Blog Post 5 - Labling, Approval, and Shot Layout

I think this week went fairly well, all things considered!!! I'm honestly very proud of our group and what we've been working on. As I said last week, I changed up the schedule so it will be much more layout heavy in order for us to have a 3D animatic by the end of the semester. We can work on asset development (like UVs, textures, rigs, etc) more once we have a layout going. The layout animatic doesn't have to be super complex, after all, just good enough for us to follow when we start working more on the scenes themselves.

That being said, the system we had going for approval in the assets list and the shot list was odd, finicky, and relied on people to remember to do it, instead of just conveniently providing them a dropdown menu to select something from. So, I fixed that!! Both of the lists now have their own little "Approval" column!!! There's a dropdown to choose an option from, and it's right in front of their faces instead of just implied so that no one forgets about it!! It's wonderful!! I can't believe I didn't think of/add it in sooner, to be honest. It's going to be a BIG help, especially when we're going over the layout scenes for our animatic.

This is my little key for what each accronym means in the little bubble.

This is what a fair amount of our Approval column in the asset list looks like at the moment.

The speed at which everyone in our group is working astounds me, and I'm amazed at how much we've gotten done since the beginning of the semester. Considering we're close to the halfway point of this semester, we're on track to have a decent amount of work done by the end of the semester. Our assets may not be fully completed, but everything is going to be modeled and laid out, and some things will have textures, rigs, and more!! The thing that I am most happy about, honestly, is that we started the semester off already having a pretty nice looking storyboard. Sure, there's some things we should/could change, but all in all, our storyboard is pretty solid, and things are easily visualized and laid out thanks to it. Celia's only done a few different layout shots so far, and already they're looking awesome thanks to the reference the storyboard provides.

That being said, the storyboard can be a bit oddly ambiguous at times, so I've been taking the storyboard and working on adding lables from the shot list over each shot on the storyboard, so there's no confusion on which shot someone should be working on. I'm about halfway done with that, and once I complete it, I'm going to put it in SyncSketch so that both my whole team and the professors can have access to it. Then I'll start on my own layout scenes!!! Though, I might approve some models before I do so, just to make sure the models used in our layout animatic are the most recent, most up to date ones. I'd hate for us to get versions mixed up and have some issues come up later down the line.

I think overall, I'm doing pretty good, and my group is doing pretty good. My other classes take up a lot of my time at times, but I am still finding time for this class. I am also finding time to rest and relax, and I still have a bedtime that I stick to, so no worries about sleep. I find that I often feel a lot better about things when I talk them out with people. It's nice. You wouldn't think it would work, but it works surprisingly well. At least in my opinion. I am overthinking things a lot less now that I've gotten some verbal confirmation and direction from various people. Not just my professors, but my friends, groupmates, parents, and therapist. Talking to people and interacting with others can really help with feelings. Especially negative ones. That being said, the CAM Alumni Dinner was a bit too much socializing for me, and my brain is still kind of fuzzy from it, even today. I had fun networking though!!