Class Log 02-19

Today we reviewed the work from the weekend. We made some tweaks to the boards of the festival and classroom, and we discussed some character designs for the side characters.

Emily created some boards for the transition between the festival and the classroom. She had it start with darkness, then light comes in as the bag is opened, which was a really nice touch.

For character designs, we looked at that had been created by Anne for the cat (code named Garbage Boy), and we agreed that the design was a little more TV animation than it was feature. Shannon said she would go over the design and develop it further.

We also looked over some designs for the guitarist by Anne and discussed whether he should have a hat or not.  The reality of him needing hands became a thing too, since he is playing guitar and all. Then the art directors decided that all the background characters need handed, at least basic ones. I think this is a good call because you never know what may come into focus. Even if they are simple fingers, they will make a huge difference for the audience. Other than faces, hands are the most important focal points on the human body.

Dennis did some expressions for Phoebe, our main character. I think we could still use some more progressive emotional sketches of the character, similar to Jin Kim's work on Tangled or Frozen. We discussed also needing some of the character with her hair down. I think it would be important to go throughout the story and find the emotional beats the character goes through and show them. I also think it would be good for Dennis to team up with a hand-drawn animator and work over some of their facial expression performances, since they understand the need for squash and stretch.

Ana did some great designs for Paperson. It's really fun to see how the paper character is so expressive yet so simple. There wasn't much discussion, which showed it was an effective design.

Digi-scout had some great things to look at, including the guitar (including epic tuners), the gelato cart, a rig for the background characters, and a demo of blend shapes.

Textures are heading in a good direction, but they have a cotton candy look that I am not sure I like. The corners are feeling too blunt for the buildings to have structure. It makes the material itself look frail instead of it looking like a texture is on the buildings. Great exploration though!

For environments, we had some designs of the dock scene by Emily and Shannon. We also had a classroom design by Kang, who did a great job on pointing out various sections. Kang also put together a great demonstration of the 2d-3d-2d approach we could use for backgrounds. He has been a great contributor for segueing our pipeline into 3d. Shannon also did a draw-over of Kyle's model as well as a mural painting. Jiazhen did a study of the Piazza as well. I am still developing an image of the hilltop, and I plan to have it ready for next class. 

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