Prof. Snape's Office

Snape's Office 1

Snape's Office 2

I have no regrets whatsoever about choosing Prof. Snape as my character to create an  environment for on Maya in my Digital Form, Space, and Lighting class, but there were aspects of this project that I just couldn't stand. There are four aspects: Blocking, Modeling, Texturing, and Lighting. I didn't mind blocking, and I might have gotten at least a low B in it if I had remembered to freeze transform all of Snape's jars after I referenced them into the masterscene. I hated modeling. It just seemed like I couldn't do anything right in that phase of the project. Prof. Maloney continues to tell me that I need work on my modeling. That's one of my many goals for the summer. I will perfect my modeling, just like someday I will perfect my inking. Texturing was fun for the most part although I hated texturing the chair and the desk, which is why I wound up changing them both. The images you see above are the ones that I turned in for Texturing, before I changed the desk and chair. I loved Lighting, but I won't get into that until I am ready to post those picture.

Before I ever started using Maya I had heard the horror stories of how it would crash, which is why we must save, save, save, save. I felt that I was pretty luck by the time I got to texturing because it hadn't crashed yet. I doomed myself for thinking that because the day before I was supposed to turn it in it crashed, and it continued to crash every time I tried to open up my masterscenes. I thought that my masterscenes were corrupted that I had to start over again. That sounds bad especially the day before it was due, but the props were all made in separate files, and I just had to re-reference them into a new masterscene. The worst thing really was to find the great camera shot that I had before. However, it continued to crash especially when I was trying to reference in both the cupboard and the bookcase. I figured that something must be wrong with those two props that I cut them out of my scene. Because I did cut them out I had to readjust my camera shot to what you see now in the images.

I got to work on redoing the entire room three hours before class, and I managed to finish it all ten minutes before it was due. That includes re-texturing the desk because the professor came into the DMC (Digital Media Center) homework lab while I was working, and he told me that I should change the desk texture to look more like wood. I wasn't too pleased with that texture either. The built in Maya texture sucks, and so don't ever use it. I got out of the DMC with five minutes before class, and I literally ran back to the main building, getting to class right at 2 PM. The real kicker was that the professor hadn't shown up yet. It continued to crash until I opened the masterscenes in Maya 2012-I had been working in 2011-and so go figure that one out. I would learn while lighting the scenes that we needed to turn the texturing off otherwise Maya would go berserk and crash. Oh, now that's why it was crashing on me. Lesson learned.

My morals kind of got in the way when it came to texturing certain props. Prof. Maloney had told us to get photo references and place them onto the objects. I knew that I had to do that when it came to the potion book, the Daily Prophet, the photograph of Lily, and the Slytherin crest, but I felt funny about everything else. It felt so much like cheating. He did understand that though, but he explained that it wasn't cheating. So I have improved the texturing quite a bit although I am still not happy with that chair.

My First Maquette

Madam Knight Original Characters

I have a storyline that I believe that I had mentioned several posts ago when I wrote about my final project in Digital Coloring, and it features a group of heroes sent by God called the Chosen Ones. So after we were done with the Firefly characters in the Character Design class we had to create a cast of original characters for any genre that we like. I have several characters who could use a make over, but I didn't want to use any of them. Instead I decided to create a new batch of characters, and after looking at different genres I came to the decision to stick with the Chosen One storyline, but bring to life the first Chosen One, Madam Knight in a fantasy genre. The story features Madam Knight/Kendra Cartwright, Mackenzie the Monk, Elisha Grayson, an emperor, the Pope or a religious figure, a hermit/druid, an elf, and a prince, and it takes place during the first Crusade. These are the first silhouettes that I did for them, but I have since redone them all except for the druid and the elf, who still need some work.

Prof. Schweizer told me that I needed to think about shape when creating the silhouettes instead of the outline. So I took his advice, and they look a whole lot different now, but I don't have any pictures to show you unfortunately.

 When I was redesigning the look of Elisha Grayson, one of the villains of the story, I had made a slight mistake with his arms. They weren't proportional. The professor liked that they weren't because it made one think of a T-Rex, and he suggested that I play with that idea. So that's why Grayson's arms are so funny looking, but I will have to consider how he will fight in a duel. I better figure that out because I am storyboarding the final battle between Madam Knight and Grayson for the final project.

Elisha Grayson

My First Maquette

I had wanted to do Madam Knight for my first maquette, but it seemed like the class wanted me to do Elisha Grayson. I gave them what they wanted. Unfortunately he doesn't really look like the drawing, but actually I think he's a scarier as a maquette. There were elements that I had to get rid such as the horns on his shoulders because it was realistically impossible for him to have all of those horns and lift his arms up. So I made up for the deletion by putting a horn on each elbow, which adds a little more to the threat that he imposes to Madam Knight.

My favorite element has to be the sword, which I made from a small piece of a wooden pick that I found at Hobby Lobby, and then I created the handle with Super Sculpey. It turned out better than I had anticipated, and now have a whole bag of wooden picks to make at least a hundred swords.

My first maquette was all right. There are definitely areas that I would improve such as the bulging eyes and the paint job. I had put too much paint on it that I had accidentally painted over the black paint that's underneath in areas that needed to keep it to make it look three dimensional. I had to go back over it with ink wash, which was the first time that I had ever used that technique. However, as a first it turned out pretty well. I hear that most people's first maquette suck although there are exceptions, and I saw most of them in my class. One would never guess that Liz Enright's maquette was her first. That's how spectacular it was. Overall, the class really hit it out of the park with their maquettes.

Anijam 2012

This summer I am getting to work on another animation project, my first one since Norman and the Love Triangle, but this one is a bit different. I will be working in a collaborative effort. It's called an Anijam, and the way I had described it once was that it's like an assembly line of animators working on their own animation, but each one has an element in common. Each animation will be jammed into one film. The beginning key frame and the end key frame for all of our animations is what will link us together. The SCAD-Atlanta Animation Society had once talked about doing such a project, but it never materialized much to my chagrin because I was all for it.

We will have several animators from the Animation Department working on this doing our own style whether it's 2D, 3D, a combination of the two, or stop motion. It will be a fun experience, and a perfect thing to bring up if a studio ever asks us if we've worked in a collaborative effort. I'll be able to finally say yes. We'll have both Professors Gregg Azzopardi and Keith Ingham helping us out along the way. 

The element that each of us will have in common will be a cardboard box that way we can really show off our style with whatever character we use to interact with the box. I have been thinking about doing a combination of 2D and 3D, which I recently learned, but haven't tried. It will have a 2D character and a 3D background, and I am going to add dialogue to it. First, however, we have to create the storyboards...after the quarter is over of course.

Final Thoughts

The Spring Quarter is almost over, and part of me will be glad because this quarter has really given me a run for my money when it comes to work. I thought that last quarter was bad with Environments, but that's nothing compared to Digital Form, Space, and Lighting. Though at the same time I will be saying so long-I will never say goodbye that's too permanent sounding-to some friends, which I am not happy about it. So I wish Lisa Tolbert, Sasha Williams, Nolen Taylor, Courtney Strickland, Nick Palmer, Jeff Yu, Lily Cho, Heather Carter, Kristen Petty, Ryan Ingram, Scott DeRussy, Sarah Crook, Dara Dyer, Kathleen Lynch, Alejandra Aldana, Jhaimensen Jackson, Heather Lipstas, Dinesh Dave, Mike Bedsole, and Eric Beatty a good luck. Remember those names, people. I expect big things from them all.

Until next time this is Billy Wright, wishing you all a good night. So long, everybody.