This is the first time I've worked with 3D animation, and I found it to be quite difficult. I especially found Maya to be a very frustrating and stressful program but again I have never used it before. Using it was very hard for me and I found myself losing interest. However the start of the project was very interesting and fun. I liked the iconic clips I had to choose from, it was a tough decision for me because I really enjoyed nearly all the videos but in the end I chose the iconic "Here's Johnny" scene from "The Shining". When I started creating my character for the project, I was told to make a simple character so I was able to work with Maya more easily.
My first idea was to design my character as an anime style character but I had to remember to keep it not too complex. Though i could have gone with a more simple anime style, I chose to draw in a "cartoon" style. I experimented with different shapes until I was finally happy.
My character was actually one of the first doodles I drew before making the other ones, as can be seen in the first photo on the bottom left hand corner. I liked the way he turned out, though it did take me a while to come up with him because I had trouble deciding which genre my animation would be.
Once his colouring was done it was time to move on to story boarding.
Now I was not very impressed with my storyboard, I felt that I left details out and I'm sure it was quite hard for viewers to tell what was happening in the background.
When the 3D work started I felt completely lost, remembering all the different tools and buttons I had to use to create this character was a bit overwhelming and I started to get frustrated with my work and slack off, which was a very poor move. When my character was finally created I had to laugh at how funny he looked, he kinda reminded me of Marty McFly, especially with that hair. Even though I thought his design was very toned down, it turns out it really wasn't. It was difficult creating the spikes in his hair, so his hair had to be simplified and then duplicated.
Changing from 2D to 3D was a lot harder than I expected, I had a lot of trouble with this project and that led me to get very frustrated and stressed out, this led me to being very slack with my work. I feel very ashamed of my lack of work and feel I could have done so much more. I found 2D a lot more easier and much prefer using flash. I' am extremely unhappy with my final work, I pictured everything a lot better with more sound, background, props and lighting. I completely rushed everything all the way through to the deadline and feel absolutely embarrassed. However through this experience has made me realise that I need to put the hard work and effort into my next work and I will a much better job.
