Planning Process

Almost three weeks since my return to the project - I've spent some time planning my shots and the idea of the animation, how it should be felt and transition between scenes, and so on. I've decided to use a loosely planned scrum board to keep track of what I need to do and to prioritize things. 

And no.. I did not dedicate all my time to this, these last three weeks were filled with challenges, if it's not my lazy self not wanting to work, it's the depression that keeps me in bed, or it's the country's local "terrorists" rioting in my city and forcing the community to defend our homes...

!!!!! ANYWAY !!!!!

I've created a storyboard and made some basic concept art for the environments: 

Storyboard Thumbnails

Basic Environment Concept Art
  

01_Environment Concept Art

02_Environment Concept Art

03_Environment Concept Art

Next up:

• Creating the environment's basic block-outs in scenes separated from each other.
• Recreate basic 3D animatic with driver POV. 
• Replace Block-out with 3D Assets.

That's it for now. I'm glad that I've made the time to write this out. It keeps me motivated to push forward when I can. 

Cheers for now!

Back after a massive break - some updates:

This post is just to ensure that I haven't given up on this project, I am recommitting myself after many months of delay.
A few things to note after the past 3+ months :

• I got a massive hardware upgrade - had some compatibility issues that delayed me quite a bit - ( this was my main reason for putting my project on hold at the start. )
• After my upgrade, I got a pretty massive freelance project that almost took a month of my time.
• BUT for the last month and a half... I was caught in a laziness spiral. I'm still slowly but surely coming out of it.

What's Next?

I ended my project on hold just as I had to evaluate what I have done so far and to decide if I was happy or not, so today I did just that and decided to try one more iteration on my environment. To see if I can optimize my workflow and the project overall a bit better. I've decided on a new approach - I'll be using newer assets to start with, totally scrapping my previous environment. I started to plan out my shots, by planning out the shots I will be able to determine what exactly needs to be in the environment. 

I'll be creating separate scenes within Blender for each shot to make things faster. I have created a Trello board in order to keep track of what I'm in the middle of working on, the automation of the website is great BTW. 

So that's it for now - I'll be posting regularly again starting next week Sunday. I promise. 

Also...

I actually started this blog to keep myself in check - kind of failed since 4 months have gone by... but I'll be more active from now on. Just want to say thanks to whoever spends the time to read this crap.. cause it's just me rambling to myself. Legit.. I talk to myself aloud too, especially when I drive... I do however have no problem with you following the blog or not, It's pretty cool to see the "viewed" icon count be more than just the amount of times that I checked it myself.

Anyway - CHEERS for now!

-- 2021 --

Let's aim to improve this year on the bad habits that the lockdown had us develop!!!!!! And to #GETSHITDONE

Starting off with quite an impressive leap with the modeling of the vehicle interior.

So I sourced for examples first, CC0 of course, I needed some scale references and to see how their topology flowed. So far I've made this :

Screenshot of WIP Vehicle Interior

Screenshot of WIP Vehicle Interior_Wireframe

It's a work in progress, but it didn't take me that long to be honest, which is awesome cause I thought it would.

ALSO

I finished the lighting and did some minor adjustments to my environment. This is what it looks like now:

WIP render of Lighting ( Cycles Renderer, 1 Sample with Denoise)

ANYWAY

That's it for now. Cheers

Week 1- Environment design:

The main focus for the week was to source assets that I could use either up to production or as placeholders while I iterate the environment layout. I never really plan out on a 2D platform first, to be honest, I usually start by creating basic 3D scenes and iterate from there, I find it to be faster for myself. 

 I created a procedural, symmetrical road, placed buildings, and street details along the path that my camera will be moving on:

Screenshot of environment top view

Screenshot of environment with sourced assets

I made another 3D viewport render to see how the environment would look like and it looks pretty good so far:

Detailed environment preview

The Style:

At first, my initial idea for style in any project would be realism, which is what I focused on this week while creating the scene and sourcing for assets. For now, I think I'll stay with this idea and iterate a bit more before making any style changes. The main problem with doing something in a realistic style usually means a lot of processing power is needed, which I don't have unless I optimize the SH%T out of the project, which would take A LOT of time. 

