Introduction & Target Market

For this Professional Skills assessment, I had to show a vast range of skills in organising and planning, specifically for a career. Also I will focus on several technical aspects for my final film project, including modelling, texturing and rendering.

Also I would have to identify a specific target market for which I attempt to have my final product aimed at.  I’m attempting to produce a short film set just after the Second World War and will include two main characters; a little girl and her father. Although the final film will have a sort of sorrowful theme throughout, I intend to give it a good ending that will appeal to audiences as well as giving that quality throughout the entire piece. The finished film is to be aimed at people of all ages and there will be no themes involved that would be considered unsuitable for younger viewers. Originally the film was to involve a live action character placed in a computer generated environment but due to certain changes as well time management, I decided to completely use stylized computer animation instead.

I have viewed several good films that I like and may use them as reference into producing a film that would be successful and appealing to all viewers.

A few goals I intend to achieve are listed below.

• I plan to research and identify a target market to aim my film at and what I wish to get out of said film.
• I shall conduct research into areas that may improve production and may prove useful such as render farms, texturing techniques, etc.
• To use google calendars to plan out all stages for production, deadlines to meet and other events into producing and completing my project.
• I will attempt to develop and advertise my final piece, i.e. creating a website, plan for end of year show, getting finished film out and produce posters.
• Quality control aspect - the film will have to go through this so certain qualities can be pointed out and kept as good as possible as well as making it work on big screens around uni.
• Also will develop a showreel alongside the project in order to present at end of year show, this of course is more of a personal aspect.

I intend to learn and improve many skills through the course of this assessment to be ready for employment, such as advertising my work, being able to meet deadlines and produce work with considerable quality. 

Targets and Roles

Roles:

Michael Hines - Character Modeller, Texturer, Lighting, Render and Animation Supervisor.

Perri Wheeler - Additional Environmental Modeller.

Lien - Animator

Below is an image of my individual contract, showing dates where stages of progress are planned and will be carried out and what parts of work need to be completed.

For scheduling purposes, I have used Google Calendar to further plan stages of development and production for various dates leading up to the final stage in May. As my dissertation is having a major impact on my schedule, I have attempted to plan certain dates that would fit in with the progress of completing this project. 

Planning/Scheduling

I have been using Google Calendar to plan the dates for each step of progress from start to finish as well as to keep track of particular deadlines where each stage has to be completed. I'm working on an individual project but as I'll be acquiring some assistance from a few others, I shall resort to certain methods of communication in order to go over any details that are necessary.

Designing Website

This is the progress of designing and building a website for the film for advertisement purposes in order to give its publicity a boost well as showing that I'm making progress with this project.

The Home page is of course the main part that contains all the links to other pages of the website and other links that may connect to future pages on other public sites such as Facebook and Twitter if the procedure is beneficial to showcasing this film.

The Film page is of course "exactly what it says on the tin." This will be the page where the film will be placed and shown on the website. May include a brief paragraph of a synopsis explaining the story and theme of the film but not to give too much away.

The Gallery page will show a series of images associated with the film, including screenshots of the finished movie and other promotional images. 

The About Us page will be where photos of those who were involved in the production of the film will be shown and a brief biography about each individual as well as links that connect to other pages where people can view their showreels and other works.

Production - Character Development - Little Girl

Throughout the past year at uni, I have been attempting to improve my skills in modelling, texturing and rigging. The main character that I intend to use in the final film piece is actually a little girl that I have modeled sometime ago in Maya. As I previously stated, I decided to use stylized animation rather than a live action character, as with the environment I intend to border on realism as this film is set in a non-fiction sort of time.

Built from references of sketches for character, I built a simple structure of a little girl, needs a bit of clean up obviously in certain areas but will not worry too much about it as I'll be modeling a dress for her.

Near completion with model and a few early CV curves intended for hair follicles. May need to work on hairstyle though.

Of course every character should have a way to express emotions, mainly body language and facial expressions. In order to achieve changing the character's face to a new type of expression, I produced a set of blendshapes by duplicating the head a certain amount of times and rearranged a number of vertices to slightly different positions to alter the shape of the character's face, one for each type of facial expression.

Created a rig and several constraints for the "skeleton" part of the character. Had to assign a smooth bind of the mesh to the rig and then used the "paint skin weights" tool to fix certain areas around the joints so the skin would move and change shape appropriately whenever a joint is used. Refined the CV Curves for hair and applied a nhair node to the head mesh. Have also applied locators and aim constraints to eyes, ready to be animated.

Applied a ncloth node to the skirt and adjusted the dynamic properties of the "cloth material" to imitate a particular type of cloth. And added a passive collider node to the whole character mesh so that the cloth would collide with her legs when she walks or moves so that it would react like real-life fabric.

Attempted to add a type of material shader to the character that would give it the look of human skin. Applied a "misss_fast_skin_maya" shader and adjusted the controls as well as assigning a texture map that I produced in Photoshop to the diffuse colour and epidermal scatter colour. Had to experiment with the controls before settling on the desired look.

Rendered shot of the eyebrow, using a grass paint effect mode.

Rendered shot with experimental directional lighting effect, ray trace shadows and global illumination modes are used. 

Rendered shot with motion blur mode activated.

Using Renderfarm

I have made plans to use the Renderfarm for this project as one single laptop alone can not produce up to 500 frames of complex CGI within the time periods, I have rendered one of the shots of St Paul’s Cathedral that I’m using for the final version of the film (see images below.) A few of the the renderings have failed several times due to technical errors and missing files but overall I’ve eventually managed to make good progress with the rendered scenes.

St Paul's Cathedral, as you can see more detail needs to be added and tweaks of lighting/global illumination are in order.

Marketing - How Others Have Achieved It

As part of the assessment, I have looked into how other Animators/Modellers have marketed and advertised their work. I have focused on finding Student work and films that have proved to be a success with both the final film and the methods used in advertising through social networks and websites.


Polished Off

http://www.polishedoff.blogspot.co.uk/

This was a great example of student work from Ravensbourne. Had the pleasure of viewing the film and it was hilarious and well made. How they made use of a blog to showcase the work that went into producing the film is well structured and easy to show people the progress. Also a good way to send people updates of the work to attract them more.

Meet Buck

Website - http://steakollective.net/
Video - http://vimeo.com/17535548

Meet Buck does have its own website but it's structure is slightly different and some of the information is irrelevant to the actual showing of the film piece. Also it lacks a social networking presence, it is not informative enough and it does not introduce the film directly.

Going Down

http://www.goingdownfilm.co.uk/

Video

This is yet another good example of student work. The film has its own website, well structured and informative and there is a presence of social networking, hence having their own Facebook page which is shown in the image below.

Throughout research, I have learnt that having an online presence is vitally important in marketing and showcasing work. People who may view videos may wish to find out more information connected to it such as the making of said film and how to contact the producers directly.