CAGD 495 Week 12 - Christopher Coombs

    Hello, again, and welcome back to my weekly blog! My name is Christopher Coombs, team leader of the Ape Adhesive. At the end of this week, our group has made significant progress in refining our animations. Judging by the work I have seen tonight, I can confirm we are around 90% complete with the entire animation process. Here is what work we have to show for our twelfth week:


    Starting with Brooke's work, she refined shot 3 immensely. No longer do I need to increase the speed of the burglar looking around in Premiere, as it now matches the intended speed one-for-one. The burglar's turn toward the camera is very smooth, and she added a bit of a hold at the end, as requested by our instructor. We also have a longer hold for the chest and the reaction afterwards. If the holds need to be any longer, that is totally doable. We have a little more time to spare for that than we did in the previous week. If there was one thing I'd change, it's how the burglar's head tilts back at the end of shot 5 during the smile. The headtilt ends abruptly, making the pacing seem a bit faster than it actually is. I believe that having the head look forward in this frame will give the illusion of a longer-lasting hold. Otherwise, her shots move as smoothly as butter now. Luis's shots 6 and 8 are also very smooth now. He managed to fix the static holds for the burglar's surprised and startled expressions so that the animation no longer looks like it's trapped in the block-out phase. He also adjusted the head's position so that it's not too high or too low. Now it's just where it needs to be in the center of the frame. Luis also created a blockout of the gorilla dragging away the burglar in the final shot. Since this was the only character that had yet to be animated, and we are very close to the animation deadline, I jumped on this animation as well, fixing some continuity errors and refining the blockout so that it'd be ready for the splining process. During the break next week, Brooke has volunteered to get this animation splined out looking perfect. The only obvious error I'm seeing right now from our blockout phase is that we need to get him closer to the burglar during the dragging scene, as he's partially merged into the side wall. This should be an easy fix. For Tyler's animation, she has smoothed out the door-struggling scene, and it looks pretty good now. She has a few more improvements for the animation, but is experiencing technical difficulties right now with her PC unit. Therefore, she said that she'll have it ironed out by Monday morning. I also took the liberty of adding some door-shaking sounds to this shot as requested by our instructor. The rest of the sound design I will save for after the animation deadline, during our post-production phase. For our layout artist, Gavin, he textured our glue bottle this week, which looks like this: 


    He also refined shot 14 of the burglar being pulled off the door and the doorknob rubberbanding to his hand as he flies off. It's hard to see right now because of the ghosting. That ghosting issue has been a pain in the neck for months now. Hopefully, we'll be able to get that issue settled during the final weeks following the animation deadline. He's also having issues with the textures still for his shot with the gorilla. He plans on reapplying the materials next week to see if that fixes the issue. However, he managed to remove all the bloom for our interior shots, making them look way clearer than they were before. Back to his animation of shot 14, it still needs a little bit of refinement to make the expressions a bit more natural, but that shouldn't be a problem for him. He managed to refine all his other animations a long time ago, and they look really, really good. 

    That's all for now! Thanks again for reading into our progress on this project! We've certainly gotten far, and I think we'll be able to reach the finish line in time. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving Break! 
                                                                                                        - Christopher Coombs

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