8 Week Project Summary

Week 1&2:

Well Jeff and I started of really well when we were given our brand. We came up with an initial idea based on the slogan we were given by our product design partners. From the slogan "life in the city jungle" and the image that puma is as a brand, we constructed an urban/environmental piece. Our two main focuses for this project was the animation and the environment. Me and Jeff had both had a similar image as to what we wanted the final outcome to look like; and we sketched put a rough plan as to what we wanted to incorporate into the advert. The first layout plan was made in the first week and by the beginning of the second week we had already started to build the environment. The style that we were looking for was a clean cut urban look

with a paint by numbers feel (black and white). We decided to combine two places together to appeal to the slogan we were given; London and the jungle. We had also decided that we would use elements of colour to highlight the environment around the puma. In the middle of the first week Jeff was able to find a basic puma rig which he adapted and was able to model over to make a more developed and more effective puma for our piece.

Week 3&4:

These weeks were dedicated to building the environment, Jeff was working out the placing of where everything needed to go, the camera angle, how many frames it was roughly going to take and he was also modelling. I was modelling the both aspects of the urban and the environmental aspects of the scene. We decided that for our camera we wanted a panning shot so that we didn't let the camera angles take away from the environment and the puma; because we wanted to show it as a journey. In this week we were also playing around with colouring effects that would give us the look that we were going for. We came up with a very effective style which matched both me and Jeff's vision using aspects from the toon shader menu. By the middle of week 4 I broken away from the environment and started looking at the animation.

Week 5&6:

By the end of week 5 we had finished the anamatic and was ready to start the final animation, I had used a book by Mybridge to help me work out the animation. At this point Jeff was finalising the environment scene importing any other objects that either he or I had made and was positioning them into place. Week 6 I was finding the animation process for the puma was going really slow but the outcome seemed to be looking OK. At the beginning of week 6 I modelled and rigged the newspaper bird for Jeff to animate in the scene.

Week 7&8:

These last two weeks were quite stressful; the animation in week 7 was continuing to move at a moderately slow pace but I was confident that I would be able to get it done and finished by week 9. Jeff was also getting along with animating any secondary animation which we wanted to put into the scene like the movement of the taxi, newspaper birds, alligator briefcase. Week 8 I was devastated to find out on the Tuesday of this week that the work had to be given on the Friday. Jeff and I felt like we didn't have enough time to show our work to its full potential. Although we were on schedule as far as wanting to finish the animation by this time there were so many other aspects we wanted to include to enrich our work. We would have wanted to add more colour to certain objects, we wanted to add more layers in after effects to give the scene depth. The last few days had to run perfectly any major mistakes and we would have come unstuck. Luckily for us it didn't fall to pieces at the end. There were only minor mistakes that were resolved with re-rendering scenes. I feel that the outcome of my part in the project is of a satisfactory level, I would really have loved more time in which to show that I do have the skills to do a better animation.

I feel that the advert overall did work out well, the way in which the scene looked was exactly how me and Jeff pictured it, and I feel that the slight colour enhanced the look of the environment. We didn't want the puma to be the full focus because the slogan was actually centered around the environment. I feel we showed an equal amount of both aspects without one over shadowing the other.

Once again its been a pleasure to work with Jeff as we do work well together. I think given the shocking changes we recovered remarkably well.