macnryart

[macnryart]

Blog Post #10

Individual experiences

How have you developed as an artist and animator throughout the semester? Honestly, I'm not sure that my actual skills have improved much, but I DO feel a lot more confident in myself and those skills, which is a big change. I went into the semester feeling like I wasn't all that good and didn't have much to offer in comparison to my peers and I now feel like while I might not be as incredibly skilled as some of my classmates, I do bring a lot to the table and I'm not a useless member of the team.

What are some areas where you have gained experience or knowledge? Organization and advocating for certain things. I finally learned to assert myself and put my foot down as necessary (or at the very least throw my opinion in the ring and see what people thought of it), which is something I've struggled with not just in this program but in life at large. I grew up with a particularly severe form of social anxiety disorder and would panic anytime I was asked to give an opinion about something. At the start of this year, I had gotten to a point in my treatment/recovery where I no longer panicked, but I still had a really hard time giving opinions and not folding immediately if there was any pushback (even if it wasn't negative). I now have experience giving my thoughts and defending those thoughts and opinions even if other people don't understand or agree with them, which is huge for me. That experience and the fact that it didn't kill me or get me socially excluded will allow me to continue to work better with my groupmates and be able to have truly productive conversations.

Was there anything about the production experience that surprised you? How did you handle the unexpected challenges? I think the biggest thing was having stuff (project organization, mainly) done in a way that I didn't like. I handled it by writing it all down, letting it sit, and then going through and figuring out what mattered most and what was worth addressing. There was some smaller stuff like the file structure and naming that bugged me but I decided it wasn't that big of a deal and I could let it go, so I did. Other stuff though, I either brought it up myself or it got brought up by Ashley in the production pass (thank you for that) and I used that as a launching point.

What are you most proud of in terms of your accomplishments this semester? The fact that I didn't crash and burn. I dealt with a lot of stressful personal and medical stuff (as seems to be the recurring theme every year, which is irritating) but I didn't break down completely. I handled it and I kept chugging.

What do you think you could have done better this semester? Time management and setting realistic goals for myself. I have a hard time estimating how long it's going to take me to do something and I tend to underestimate and then be stressed when I don't have the time to finish the tasks I said I would do.

List some personal goals for the next two semesters. Get better at time management and goal setting, continue to communicate with the group, and try to find something in the pipeline that excites me and I really like doing.

Group experiences

How did your group handle the challenges and requirements of the semester? A lot of talking about it. If there was an issue, it eventually got brought up and we talked it out. We also talked about how we felt about the progress we were making and whether we thought we would accomplish things on time, which I think helped a lot. You can't read your group members' minds so it helps to find out when someone has a thought or cares a lot about something and you didn't know.

In what ways did your group maintain focus on the goals of the project? We kept circling back to our main style inspiration, TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem). That got brought up a LOT and since everyone was familiar with it, it helped us refocus on the style we wanted for our film.

How did your group handle personal or interpersonal issues that came up along the way? Same as question 1, we just talked about it.

Do you feel that everyone’s personal strengths are being used well? For the most part, yes. There are some things that aren't, but it's stuff that is coming in future semesters and we've already talked about it and made plans for that.

Do you feel that the work is being shared fairly? As fairly as it can be given the fact that we each have different amounts of time and energy that we can devote to the project. It doesn't seem like anyone is either slacking or doing most of the work. It feels like a pretty even balance.

What did your group do well this semester? I think we created a pretty strong group bond immediately, which set us on a good track. Evan gets the credit for this because he really went out of his way to make sure that everyone felt included and wanted straight off the bat. We also set up a group food outing pretty early on which led to some great bonding and allowed us all to get to know each other better in a more organic way than doing an icebreaker or something like that. We've all kept it up and I think that's a big strength for us. I heard (not intentionally; I was waiting for Jeremy and overheard a conversation with one of the current seniors) about a kind of hostile situation that happened with the Liminal Sleep group and I am incredibly grateful that our group meshes in such a way that a situation like that is unlikely and certainly would not get to that extent. There absolutely could have been potential for it because Helen, Evan, and Noah are all friends and part of a larger tight knit group within our cohort so it would have been very easy for that to become an exclusionary situation but we (again, Evan in particular) have taken steps to make sure that doesn't become an issue.

What do you feel your group could have done better? Communication. We've gotten better about it throughout the semester and I think we will continue to do so, but it definitely was a bit of a rocky start to get there.

