and an unannounced title. I also graduated from the CG Arts course at UCA in 2010 with a First Class. www.jonstewart.co.uk