Bi-Weekly Update

There is a lot to juggle for this short film -- in hindsight, we probably took on too ambitious a project for such a small group. One thing that is easily slipping away is the weekly updates that I attempted to do last semester. As such, they have now turned into bi-weekly updates that will match the bi-weekly progress checks that we turn in for school.

Essentially it's been a week since the last update, the Faculty Review, so this will just be about the work this last week.

I finished modeling the customer character that we need for the food stand scene. I was using Ryan's model and finishing it. I needed to try and bring it up to date with our current style as well as give him clothing, hair, and UVs. The only step left is adding the UV's before it goes to Sandra for texturing.

I also am working on the costume changes for our Main Reaper. It's my job to model and UV them before passing them on to Sandra to texture and Ryan to rig. So far I have finished modeling and UV-ing the bathrobe, and I'm through modeling the balloon and food uniforms.

I have also been working on putting together the rendered image that we need for our poster. Sandra provided the 3D text, Ryan modeled the Main Reaper character, Allison created the willow trees, and I put it all together with some of our other graveyard assets, lit the scene, rendered it and edited it in Nuke. I got feedback today during our meeting on how to improve it, so there will be a better image next update.

I've also been working on our opening shot that includes our title before we drop through the ground and into the underworld office scene. It's an interesting process to try and figure out the compositing.

Over the next two weeks, I need to finish the Main Reaper's costume changes so they can get rigged ASAP. I also need to use the customer character model to create some background characters that we can use in some of our more populated scenes. I also need to work on fixing things from our first scene, starting with animation. There are also some other scenes I can start animating with the characters that are currently finished.