List some goals that your group has for the next two semesters. By next semester we want to have put out flyers for voice actors. We want to be largely done (entirely done, if possible) with animation by the end of fall semester.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #9

4/19-5/2

Things are going better, though I haven't gotten to talk to Helen because she got injured and I don't want to bother her while she's recovering. I'm working on layout as per usual (but 3D animatic layout now; I'm mostly done with environment stuff). The plan is to have all the shots done by Wednesday night and honestly I don't know if we're going to achieve that but I will do my best. Kat and Ash are helping out with layout so that's been nice. We have a plan going now and it feels like we're on the right track and picking up steam. I also made (or rather finished/wonked) some assets, mostly the kitchen cabinets and sink. We've planned to have Noah work on texturing in Helen's place once he's done with the roach. We realized that Helen is the only one who's been doing the texturing and none of us know how exactly she's been doing it so having her out of commission for the rest of the semester threw a wrench in our vertical slice plans. We're mostly focusing on the animatic for now though, since it sounds like that's the main thing that's going to be showed at Production Pass 4.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #8

4/12-4/18

Issues continue. As I'm putting the rooms together, I've noticed a lot of the assets were created without the proper scale or the most recent version wasn't put into the pub folder or there's still lights or a turntable in there or things weren't grouped or named so it comes in as 15 polysurfaces. I can't get my work done as quickly as I should be able to because I am spending a lot of time going back and cleaning up everyone else's scenes, which is kind of annoying to be honest, but I'm trying not to let it bother me because I know it's not that big of a deal and I don't want my irritation to poison the work environment. I also am pretty sure a lot of the group is like me and has ADHD so it doesn't matter how many times you remind someone, there is still a 90% chance they will forget something. We have a production pipeline document that Noah put together which has a really nice guide for how to name things, what folders they go in, etc, but it seems like not everybody reads that.

There also have been some issues with things being modeled without taking into account the room they're in. We've been wonking assets which generally has gone well but the fridge was wonked in such a way that it ran into the wall that it's next to. I had already built windows and had told the group where they were and that they were ready to be wonked and instead of using those windows, a new window was built and Helen I guess looked at it and was like "yeah that's fine" and started texturing it before I even got the chance to look at it. So I ended up having to adjust the walls so the windows would fit. The way our review system is set up, it's mostly Helen, Evan, Noah, or Sienna who get the final say on assets. Which I didn't see an issue with until these situations. Evan thankfully is pretty open about what he's working on and will ask for feedback in class as he's wonking so a few times I've been able to point out that something would run into something else. But for a lot of the assets in general it feels like they were designed and wonked without taking into account the fact that they go in a room and they need to fit in that room in the spot that they're supposed to be in. I have been doing my best to just gently remind people about this but I am slowly losing my patience.

We joke that Helen is the benevolent dictator but honestly it's starting to feel that way a bit. This week she messaged me privately asking me to change the scale of the walls in the living room because it felt too cramped. Normally with roach-related things, we talk about it in the discord server that is specifically designed to house our communications so that everyone else can see and weigh in on them. When I asked for more details (like are there any specific walls she wants moved because it looked fine to me) she said "I just want it to look wider" which stuck out to me because it wasn't "I think it would look better if it were wider" it was "I want it to look wider." I don't really know how to explain the difference and why that difference was a little bit concerning to me so hopefully it makes sense when reading this. I think to some degree the issue of "I want it to look the way I want it to look" is present in everyone in the group but it's most prevalent with Helen and she's the one who's the least flexible about it and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that. There's an overall feeling that once Helen says something is how it's going to be done...you don't really get a say in it. I will be discussing it with my mom later today since she usually has good ideas for how to tell people to stop doing what they're doing without sounding like an asshole.

On the actual production side of things though, I got a lot done with the layout. I added windows and doors, beveled the room structure, put assets in, and created the vent system. I got a basic animation done for the very first shot (roach POV going through the vent). I created the thermostat and put the texture on that so I could work on the third shot (Kat did the second). I'll be working a lot this weekend to try to get as much done as possible before Production Pass 3 on Monday.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #7

3/28-4/11

Well. Production Pass 2 was...rough, to say the least. We all went into it like "yeah I think we're doing pretty well" only to be immediately humiliated by the progress the other groups had made. As embarrassing as that was, it was the kick in the ass we needed to really get moving and now we're doing pretty well (all things considered). I spent the majority of this time redoing the layout for everything. I went back in and combined the faces and renamed everything and then continued working on secondary layout stuff (windows and doors mostly). I was told/assigned by the group to stick with layout as opposed to cleaning up the storyboard (which was the original plan).

This, in all honesty, bothers me a little bit when I think back on it because the apartment layout is something I started back in the very first week because I knew it needed to be done and I didn't have anything else to do. I just wanted to help out. I didn't know I would end up being the designated layout artist for the whole film. It's not the end of the world or anything and I don't mind the role, but I do mind that I wasn't ever asked if I wanted to continue doing that or move to something else. I actually would really like to work on the sound for the animatic and then work on general asset modeling but it was just assumed that I wanted to stick with layout. Yes I will bring this up to the group at some point.

