Got 30th.....sadly.

So I finished up my animation for the 11 second club for April 2010. The votes were cast and I got 30th out of 177 entries. Which sucks to be honest. I figured I was going to grab at least a top 25....bleh. Oh well just have to do it better next time. Doing a self critique I can see that I just didn't get the emotional resonance I wanted too with the final look for the female character. I really should have pushed the camera closer to her face as well as pushed the emotions she was feeling. I also feel like I could have polished a couple of moves, one in particular. If I had to do it again I would have reconsidered the leaning on a table thing. That was just a technical challenge across the board. Having to make sure that the arms and hands and fingers don't clip through the geometry was a bear to handle and took a lot of time which I could have spent elsewhere. I was also relying too much on my animation to convey what I wanted to. Though that is my primary function, it isn't the only aspect of animation, there were a lot of things I could have pushed and improved in order to have pushed my entry farther up the voting charts. Such as working on better textures and lighting, going through the trouble of finding real clothes and hair. Doing the little details such as adding some kind of text on the document the guy slides over. All of these things would have pushed the shot farther if not the animation. Overall I think its an OK little piece. It sure isn't reel material by any stretch of the imagination but its OK.

11 Second club cont.

So I am getting along, Animation always takes longer than I anticipate which is annoying. Its just the fact that the little things take longer than you think they should so I am getting bogged down by that. At this point right now I have 44 hours left to finish up my piece, which includes not just animation but lighting and rendering and uploading the final video and all that. I am going way slower and I would prefer and at this rate I wont finish on time to the quality that I would prefer. Of course I started significantly later than I should have but I knew what I was getting into when I started this thing. I think this entry is going to get a better rating than the last one that I uploaded to the competition which got 70th out of 204 which is alright since I did it in about 3 days, and as more of a lark. This though I am actually investing some time into I am really hoping for something more significant. I dont anticipate winning this time around though since the quality just isnt going to be there, the acting is going to be there, the movement isnt going to be there, the rendering wont really be all that impressive, and compared to what I have seen win in these other competition I foresee a few dark horses coming out of no where to nab up a pretty big victory. I didnt get any of the emotion or subtext that I was looking to get into my shot but I am hoping that somehow it will still manage to radiate through by the time I finish but I just dont know, anyway wish me luck I could use it.

11 second club April

So I am doing the 11 second club this month, I got a pretty late start so its going to be a sprint to the finish on this one. I am trying to get the emotion to work on this scene before I go to spline because if its not working in the blocking it wont work in the splined version. I am really trying to do something more based in reality here as well as trying to do more with texture and varied timings. I have noticed that I want to gravitate towards a singular timing every shot that I do and need to break myself off of that, so that is what I am trying to do. Anyway if anyone has anything to say feel free to yell at me because I could use any input that I can get on this one.