My goals this semester were to prepare and research where I want to work. I want to be mentally ready in case I have to leave CA or the country to get a job to start my career in animation. For my senior portfolio and demo reel, I wanted to work on my animation and storyboarding skills. My other two classes, CAGD 441 character animation and CAGD 445 helped me practice animating rigged models in Maya. Their projects will allow me to continue animating future projects with a good workflow. I have learned the steps to create an animation in 3D: story, research, reference, block, blocking with in-between poses, spline, facial animation, and clean up. I need to improve my focus on arcs, holds, and weight to make my character animations more realistic and flow more smoothly. My main goal for this semester in my Senior Portfolio class was to create a storyboard.
441 Game Animation- WIP
I did not achieve my goal of completing a storyboard, however, I did complete my animation projects for my other classes. I created an outline for my storyboard process but once I got to the storyboarding stage, it took more time than I anticipated. I was able to create characters, a plot, and a script. I only have about half of my storyboard done and I was hoping to move onto another project next semester. If I have time over winter break, I would like to work on my storyboard as much as possible. I had a good idea of what I needed to do before starting to draw my panels, but I added a lot to the script since every new action or camera change had to be on a new panel. I researched different storyboarding styles and software. I wanted to see how the pros conveyed their ideas and story to an audience.
If I wanted to complete the storyboard in one semester, I would have made a shorter story. I would have tried to be more strict about how many characters I needed since I keep adding more and having to give them a more simple design since they are not the main characters. I should have set more stern goals so I could get more time over this semester. I wish more of my peers gave feedback and critiqued how I could improve on my storyboards, but I could have done the same.
Early Character Concepts
Overall, I am proud of how much I accomplished this semester given that all of my classes were online for the first time and I had 3 CAGD classes that assign time-consuming projects. I learned a lot from my peers, their feedback, and the presentations by the guest speakers that were able to take time out of their day for us.