On a similar "being assigned things" note, with the schedule, we just get assigned things to do and due dates with no real discussion about whether that's possible both with the speed that we work and the time that we have for that week. Which, while I know is probably exactly how it works in the industry, this isn't the industry and this is a situation where I don't think we should treat it like it is. When you're working in the industry, that's your entire job (and presumably your only job). Right now, I have four classes, two part time jobs, and a lot of stuff I'm dealing with outside of that. This production is not the only thing I am working on and I cannot drop everything else in my life to get things done. I intend to bring this up the next time scheduling is done.

There were also some mild issues with some of the pipeline organization. I, due to being the layout artist, have largely been in charge of referencing assets into the scenes. It took two conversations and felt like pulling teeth to get everyone (mostly Helen) to understand why I asked that we have a PUB and a work folder. All of the pub files I had created and referenced into my rooms were deleted and I was not given any notice about this until I was like "hey uh what happened to the assets?" at which point it was explained to me that the "finished (since renamed "published")" folder was only to be used when the asset was done (like, textured and everything) and that was what would be referenced into the scene. And I was like "absolutely not, the most recent version of the asset goes in the pub folder no matter if it's done or not and that's what gets referenced." It's the only thing I've really put my foot down on so far with this production but I stand by that decision because it's an important one and it affects the efficiency of my work.

Helen modified the asset list in a way that didn't really make sense to anyone and, when a lot of us were talking without Helen there (we didn't purposefully exclude her, she just had to leave early from our scheduled meeting), it got brought up that Evan had tried to ask her if we could change it and he got shot down. Upon hearing that everyone else was confused too, he asked us to bring it up at the next class and hopefully that would get listened to. That...concerned me, honestly. Evan generally is not afraid to give feedback or suggest that things be done differently. And the general consensus from the group seemed to be that everyone knew there were problems with the list but no one wanted to approach Helen about it. I'll talk about this more in Blog Post 8.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #6

3/15-3/21

This week did not go as initially planned and I spent it working on layout as opposed to cleaning boards. I made some good progress and started getting all of the scenes updated with furniture and referenced into a main scene so I could test everything. I discovered an issue with the referencing though. When I changed the PUB files, they didn't update in the reference.

For example: In my "whole apartment" scene file, I referenced in each individual room. I went into those room files and referenced in furniture, then saved the file with the [room_name]_PUB.mb name format, which is what was referenced in the apartment scene. But when I went back to the apartment scene, the rooms were not updated to include the furniture. I tried reloading the reference and that didn't fix it. The only way I could get the scene to update was to completely remove and re-reference the room file. I haven't been able to troubleshoot that yet and figure out if it's just that machine doing it or not. Hopefully it's just a weird glitch and it will get sorted out. I was under the impression that so long as we kept the file name the same and kept the same file path, it would update automatically (or at least when we re-loaded the reference) so this is a mildly concerning problem. I will try to play with it over the break and if that doesn't work, I'll set up an office hours appointment with Jeremy and see if he can help me figure it out. We're kind of relying on that reference updating for this film so I'm hoping we can get that to work.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #5

3/6-3/14

Didn't get a lot done this week on the Encroachment front. I finished my rough boards and am now working on cleaning them up. It was a super busy week for me outside of this class, so I prioritized that. But I'm now caught up with my other classes so I should be able to take on some work this week and get my cleaned boards done. I'm in charge of two sections (sequences 4 and 12) and if I get those done, I can probably do another.

Oh we did however go to the CAM day and one of the pre-sessions Sienna and I went to was the tour of the Recording Arts spaces. While we discovered we aren't allowed to use the spaces or equipment without a recording arts student, we DID find someone who is potentially willing to score and record music for our project. His name is Jonas and he led to tour. He's a senior so we would need to get stuff done sooner rather than later. He mentioned he scored music for a horror short film recently and he seemed pretty excited to work with us so hopefully that will pan out.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #4

2/19-3/5

These weeks were spent storyboarding! I initially just did the boards for SQ012 and will put a screenshot of those below.

I then began working on SQ004, which is not quite finished but I'm making good progress on it.

Here are some of the original rough boards:

Then the cleaned up (and some semi-but-not-fully cleaned up boards):

Sienna talked to Kat and I to get our input on requirements for cleaned up boards (largely things like resolution, having certain things be on different layers so Sienna can move them around, etc). We also discussed finding/creating temp sound, so I will begin working on that once I'm done with the boards. I already have a list of sound effects we need so we should just be able to go down that and do the essential ones first and then go from there.

