Conclusion...........................

First of all I'm a little dissapointed with myself because of the fact that I once again didn't leave myself enough time for animating, which was really the reason for me choosing the brief I did. I ended up having to down my animation idea to a little less than half the original length, causing it to be a little less that the length set in the brief which was between 30-60secs.... and even for the portion i DID do, I peronally don't think I animated it well enough because I ran out of time to tweak it some more, and there were some movements and emotions I wanted to make with blendshapes, which I again ran out of time to create................

But on the up side I feel like I did a pretty good job aesthetically with the final models and environment, even though about half the finished characters didn't get to be used. Apart from the 'Sam' character which had very slight grooves underneath the ear areas when smoothed, I managed to get ALL of the charcters spot-on exactly like the actual toy or illustration versions..... something that I am incredibly pleased about. In the actual animation itself I had to get rid of Adios's cape, because I hadn't managed to learn enough about nCloth in time before the animating stages...... it was taking too much time trying to master it, and even when used it was probably gona over use my CPU power and really slowing down animating work time. It's ok though, because not every illustration of the character shows him with his trusty cape, thus I have managed to still stay true to the character's original design I think................

All that being said, even though I didn't get to really test out my animating skills like I was hoping to for this project, throughout the time spent on producing the different aspecs of it, I'v learned soooooo so much, especially on the last 3-4 weeks. I now know how to properly UV texture geometry (even though I need quite abit more practice), I have a huge increase in my knowledge and experience with lighting and render techniques, and overall I'm able to work so much quicker in Maya now with the all the new little tools and techniques I'v manage to discover or learn from others. Working on those simple models, trying to get them perfect resulted in me really getting my head round geometry as I had to really pay attention to what would affect the mesh in what way when smoothed. I still need alot more practice with weighting characters though.... with the Ci Boys characters, if I had ended up using them last minute, you would have seen how badly they were deforming around the main body areas, like around their bellys...............

The visual benchmark that I kind of set for the animation when coming up with my brief were the Lego Star Wars games and Bioncle animations and games. I feel like I have really reached my goal in this area, personally I think visually my final animation was actually better (though maybe not the animating itself) tahn the Lego Star Wars' visuald, and around about a similar kind of level to the Bionicle animations, but with a different style. The brief also said that the animation itself had to be cute and appealing, and the contents had to be well made and smooth looking like the toy counter parts. Again I feel like I have reached this goal...... everything is super smooth and glossy, pretty much all models look perfect when compared to their existing designs by each vinyl toy company, and from the responses I'v gotten from the people who have seen the finished animition (people both from class and outside of Ravensbourne) the animation itself is pretty damn cute....... and they seemed pretty appealed too :P................ I should note though that I wish I had time to add more to the environment because it seemed a little bare to me, I'm not completely happy with it.... but I guess it's ok...............

I can honestly say I have a massive massive increase in confidence in myself with what I am able to produce on Maya, and I now have this constant thirst for more knowledge to better myself even more. I look at things around me, and think to myslelf "I can actually model that now if I wanted to" or think of what I need/want to learn in order to produce something that looked like the way I invision it. So ultimately I'm very happy with my personal development this term............

So to conclude........... I DID manage to pull through in the end with a finished piece of promotional animation for the vinyl toy industry, with a nice and reasonably appealing visual look to it, but the lack of time I had due to really perfecting the characters, having to learn a wide range of new skills, AND the loss of time around the beggining of the term due to computer trouble (although it was my fault really that the time waiting to solve the problem wasn't still spent also being productive with this project), resulted in me cutting down the final animation to less than what was set for the duration in the brief. So in terms of sticking to requirements, theres both positive and negative results. I didn't get enough time to animate properly, wich was something I wanted to do for myself...... so for me, that was the biggest negative at the end of this project. BUT, like I said above I DID manage to improve myself alot this term, and I feel like I can take on much more difficult tasks than I have so far........... and that is the biggest positive thing for me at the end of this project.

I think I might go back and do the animation the way it was supposed to be done during the Easter break we have, and probably even take on a few different ideas (maybe even create more chracters, and even a new invironment)....... and this time round I know for a fact that I will be going through countless tutorials over our time off, because right now I'm in an over ambitious state with loads of ideas I now want to take on.

........And with those last words........
...............................Mehmet signing out...............................