Evaluation

As can be seen from my updated SWOT and Skills Audit, I have gained a lot from this module, mostly based around my main job role as designer and producer of the time-lapse segments of our showreel. On top of my newly established knowledge of time-lapse creation, i believe i have also exercised good communication between myself and my team, mostly through our facebook group, as well as far better time-management through the need to stick to a recording schedule for the time-lapse videos.


On the negative side, while i believe Wayne showed his expertise in photography through getting the camera set-up properly, i felt i could have made more of an effort to learn from him, especially as i feel this would have meant i was comfortable enough to go out and get the Sunset time-lapse i desired. I am also aware that my concentration didn't really improve much though it was certainly an improvement given my interest in the module and on top of this i feel my self-belief hasn't increased much either.

On the team side i felt that there was a certain communicative/participatory disparity between some of our team members, though they did help and play their part to some extent they were almost non-existent in terms of presence and general contribution. Despite this, the members of the team that were active and involved worked well together, and i feel the project lead, Patrick did a good job of keeping everyone up-to-date.

I was very pleased with the showreel overall, we've created something with a professional look, excellent soundtrack and enticing content, though admittedly as i have mentioned in a previous post i feel like some of the content isn't of a high enough standard. Also, the overall style of the video is rather erratic due to the lack of consistently themed title cards for each of the subject areas, though i understand this was due to some communication issues.

And here, for your viewing pleasure is that video:

Final SWOT and Skills Audit

Having finished the project, here is an updated SWOT analysis and Skills Audit:

Strengths:

- Problem Solving
- Idea Generation
- Research
- Supporting others
- Photography ^
- Time-Lapse Creation ^
- Communication ^
- Time-management ^

Weaknesses:

- Concentration
- Self-belief

Opportunities:

- Improve Communication by working in a team, discussing ideas, etc.
- Improve Time-management by focussing on meeting deadlines
- Gain new skills and abilities
- Gain confidence of own abilities

Threats:

- Team mates not getting work done
- Poor communication between team members
- Inability to obtain desired material
- Inability to obtain satisfying material

Skills Audit

Below you can see the areas in which i improved the most are based around my main body of work for this project, the time-lapses. I feel i have gained in confidence (self-belief) through my new abilities, and i made an effort to keep up communication throughout.

Skills	Evaluation: Project Start
Research	5
Problem Solving	4
Supporting Others	4
Idea Generation	4 (+1)
Communication	4 (+2)
Self-Belief	3 (+1)
Concentration	2
Time Management	3 (+2)
Photography	3 (+2)
Time-Lapse Creation	5 (+4)

Showreel Creation

Today was the day everything we worked on came together.

After adding the footage i had attained from my own work to the 'pool', Patrick and I worked together on making it into a coherent, enticing video of what you can achieve on this course.

Above you can see our showreel storyboard, admittedly it's a little 'bare-bones' in appearance but it conveys everything we need to know about the structure of our showreel. So using Apple's iMovie software, we began the process of choosing the content we included, as well as the timings. I found this multiple person approach to the video creation to be very enjoyable as it allowed for discussions and arguments to be made on every aspect, and i feel the final product benefited greatly from this.

The footage we had was obtained by Dean and Helen, a selection of their own work and that of students past an present, as well as opening and closing title cards from Wayne. There were initial concerns when we sat down to make it that we may struggle to reach our target of 2:30 (the agreed length of our showreel), but these proved unnecessary as we hit the desired time fairly easily in the end.

I should clarify the reason that hitting the time limit was a necessity for us. Patrick, being a wizard with sound and music software, had made a soundtrack for our showreel long before we started piecing everything together and it being such an excellent piece of music there was never any doubt that we would be basing the showreel around it.

Patricks Showreel Soundtrack 

So, that's what happened today. An enjoyable experience with the only problems being the lack of intermediate title cards for the different subject areas like "Art", "Animation", "Level Design", etc. Besides this i was very impressed with our final product and i was very proud to see all of my time-lapse work in the mix, though admittedly i felt some of the content was slightly unfitting or of too low a quality to be put in the showreel. Despite this, i believe we still have a great video on our hands, mostly thanks to Pat's fantastic music piece that just fits so well with the video, as well as Waynes high quality work with the title cards (though i wish there had been some made for the intermediate cards. I believe this was due to poor communication, however.)

Footage Contribution

Having recorded the timelapses, my next undertaking was simply to gather some of my own work to the showreel.

The peak of my work this year was my animation work for Professional team brief, and the collaborative effort between myself, Tim Nguyen and Pat to create a racing game for the summer show,  so i decided to use them.

Jäga Rally (Racing Game)

Obtaining footage from Unity was a little tricky and somewhat frustrating, I was hoping there would be some way for me to create a camera in-game that i could fly around the track to get the various shots i desired. Sadly, there was nothing that would allow me to do this so i had to make use of the camera movement offered out-of-game and make do with that. The only problem i had with this is that i felt it was of slightly lower quality than if the game were actually running, and the dense grey fog that is automatically added and i could find no way of adjusting, making it difficult for long shots.