As a group, we talked about finding a geometry style that makes the characters and props/environment consistent. We decided to do as Jeremy suggested to the Gumbo group and start with the realistic asset and then wonk it from there. We're aiming to end up with a Monster Inc esque style (realistic enough to be able to easily discern what an object is, but a lot of the details are simplified). I created some examples of this style.

Things are going really well so far! I'm confident we will have a good animatic by the next production pass :)

[macnryart]

Blog Post #3

2/13-2/19

I took the layout I made previously and created a camera test with the "scary kitchen scene." It was really just panning from Lex and Blair in the kitchen over to the Roach in the living room. I intended this video to be shown at the first production pass (as I was told Jeremy recommended showing part of the layout through a camera) so I added little faces to the characters (who were otherwise abstract shapes) because I figured everybody would be stressed and could probably do with a little bit of laughter. We ended up not showing it but I'll include it here. I was able to test some of the furniture (couch and fridge specifically) and confirm that their individual parts were, in fact, movable without having to separate geometry or anything.

I also used the Lex guide Sienna made to create The Lex Scale, which is just a rough model of Lexi that we can drop into our scenes as a reference for scale, as recommended by Jeremy.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #2

1/29-2/12

I spent most of these two weeks working on layout for the apartment. I started with a full-scale model with all the rooms (see below) and broke them into individual rooms.

I separated all of the geometry into walls, floors, and ceilings, and labeled and organized them all for easy navigation.

I then created copies of the scene (one for each room) and removed all the irrelevant geometry so it was just one room per scene. After that, I created a scene that referenced all of the individual rooms. I also laid out UVs for all of the rooms.

[macnryart]

Blog Post #1

Week of 1/21/25

We didn't do a ton this week. We already created the Encroachment discord (thank you Helen!) and started talking about possible roles (I know these are not final; we mostly were just trying to figure out what everyone might want to do). We also collected the existing resources (pitch deck, concept art, references, etc) and created a shared Google account so we could consolidate everything. I created duplicates of my existing organizational documents (asset list, task list, shot list, render list, contact information) and modified/cleared them so they would be ready for this group. I also let the group know that I will be out of state for a while this summer due to surgery. I have to go down to California for five weeks so I told them I would still be able to work on stuff, it will just be slow progress due to post-surgery exhaustion / intense recovery and the fact that I will only have access to my potato laptop, which runs Maya but has a pretty small screen so it takes about five million years to get things done). Everyone was fine with that so I'm glad that's out of the way. I'll still remind them once it gets closer and we start doing the schedule for the summer.

Last Wednesday we had a meeting (voice call) on discord. In all honesty I don't remember exactly what we discussed (my memory is not so good with these things) so you'll have to find that out from one of the other members. I think it was just an overview of the general plan though.

On Monday we met in the lab where Jeremy taught Surfacing and Lighting 2 and started discussing assets. Sienna went through the script and pitch deck and listed out the sets and props that were important to include. Others added to it and we got a nice list going. I wrote all of these ideas down in my asset list and then created a more detailed task list that mirrored the one Jeremy showed us. Here is a short part of it to show the template:

I couldn't remember exactly all of the steps so I'll have to go back and add some later (can we get access to the powerpoint Jeremy showed?) and then add the shot tasks once we develop a shot list. Sienna is working on the storyboard and should have that done soon.

Overall, things are going really well and I'm excited for the project. I was relieved to see that I was on this film and that we have a really great group of people working on it. I have a hard time making friends and a couple of the team members are people I've slowly been trying to befriend so I hope working together will help with that. I think this project is going to turn out well. I know there will probably still be lots of stress and frustration later on but I'm confident we will end up with a good film and will have learned a lot about the process along the way.

I decided not to say anything in my survey because I recognized that working with people I really didn't want to work with would likely benefit me in terms of learning how to work with people that frustrate me but I was still relieved to see that none of them were in the group I'm in. It's taken me a long time to get back to school (did my first year in 2018 back when Dane was the head of the program and there were a bunch of sticky chickens on the ceiling of 840) and I've had to fight against my various medical stuff in order to stay in the program. So, while it would have had some benefit, not having that added stress is a massive relief.

I also am not particularly worried about my conflict management skills because I've learned an awful lot about how to effectively communicate with people over the last year (shoutout to my DBT program. Unbelievably helpful in this regard) so I don't think I necessarily need that experience. Checking in with people, figuring out what the roadblocks are and how to overcome them, and (when necessary) being a bit of a hard ass in order to get things done are all things I'm decently good at so I think I will be an asset to my team in that way. I know the production coordinator and other related roles are ones a lot of people really hate and don't want to do but it actually sounds incredibly appealing to me. I think that through this project, I can get a lot of solid experience doing that sort of work and I can start to fine-tune what works and what doesn't so I can take that experience and knowledge to my first job out of school.