A Fairytale Ending

All done and dusted, BB has been handed in to Jared as well as the special edition copy to Paul! We really did push it to the last minute to get this thing done. On thursday Alec and I were still rendering, and yesterday (Pauls meeting) we were still burning it to disc and making the dvd case! We slightly ran over time on friday for Jareds deadline, handing it in at about half 5, so not too bad.

Well, as always, start with the negatives. The animation was rushed big time at the end, and I think I echo everyone in the class when I say that was down to conetexual studies and ROA depriving us of 2 weeks or more. So yes, the animation was not as high quality as I feel we could have achieved, however for most of us the cupboard exit and aniamtion before ROA was great. It was only like the last 10 seconds of each of our scenes which was quickly done.

Secondly the music. Again a rush job on the last day, and something myself and Alec have a tendency to do to our projects. We always slap a piece of unsuitable music at the end because we have nothing else and we're so sick of the project we dont care. Not a good attitude, or result - as is evident with eminem in "Im a gorilla", and now night at the museum in "Bare Bear". We must find music earlier in a term next time.

My final gripes are the bears texture and the book intro. Unfortunately due to time we had to completely change daves dump from an animated scene to a number of faded stills in a book sequence. It was the best option we had with the time left, however if we were to do it again I would make sure the dump scene was fully animated, full screen like ours. It still did the job in setting up the demo story though, and as Paul said yesterday could be substituted for the nice pop up book idea we had before.

Oh and lastly, the bears texture. We ended up settling for a wicker basket texture we found online, edited in PS abnd given a bump. Hmmm, not great I know. We would have loved to of achieved a slightly softer and fluffier looking texture, with the UV's better mapped out - Blue Zoo quality basically. Also as legend Tony Trimmer said, the wardrobe could do with one more layer of dirt or moss in PS to add depth and realism to it. I admit its a bit flat and cartoony at the moment.

Those are all my negatives though, which is a heck of alot less than "If I were a Gorilla". There are many more positives such as our environments - I love the texuring, modelling, and lighting that has gone into all of them. I'm especially proud of my woods scene, and the time I managed to create it in. Parts of our animation are better than anything on kids TV at present I feel, such as Phils cupboard exit and walkcycle - adorable and proffesional. Alec sorted it out in the end and produced some quality animation of BB checking out his suit and sniffing the bamboo in a matter of days - awesome stuff. I love most of the animation to be honest. I'm really happy with the tumble out of my closet particularly as well as my CLASSIC BB POSE! The animation wouldn't have been possible without daves legendary rigging skills though, so congrats to him as well. Oh yeah and the intro is sweet, I love the bear footprints and title.

So we had our meeting with Paul yesterday, and everything went great. He loved the work and complimented us on the standard of it. He is pitching the demo to the BBC in 3 weeks and will let us know how everything goes.

All in all, a great term and a winning formula as far as a team goes. I definately will be working with these guys again next year, and we have all agreed to turn it up 20 knotches for our film. It's going to be the best thing we've ever done, and hopefully a landmark in ravensbourne animation! We're aiming for gobelin standard, so watch out! ;)