My main concern right now is the timing of the shots and the camera angles, something which, again, is a previz issue. I don't think the editing of this piece should be invisible, although the cuts themselves should feel natural enough such that they aren't noticed. As I mentioned, comic timing is important and I have to give the audience a chance to react to the piece. There are many shots, and a whole bunch of cuts, lending this to an editing exercise as well. Perhaps I can get more help from my fellow thesis student Demetri Patsiaris on this.
Some comments from CADA student and Maya expert Mehma Sachdeva, who I like to go to for comments because she always tells me what's bad about my piece. She reacted to the story, so at least that carried over well, but said there were a lot of problems with the timing of the shots. I tend to agree. She also said that the cricket sounds stopping midway through the piece was distracting, and that I should take the volume down but keep them going all the way through. I think I'll do that for 3D animatic purposes, but after I get the piece scored it might be less necessary to have background noise.
Speaking of which, I have recruited my friend Germono Bryant to score my animation, but he seems a little disinterested and of course has his own projects to worry about. We'll see. For now, I will definitely consider the possibility that I may have to score the piece myself or look for royalty free music (or pay for it, another possibility).
So, changes, from the top:
I have since changed my title from How to Make a Dragon to Mighty Dragon. This seems more appropriate considering the theme of the animation. I cut out the establishing shot with Billy carrying the box. It's too much animation and modeling and texturing and doesn't add anything to the film. So instead, I'm going for a "closed opening" (going back to Visual Literacy terms) where the viewer needs a few shots to discover where they are.
The first shot is the box coming down on the well, followed by a few quick shots of Billy taking the manual out. His face is not shown until he puts his hand on the page and smiles at the dragon he is about to create.
My page turning rig was pretty cool at the time I made it, just a few simple blend shapes with a driven key "page turn" attribute. This worked, and I used it for every shot where a page but I think I will try out Duncan Brinsmead's page-turning rig using nCloth. Another visual effect to add to my toolkit.
One thing that kind of irritates me is the montage sequence with all the ingredients. It's hard to animate and it's a lot of animation that will have to be tweaked in order to look non-repetitive. I'm thinking of going with Boaz's idea (my lighting professor) and keeping it to one ingredient: PRO-QUEST brand instant dragon formula, or something. The montage sequence also doesn't add anything to the film.
The ocean shader shot under the water turned out really well, and I think I'll keep that shot in the film as a fluid effect. I need liquid viscously coming out of the bottle, and maya fluids might be a good solution. The refracting I will either handle in post or with mental ray's glossy and refraction nodes.
The glowing well water is easy to achieve through incandescence, glow intensity, and an extra spot light in the appropriate places. It's a great moody effect that's incredibly easy to achieve. The only thing, of course, is that dastardly ocean shader and its refusal to rotate.
I composited the dragon splash with After Effects. It took just a couple hours of color correction and keying, plus a slight roto. Turned out decently. I might use some compositing in the final piece but the main effect is probably going to be particle-based, unless I can simulate something pretty well in realflow.
I'm having trouble getting the dragon to look big for its first shot, even with a fish eye lens and lower perspective. I think it's the size of the well. This will be a difficult shot to pull off.
The fire effect took about a day to achieve, and involves extra spotlights linked to the dragon and Billy separately, with animated intensities, and the standard Maya fire effect with scripted tweaks. Instead of the fire flowing upward, it flows along the vector defined by the direction from the dragon's mouth to the manual. The simulation took a long time. I actually really like this shot, even though it took the longest to render.
The smoke effect of the burnt manual is merely a texture on a deformed NURBS plane with some composited smoke, and again I like how it looked. The smoke was multiplied on top and taken from CADA's stock footage. This is actually a viable alternative, unlike Maya's smoke effect, which I spent several hours tweaking to no avail. Maya smoke, I find, is best for smoke viewed from a distance, not closeup. I think this is a consequence of using sprites.
So what took the longest time? Do I even have to say it? I spent about 60% of the time tweaking animation curves for the kid, the dragon, and the final ingredient bottle. Another 30% of the time was spent on creating and rendering out special effects, and the last 10% was everything else, including setting up the cameras, basic basic modeling and texturing, and even the dragon rig took less than half a day.
Goals for next week:
-Model the well and the final ingredient bottle, two key elements that will be needed regardless of any changes made to the script.
-Find a solution for the trees, be it paint effects or a modeled tree, or a purchased one. Think about, maybe even start the matte painting background and how that will integrate.
-Iron out the 3D animatic for timing, tempo, and rhythm of shots (yay for Story)
-Research fluid solutions
-Come up with a nice ground plane shader that renders quickly in mental ray.
-Iron out story elements, especially the design of the lamp.
-Model and shade the lamp
-Model and design textures (perhaps not finish the texturing) for the box
-Talk to my fellow classmate Vanessa Weller about foley sounds. She took Pro-tools and is sold on the importance of sound in animation.
-Model the dragon. Three words, yet this will be the hardest task I think. I need Cidalia's and Patrick's design sketches scanned before I can start, so unfortunately there is a bottleneck there.
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