I could always make it more stylized, meaning:

Fewer color data + Fewer reflections + Less geometry = More processing power

Maybe Semi-Low-Poly  ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯

I don't really mind what style I work in, so I'll maybe iterate a second scene with a low poly mindset.

The best thing to do is to finalize my environment with the assets that I have right now and to make the changes afterward.

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 I also made this list -

Ways to optimize my scene:

• Lessen geometry of sourced assets.
• Model own assets.
• Break shots into separate scenes.
• Create Texture Atlases for assets to minimize draw calls.
• ?? GO LOW POLY ??

ANY other suggestions are welcome!!!

Anyway - That's what I have to share for now. Keep in touch for more updates next week.

Cheers

The Drive Home - Animation Project

What is this?

I've decided to create this blog to make myself accountable for myself, to prove that I can finish something of my own, to drive through the procrastination that most humans ( especially artists ) deal with. 

For a while now, I had an idea, to create something that resembles an experience everyone goes through, or a situation that most people can relate to. I've always been interested in creating experiences rather than games or animations and I only managed to pop out one real-time experience a year ago. So by utilizing the blog feature of Artstation I will try to complete this project. 

What to expect:

•  I will commit to constant updates through posts, either to discuss the main decisions for the project or for showing something that I have achieved. 

• I will provide weekly updates to show progress ( every weekend ).

• I will only be posting this on Artstation and share it on my Linkedin Social Media ( I don't have an art account for Instagram ).

• I do encourage anyone who has any comments on my work to please post it, I do take critique into consideration and I do appreciate anyone who follows this.

What now?

So the next step would be to explain the project, to show planning or any visuals that I've done so far... 

I will be using Blender for all the 3D work, I'm still deciding if I want to add it into a game engine like Unity or UE4, I usually work in an optimized manner, so I'll most probably try doing a render inside Eevee first and see how my PC handles it. But I would want to render it in cycles to create a propper animation out of this project for sure! 

My Animation Rational:

The Drive Home

I finished my studies in 3D Animation and Game Design in 2018, and got a job in Architectural Rendering in 2019, Doing Archviz was a great learning experience, but it often required me to work late at night, on occasion public holidays, and even weekends ( Sundays included ). This being my first job ever, I made it my main priority, not making time for anything or anyone else. This way of handling it made me go from being in control and enjoying the work I've done to be in survival mode, just doing what I've made the norm. Repeating every day. And I've experienced the "Autopilot" scenario more than a few times. 

The idea is to show a POV of someone driving at night, this person is alone on the road, for the most part, the radio is playing and this person is heading home after a long day of work. The animation is to convey the almost habitual / ritual of what most people experience in their everyday lives. Every day is a repeat and sometimes you don't even remember how you got home... the scary realization that you were consciously asleep during your drive home, not knowing if you skipped a stop sign or drove over a red Light...

This is what I have to show so far: 

• I have a reference board: 

Pinterest board of my References for the main elements of the animation.

•   I've made a Lighting render on the mood of what I'm trying to convey:

• A quick prototype Animatic on what the view will look like throughout the animation ( Raw file ) : 

3D Animatic

Rough roadmap of this project:

•  Writing and sharing about the project ( weekly updates )

•   Environment Design for the overall scene ( 1 week )

• *Modeling of the vehicle interior ( 2 Weeks )

• *Modeling of the buildings ( 1 Week )

• *Modeling of the Street details ( 3 Days )

• *Modeling of the POV character arms ( 3 Days )

•   The rigging of character arms ( 2 Days )

•   Animating [ traditional/mocap ] ( N/A )

*Assets will be sourced either for use, placeholders, or references.

That's all I have to share right now... (•‾⌣‾•)و ̑̑♡