End of Semester Progress Update

Intention Definition & Exploration of Ideas

    My concept was looking inwards, more specifically about how the little things in a day can add up to a breaking point and how it can effect someone almost as bad as if one big thing happened. The reason I wanted to go with this theme is because when ever I have days when so many things are stacking up it feels like complaining if I ever try to tell anyone, so by making an animation that visualizes this feeling it is a way to help people understand that even though nothing really big happened it still has an emotional toll.  

Planning

    I used this tutorial to create the cloud over Sadness and it taught me a lot on how to use meatballs. While I used this tutorial to make a unanimated cloud it taught me how I would use meatballs to make lumpy meshes that blend together nicely.

    For the Sheet on the bed I followed a tutorial for a cloth simulation. It went mostly well except either the tutorial didn't say or I missed where it said how to make the cloth not slip. I had to bake the sheet a few times because it would fall off the bed  before I could get a good position for it.

    In order to make my Textures look better I tried using image textures for different things, but I couldn't figure out what the AO map was for, so I found an image to use as a reference of what my nodes should look like at default. Then after the nodes were in place I'd add or remove nodes to get my texture to look closer to what I wanted.
 

 Lastly as a refresher I found the neon light tutorial that has been used before to help me create my neon signs in the alley

Producing

    First I started by making a low effort animatic to plan at what kind of characters and settings I'd need.

    From there I made my
Ghosties for two reasons, one was to use them as a scale when making the settings and the second was because they're cute and I wanted to. I focused mostly on trying to make their silhouettes easily distinguishable from other ghosts so color wasn't the only way to separate them. since their base shapes are the same

   After I finished my Ghosties I moved on to the bedroom, I started with cooler colors originally but moved into a warmer hue so that as the animation goes on I have the room to slowly move there. also I adjusted the carpet into a rug because it was climbing the walls

    I moved to the alley once the bedroom was good enough. I started with mapping the alley with cubes then making a set of buildings to replace said cubes. then texturing said buildings.

    Lighting the alley was next, first I turned of the world lighting and added fog so that any rays of light would have a higher contrast. Then I lit the 2 open air buildings and added some lanterns and neon signs so that there was no main light source but instead it came in small amounts in different directions

    Lastly I made the hallway keeping to cooler lighting and having few other things to light the hallway to add spots of dark to give the hallway an eerie feeling. 

Evaluating

    While my project is going good, as per usual, I underestimated how much time it would take, so I'm having to cut out some detailing and other small things that I wanted to add but don't think I will have time for. For example there is a post production application in blender that I want to experiment with but because I believe I'm going to be on such a time crunch I am unsure if I will have the time to play with it as much as I'd like to if at all.

Integrating 

    Since the other two settings I need to make are fairly simple I want to be done with all the settings by the end of the semester so I can model and animate some characters to actually be in the settings. To prepare for this I've planned out what is in each setting and have started gathering and making the textures I'd need for both settings.