I used the popular desktop recording software Fraps to obtain the footage itself, a very simple program, you press a hotkey and it records your desktop until you press said hotkey again. I found it very easy to use but the results varied, i would sometimes get disastrous framerate issues and towards the end i found my videos were becoming artifacted and disjointed, as if the software was breaking. Thankfully at this point i had already obtained more than enough footage.

Team Brief Animation Work

Obtaining footage from Maya was a much easier affair given its built in 'playblast' function. Playblast allows you to quickly render an animation sequence directly from the viewport, so while admittedly this would be unsuitable for a 3D modelled scene where proper lighting would improve the look, with my flat 2D animations that look as good in viewport as they do when rendered, playblast was perfect. The videos i obtained were simply a select few of my favourite animations from those i had created on the Team Brief project.

Timelapse Progress

In this post i will be writing a summary of how each of our timelapse recordings went. To reiterate, the recordings we will be making are:

- Front of College (Sunrise)
- Front of College (Sunset)
- Classroom
- Sound booth

Front of College (Sunrise)

After finding we could get the equipment we needed, and given the bout of beautiful blue skies and sunshine at the time, Wayne and I immediately took out the equipment we needed and agreed to meet at roughly 4.30am the next morning (eek)

After very little sleep on my part, we did just that, and made our way to the front of the building where we intended to shoot our first timelapse. Something i noticed upon leaving my house was that the sky was much brighter than i had anticipated, though i was assured this wouldn't be a problem.

We agreed on setting the camera to take photographs at 30 second intervals and after finding a suitable spot we began. Given the time of day and our close proximity to a much lauded street for nights out, we encountered a few people who were just stumbling home. Thankfully given their intoxicated state and the agreeable nature that often comes with it, they didn't interfere with the shoot.

It was a fairly smooth run until we realised there was some overexposure in our setup, this was a very daunting prospect as it meant we would have to adjust the camera and this would be quite noticeable in the final result.

Despite this the footage appears to be useable, some adjustments were required in post-processing that saved it, and the footage would be squeezed into a few seconds of footage so it most likely wouldn't be too noticable. Either way neither of us really liked the idea of having to do it again!

Classroom 

The classroom timelapse was fairly straightforward, although instead of 30 second intervals we went for a much shorter 5 second interval between photographs. On top of this Wayne decided to try something new and create a blurred effect for any movement in the shot by lowering the shutter speed, this would give a nice effect commonly seen in timelapse videos.

Sound Booth

The soundbooth timelapse saw some clashing of ideas between myself and Wayne, in the setup process we argued over whether to have the lights on in the room in which the camera was placed, his argument was that having the lights off gave a nicer look to the scene, and in hindsight i agree, however we came to a compromise and had the lights switched on at the beginning when the sound booth was being set up. For this shoot we used a 3 second interval between photographs.

Front of College (Sunset)

It was decided eventually that the sunset timelapse was not a necessity as we could simply reverse the sunrise time-lapse. I was unhappy about this, but admittedly made no effort to take the initiative and get the footage myself.

Relevant - Teaching Assistant Experience and Brighton Develop Conference

On the 1st of May myself, and my coursemates Tim and Patrick acted as teaching assistants in the absence of Rob Naylor, the teacher for the lesson being run which was a general studies class on the use of ZBrush.

Despite apprehension as to our ability to help in this situation we all found it to be a very gratifying experience. I personally felt surprised by how much i remembered of the program, not having used it for roughly two months.

After a tentative start we sank into our roles and eventually decided it was best to combine our knowledge and attempt to solve problems together, this meant we had a greater chance of being able to successfully solve the issues we were presented with, whilst also learning something new from eachother.

I found the experience to be wholly enjoyable and offered a great boost to my self confidence, i would happily do it again.

Brighton Develop Conference

On top of this i felt it was worth noting that i have signed up as a volunteer for the Brighton Develop Conference after the opportunity was recently given to us. There's no guarantee that I will get a place as their are a limited number of spaces and the pool is not being limited to our college alone. I would be ecstatic if i landed a place as the BDC will no doubt offer excellent opportunities to learn as well as meet talented and well-known indivduals who already work in the industry.

[UPDATE] - Time-Lapses are go.

Hallelujah!

Though we have yet to settle on an exact structure for our showreel, it has been decided that we will be using time-lapse footage.

After having clarified this i went with Wayne to see if the equipment tis available o us, the answer came back surprisingly quickly: Yes.

They have everything we needed bar the one piece that i was expecting more than anything else not to be there, the dolly and motor. Or, more specifically, the motor, apparently there are dollys that can be used (with special permission) but no motors for those delectable panning shots i was hoping to get. Still, i came away very happy that we will be able to get the time-lapse footage we need.

Despite lacking a proper plan for our showreel we still decided on a few time-lapses we wished to include:

- Sunrise/Sunset over college on a clear/very sunny day
- Footage of classroom filling in the morning
- Over-the-shoulder footage of a student working on something (undecided as of yet)

I am both very excited and dreading the prospect of creating these time-lapses, though the dread stems only from the 'Sunrise' footage which will require a very early start for myself and Wayne!