Week 38

Since last week I've almost finished the cliff environment and I've started preparing everyone for animation.

I've made a few changes to the environment. I've cut down on the size of the ground plane, which won't be noticeable in camera but it makes the set more manageable. A few more trees and bushes have been added to fill up empty spaced and I've changed the grass so it gets thinner the closer it gets to the cliff. I also split up the ground plane to fix a gap between the plane and the cliff edge. While it wouldn't be noticeable in camera, it might affect animation and shadows coming off the character.

Animation wise, I'm about to get started on some act 1 shots, but I went through the first act of our current iteration of the film and made animation notes on each shot. I primarily was pointing out secondary animation that we need to add to better express emotion and the character's personality. Shots have been divided up and as soon as some little tweaks are made to the newest version of the character rig we'll be able to start finishing up the animation for act 1.

I'm going to finish up my live action references for act 1 and then properly get started animating, which is what I'll be doing for the rest of the semester.