Thesis Work Pt.3

It's been a month and things have changed, things have also stayed the same, and things have changed back and forth. During this semester at UTD my focus is primarily with getting everything ready to animate. That way I can animate all day to my hearts content for the winter break and next semester. A big part of this project has been balance, I work at the university as a teaching associate while also teaching at the trade school nonPareil as an instructor. Finding a balance between school, work, friends, and relaxation has been an interesting task to say the least. Ironically, I would say this is the best environment for me to work in. If I only have one objective I tend to sit on it for a while, but with multiple things to juggle I can bounce back and forth from one thing to another.

I digress from my workflow ramblings. Let's talk about the work. Below is the current animatic, this time using maya shots that I have blocked. This animatic is a little outdated such as some of the gags being changed. Biggest change is the "gym bro dealer", he is only present for one scene. This decision was made because he never really added anything to the other scenes. No longer am I focusing 100% on the characters but the story and message overall.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/81b14e_b5f9de93f1ae4bc0a03fd98e51334528/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The feedback was primarily about pacing and staging. Making sure the camera was not too far away from the action. In my attempts to further exaggerate the gags I also changed the staging from the previous animatic.

I have also changed the "Supplement" gag from shelves to a briefcase. I was really bouncing back and forth between which gag to use. After consulting my wonderful committee I decided to go with the briefcase gag. Below you will find its first pass compared to the new camera angle.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/81b14e_d0192aae5cb8447eaf1ad4c2a234abe3/720p/mp4/file.mp4

This was a theme for pretty much all of my shots. I needed to push the camera closer to the action, rather than overwhelm the audience with the messy gym.

I am just scratching the surface with this months update, but I had a lot of fantastic feedback and want to get back to work right after I post this. So I will leave it off with a short progress checklist:

Everything has been assembled for the most part (a few things need to be modeled for the closing shot)