3/26

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Our first day of the new quarter began with a team meeting, with the animators and the production team totaling about 35 people, but the Friday classes will have even more.  Today was mostly logistical stuff, setting up to be sure that everyone understood the project. Mocap told me that they need a comprehensive list of all of the motions that the background characters need to be doing, so we'll go through that on Wednesday with the Art Director (Dennis).

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3/28 

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Today was a lot of running around between the two classes, making sure that everyone was ready to begin the project.  Dennis and I teamed up to tackle all sorts of problems.  I missed texture time to help John Webber give out shots to his animators, and make sure the shot list was running smoothly.  Dennis and I have to make a lot of tough calls (Dennis has the final say in everything) to be sure that everything goes off without a hitch.  The modeling team needs to have a finished, referenceable WIP of the final map by Saturday, when the animators meet with John for a progress report and I give them all the materials that they need to move forward with their shots.

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3/31

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Saturday Animators meeting!  Giving them assets to start animating went well, and they got some really nice tests started.  We set up a dailies structure in the collaborative space so we don't have to worry about using the google drive anymore.  A lot of making sure that the animators were ready to start layout and blocking.

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4/2

We got our first look at what the animators were working on, but it wouldn't all load up together. Jonathan Lester is going to be making a weekly playblast compilation which should show us exactly what the story structure looks like now.  There was a bit more work about which shots should be combined with what, and then we ran Dailies as usual.

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4/6

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Proof of concept day!  I asked Jonathan Lester to have a cut of the animatic ready for today, as well as our proof of concept shot for the gallery!  It looks so amazing, our texture, modeling, and rendering teams all did such an amazing job.

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4/13

Proof of Concept day 2!  This week we focused on the plaza and background characters, and it came out so well! Texture team blew it out of the park this time.  Look at that church it looks like stop motion!

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4/16

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Class was alright, but I had some fires to put out afterward.  The animation class found numerous problems with the rig, and to top it off, Rebekah, our rigger, broke her finger.  I had to immediately find Beth and enlist her to rig Phoebe, which is no small task.  I know that she'll turn out great, and in a short amount of time.  Beth is a great rigger and I have total faith in her.

We also got to see a cut of what the animatic looks like right now, and it honestly looks so amazing.  The animators are doing a fantastic job, and I'm very confident that this film can be finished in time.

Chris asked for the "whole film rendered by next Monday."  Then he paused for dramatic effect.

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And then he said that he meant 3 frames from each shot rendered as the environment and animation is right now.  Which was a big relief.  I think that we can do that.  I also assigned the hilltop and mural as proof of concepts for monday and wednesday respectively.

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4/18

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Julia is amazing.  She has walked the entire production team through how to set up the renders, both on the animation side, as well as the production side.

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4/20

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Today's meeting was mostly to go over how the animators will be saving out their scenes so that they can be rendered, and we can hit that goal of the "whole film rendered by Monday."  It was also a checkpoint for the Hilltop and Mural Proof of Concepts, as today the models were to be in for the mural, and the textures were to be in for the Hilltop.  Beth also had our rig ready for use today, which is very exciting.

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5/2

The animators on sequence 400 were to have all of their animation due today, but shot 30 and 70 were hindered slightly, and are due on friday instead.  Today was a ton of waiting around for shots to be ready, but next due date the animators will have them at the start of class, so that our rendering team does not have to waste any time.