Approach
This week I finished workinging with Imagineering in a box video series. The final chapter this week covered character design. As I mentioned in the beginning of this project, I did not expect to learn anything necessarily revolutionary or ground breaking, but understand how to repurpose what I know in a different context. As a whole the videos were a helpful world building, character creation, and story development 3 week intensive. The series also showed a dim light into what full time imagineers do daily. As a possible career opportunity, it is reassuring that more jobs exist which could utilize my unique mix of interests and skill sets. Understanding a full time position working for Disney is a lofty goal, however, internship opportunities offered within imagineering seem less imposible, and something I'm interested in working towards.
This week I also continued to develop and refine the look of the main character in the short. Below is the mood board and look I am trying to achieve.
Link to full mood board https://www.pinterest.com/kgolson7/light-mood-board/
Ideally I would be working in Arnold render in Maya to achieve the desired look. However, due to several circumstances (including: rendering times and access to Arnold) I have been looking into a cheaper way of achieving the same effect Arnold gives. I am attempting to do this by rendering animation out of Maya using Hardware renderer and adding layers of effects in After Effects. In the end, I didn’t necessarily create an Arnold work around, but I did run into an interesting grouping of effects, inside of After Effects, to create something different but similar. Below are a couple of screenshots of what I am currently working inside of After Effects.
I would like to add highlights to the black shapes to make the form feel more three dimensional, but for the most part I am pleased with the current turn of events. For context, this black blob moves around the door in an organic way, transforming, and shifting into different rigid and liquid states.
Rendering
As a twisted turn of events, working in After Effects was meant to speed rendering times, and for the most part it has, however, as I start compiling different effects and procedures together in After Effects, the render times get longer. This next week I will hopefully be finishing rendering. Thus far the render times have been manageable. I did a test render of the 1 minute 30 second scene utilizing the blob (depicted above) and it's going to take about 6 to 8 hours. I am hoping not to have many more long renders as I can’t do anything else while the computer renders. I'm trying to render things overnight to keep up. Not a major inconvenience, but I just have to stay flexible with my schedule and be smart with my time.
Link to Imagineering in a box
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcXlEH5sTVI&list=PLZuKWjoQGMP4MB9UfsCaGTqU-wPPGZK0-&index=3