End of Film self evaluation

(Warning: Long read)

Firstly I would like to say that this project has been a huge learning curve for many aspects of the film and taught me alot.
Many of these lessons are techincal, artistic and some pure personality.

I have learnt a lot from the film, making several mistakes throughout the creation process and some mistakes still plain show in the final film. But I don't mind that.
It shows what I have done in this year and no its not perfect but I am still proud it's my work.

Secondly, I have involved the use of some new software in the case of mudbox while also learning new skills and techniques in photoshop, after effects and obviously Maya.
Mudbox was of great use to me during the process, my only regret is that i used it even more, however for what i used it for, it did speed up my workflow and create better results.

I shall try and be super critical of myself to layout what I have to improve upon.

I started the project with a very motivated mindset and wanting to get straight into the 'fun' things such as modeling the environment and objects. However I needed a clearer concept than just *a diner*

Amy and Hollie's concept work did assist me in the creative process and helped me visualise my idea better (I only wish i had taken advantage of there skills more) .
With a clearer idea, I did start work on the modeling possibly a bit to prematurely as other specifics needed to be sorted out such as story, layout and visual style.

I quickly chose to make this film purely realistic as i wanted to demonstrate my abilities as a modeler and texture artist. After much more pre production of the film I decided to have several characters in the diner to add a human element and bring it to life more.
I had amy create some quick moodboards of one of the characters and these were good but my failing was not following it up and keeping in contact. I think i might not of been as passionate as i originally was about including the characters.

I was progressing through production at a steady rate but still a little way off scheldue. I became alot more confident with texturing and shader work, becoming comfortable with bump maps, specular maps etc.
The use of Mental Ray for rendering saved me some rendering time as models didn't have to look fully smooth as models, they could simply be smooth previewed just before rending.

Midway through the project i started using mudbox for some of the texturing including the booths and stools. It has a great familiar interface which really streamlines the pipeline between it at maya and i also discovered how simple it was to go back and forth from photoshop with the paint layers.

Unfortunately at a certain point I had to abandon the characters for lack of time and designs. I think if i had of worked on the characters more, the overall quality of the film would have suffered greatly in the time.

Rendering became a much larger task then I anticipated, in the space of a couple of hours and some tinkering, the render time jumped from 8 mins a frame to almost 20!!
This was bad news, However by this point there was very little time to change and despite the rendering times, i was confident with the current look and knew post production could give it that extra little something.

Towards the end of the project i became a little bit demotivated. I simply wanted this to be out of the way with as the problems were just causing headaches. These problems were generally from using the studio computers.
I managed to gain motivation from a magic fairy and nearing the deadline I got stuck in and worked damn hard on it.

I was apprehensive about using mudbox at first as when i first tried Zbrush it seemed extremely daunting. However I enjoyed mudbox as i learnt with every tool and pallet

As i already have said, I have become a lot more confident with shaders and texturing.

Regrets:

I do often think it could have been a 2 man project as i lacked concept, visual style and character designs.

I regret not going to physically see tutors that often for extremely valuble feedback on the production.

I regret my lighting method, which created huge render times and made it nearly impossible to fine tune individual frames.

I do NOT regret dropping the characters based on my final output, But had this of been a more than 1 man film i think the characters should have been there.

I regret not working in a group because I like the structure. Everyone has a different job or 2. Although working on my own did mean I didn't have to contend with design/style clashes and i had control of the whole film myself.


Some last notes:

I am proud of the film. There are lots of aspects i would change in it still, which makes me hesitant to show parts of as a showreel.

I will post the film on my blog soon. I am having some horrible problems uploading it to youtube and vimeo as it makes the video extremely dark so i will try fix it asap.