Title Sequence

For the group project I was assigned into random groups with my peers. I've always enjoyed group work, as it involves teamwork and communication. I felt like my group was very well put together, some of use prefer 3d and editing and others preferred 2d and editing. When we had our first group meeting, we handed out roles so we could get started on the project as soon as possible, I was set to work on the 3D and final editing side of the project. We also discussed what title sequence we wanted to do. We were stuck between Taking Flight and Teddy!. In the end we had a mutual decision that Taking Flight seemed like the best choice.

For the first weeks I was assigned to work on creating a 3D plane of Amelia Earhart's. I got reference and also created my own personal 2d planes so I could use them to model from. The plane didn’t need to be to detailed because we were using it to refer from for the 2D animation. So I took this in mind and made the plane look basic, but I also used Maya silhouette mode so I could see how the plane was going to look flat, this would help the plane look decent. Once the plane was finished I uploaded it to our shared google drive so others could begin drawing round it for reference.

After this we had another meeting and I was assigned to make a 3D layout of the room so our 2D artists could get a better perspective of the room for scale. Again this only needed to be somewhat basic because it will be getting drawn over again by the 2D artists. I designed the room based off drawings done by Jamie and Michael. 

Now we had a 3D room layout I was also set to make a basic  3d plane animatic so we could understand what the plane would look like moving round the room. I used Michael's storyboards for reference, and created this so we could see what it would like. It didn’t need to be perfect as a lot of this would be cleaned up in the 2D style animation we was aiming for. After showing the animatic in the weekly class meetings, we were asked to try the plane going the opposite wat round the room because some of the shots of the plane was having it come from opposite directions then the previous shot. This was understandable once mentioned and did make the animatic look slightly off. I re did the animatic with the plane flying the opposite way round the room, it looked much better and flowed much more nicely, again the animation wasn’t perfect as the 2D style we was aiming for fixed this. 

It was at this point the 3D side of the project was done, I now had to wait until everything was ready for animating/ editing. I was happy to help others if they need it however with my 2d skills not being as strong as others there wasn’t much I could do. It was at this point In the project I feel like the work flow slowed down, individuals in the group wasn’t giving much communication and also was taking very long to do work for something pretty simple to do. This meant others had to do extra work as it just wasn’t getting done otherwise. 

This resulted in this project really struggling, we didn’t have much to show due to simply not getting it done. It also meant that animating and editing once it was done was going to be very difficult with just not having enough time. Also with deadlines approaching it was hard to make sure everything alongside the group project was getting done.  

I started editing and animating the plane going round the room in 2D a few days before deadline because of how much the worked slowed down, this was making things more stressful for me as I still had to finish other projects. It was hard to give enough time to each project but I knew it had to be done.  

I think if the group were to do this again some people need to communicate a lot more than what they did. A few of us pulled it together at the end as much as we possibly could, its just disappointing to me seeing other groups all working together, when it was only a few of us working until the end to make sure we had something to hand in.