Zepp Stairs..............

We hadn't made any stairs or any kind of entry platform/ramp for the zepplin asuming we could use the door as that, which obviously ddnt happen :P............. so Chris asked me to quickly model one for the scene. I improvised a little so that I didn't waste alot of time on is and used the stairs I made for Tasha's environment she was moddelling which I never finished (the actual steps weren't done). I didn't keep the stairs how they were though as it would look out of place, and instead duped, mirrored, altered and then combined them all together to form the final thing.............

Render Problems and Lighting Tests....................

With only about two more weeks left before initial film hand in, we have started hitting major problems with rendering. Though Dan in our group had already tested it out prior and it seemed to work fine, the Render Farm of the college which we were relying on just flat out does not want to render our work. Although we are not 100% satisfied with our animations in the 1st scene, we want to start rendering them now so that we can get the film in on time (we can polish it all up for the dgree show)......... BUT.......... every time we try to render using the Render Farm we get errors or renders wich have not come out right.

Dan and louis, even though overly frustrated, seem to be managing to resolve each problem that occurs........BUT (again).............. a new problem problem arrises each time one is resolved. This is really really bad not just because we are running out of time to render full quality shots, but also for animating. Each time something happens louis is out of commision with animating, and then occasionally the fix would need to be applied to the scenes im working on or my animations would need to be imported in a "now fixed" scene............ meaning I could be sitting around for pottentially hours waiting for scenes to be fixed (which can't exactly be helped).............

Everyone in the group is working extremely hard at this point, but right now its looking as if Chris and whoever else that can help will need to take on a big part of the 3rd scene as Im running out of time and I still havn't been told EXACTLY what dialogue is to be in the 3rd scene for me to animate around.

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Though Im pretty sure Ajdin has already sorted it out, below is a lighting test I did for the 3rd scene earlier............

More Scene1 Cleanups............

Pressure.............

Animation Cleanup Start................

Scaling All Scenes Up Correctly.............

Finished Environment 3..............

Initial Test Animations...............

Situation with Animating...............

Because of the lack of time we have to animate now that both character rigs and all environments are ready (though they were ready enough to animate on weeks ago :P) for JUNK FOOD, the group has come up with a strategy to get things done. The strategy is ultimately a production workflow, Louis is to blockout the keyposes of shots that need to be done in the 1st scene while others who are willing to animate help do the same for the 3rd scene while i start working on it, then I will go over all the blockout animations and clean them up and sort out timing issues etc............

The purposes of us deciding on this is firstly to speed things up, we can at least have the film blocked out and everyone can pottentially be able to pitch in even if they are not too comfortable with animating. The second reason is the issue of style changes in animation. We'v been going over how we are to maintain a similar animation style throughout the film, it was very obvious more than one person (being me) would have to animate as its still quite a big film to take on in such a short time. By doing this method of animating, we can get the film done easier and the group reckons we can maintain a similar look to the animations as my style will be through the final passes...... wich makes sense to be honest.

Soooo yeah, we have a TON of animating to do and only like a month to get it done from this point on............ whoah!!

Scene Progress Shots...................

Some update renders of my scene.......................

The valley walls are more jagged now, but a bit more is needed I think........

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A quick HD render of the main crater area............

Cranes..............

I moddelled a crane for the scene to include in it, which I then duplicated around the scene.................

More for the Valley..............

Added this detail close to the entrance of the valley.................

Scene Progress..................

Progress of the scene 3 moddelling..............

Adding to the Valley..........

I started moddelling the ring like structures I had in the blockout I did for the 3rd scene...............

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The environment structures I had made prior to JUNK FOOD being reworked seem to look ok in the valley section of the scene, so Im gona recylce and use em to fill out the valley and thus also in a way not letting that stuff go to waste.................