Project Begins

The project I have set out for myself is a two to three minute long animated piece that will feature two characters. It was originally going to be a platform game, but I had an exhausting list of ideas which seemed far too ambitious on reflection, and so I opted to do something that would allow me to do what I want in greater detail. The film is set in the future, and the two characters will be vastly different in their appearance in order to demonstrate a broad and versatile range of animations. This should facilitate my aspirations and develop my skills.

I have opted to approach producing this animation in three parts throughout three months - spending the first to develop ideas and produce designs and art for the characters, environments, summarize story, produce storyboard and so forth. The second month will be dedicated to creating and animating the characters, though I understand this may be the most time consuming part and am prepared to compensate by cutting into the third month which will be used for editing the animation with sound or visual effects. I will be using Maya for the animation, and whether or not I animate the characters within the environments, or seperately and edit them into similarly seperately rendered environments I am not sure. I have a feeling it may be easier or may feel more natural that way, and will be of more aid when it comes to adding visual effects as I am not trying to work solely with one layer, and it also allows me to adjust things in ways I otherwise could not. It is likely I will do this but I am keeping all cards on the table to weigh pros and cons over time, at least fro now.

I will be trying to stick to this as best as possible, and I anticipate there will be plenty of problems that will test whether I can do so punctually. But my project is already underway; I have thought out a storyline of sorts for the setting and I am roughly aware of what sort of a task I am undertaking already. The concepts of how I might model my characters or environments are all in my head, but it is of course, most important to give manifest to those ideas and ensure they come across cleanly and as intended - and if for whatever reason that is not possible, be sure that any compromises are ultimately necessary and worth whatever cost they have on the animation as a whole.