Where are we this week?

We havn't been doing as much running around as we did earlier. I guess that is because we are solidifying our concept. We basically started this week off by me camping out in Ferry's animation class so we could talk to James again and his Maya assistant Shervin who also happens to be an animator on an upcoming Fox animation. Or so I've been told. Basically we presented to them what we are planning to do and as expected got a worried response. Both Shervin and James said it would be very difficult to accomplish our said script in time and I know from experience it would be. Before getting into this I knew we would have to scale back so what I think we will do is focus work on a good portion of the story that we would have as a solid end product and see how we are going with time. If time remains we do other areas of it. But I do have full confidence on our abilities to full this off, we have pulled of a 1 character animation in 5 weeks from start to finish before so I think a larger scale project is probable if we put everything in it. Plus, I always like a challenge, and haven't failed to complete one yet.

Aside from having their doubts, they did offer some good advice. Or rather we wanted to know how to start our character modeling properly. At first we were going to model each character's body and then cloth it but Shervin directed us to ignore anything under clothing that won't ever be seen to reduce work and render time. It makes sense. He also directed us to learningmaya.com for several tutorials we can follow and he was happy to see us follow the Joan of Arc tutorial I mentioned earlier, he said it was "a very good tutorial". So i think we are on a good start. However, presenting next week, we have to be better ready so me and ferry are not leaving school this Thursday until we have 3 solid characters we can model and create. We are going to sit and figure this out. Also we hope to FINALLY meet with ED, maybe Ira and James to get some more ideas on the overall story development.

Also, I love Ferry's drawings - mine are too serious....go Ferry!