End of the Semester

Well I haven't really kept up with this as I first intended to, I guess it comes with being so busy all the time I just don't get around to it.

First off, somewhere between the last post and now, I was given the title of lead animator on our film, along with one other person in our group, and I am just ecstatic!

Also, in the last post I mentioned that the Junior class had presented their stories that they would possibly be working on for the next year and a half.  They recently had their final presentation and the two stories were selected, they were all pretty good and I can't wait to see how they end up creating their amazing stories.

On the Ember front, things have been hectic as always.  We have come to the end of the fall semester but that definitely doesn't mean we get a break really for the winter holidays.  I mean, we technically do have a break, but we will be working like crazy on our animations for our film since we want to get it done by the first or second week of January.  Also, since I am one of the lead animators and I have a very short attention span when trying to work from home, I will be going into the studio for the majority of the "break".  I am looking forward to it though, seeing as I want to be an animator somewhere in the industry after I graduate, I do enjoy it quite a lot.

Also, we have a few test renders of our film and, if I do say so myself, they are looking quite gorgeous!  Our team is full of extremely talented people who know how to make our movie come alive.  I'll have to get a copy of some of the frames and post them up here for the world to see, even if the world doesn't look at this blog... :)

Junior Gong Show

So today was the midterm Gong Show for the junior class where they pitch their 6 story ideas to us seniors and the faculty, and it went pretty well.  They had some interesting story ideas but a lot of them still need work, can't wait until the end of semester presentation to see how they all change!

Rig testing

So I started my animation today to test the man rig for our film, cool things happened when I tried to rotate the body, like hands exploding, feet breaking, and eyes coming out of his head.  I'd say it's not quite ready yet...

Unexpected

     So I guess I should give some information on exactly what I'm working on before I start going crazy about what's happening.  So I am working on an animated short with a group of 15 other students and it's been pretty amazing.  Our movie's title is Ember and it's centered around the lives of a Mongol man and a fire spirit named Ember (hence the title of the movie).  In this production I am currently the assistant production manager.  Here's the link to our facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/Ember2013

     Anyway, on to what unexpected thing happened today.  So normally every graduating class in VL submits their film to the annual national SIGGRAPH convention and the submission date is used as a deadline for when the film should be completed. We came into class today, however, to find out that the date of submission has been moved up a whole month so that means one less month to create our film.  Now we're going to have to see if we can produce the quality of film that we want in the time of 19 weeks.  If we don't get the quality of film that we want by that date I guess we'll have to wait until next year to submit.  There are more festivals that we can apply to, it's just, you know, SIGGRAPH is kind of a big deal.