Last words

So, over the project I did learn a few things.

Hopfully I am a better animator then I was before I started. I am much more confident with splining. I have also come to the conclusion that I need to learn more about rigging, because I feel I could have done a better job skinning with more knowledge on how rigging works.

I have never really given much credit to animatics, but I must say it did help out a fair bit to have it. Seeing the entire movie at such an early stage made it easier to spot things that should be changed.

I knew from previous animations that having good reference was vital, and this project have proven that even more. The reference videos that we filmed at the started helped a lot.

I will probably render in pass from now on as well. After all the extra work we had to do in post because we didnt render in pass it seems to be the only way. A plusside with all the extra work in post was that I got better at using After Effects, which good.

If I had known what I know now about making this short I would probably try to be on a smaller group. We did have some communication issues in the start. And on a smaller group I feel it would be easier to get a common opinion on how the movie should be. I also feel it would be easier to get stuff done. A large group does obviously have more workpower, but a smaller group is probably easier to work with, and on. Making it more effective.

I would also most likely animate out hero shots first, just to safe it incase something happens.

As for rendering I would, sa said above, render more in passes. I would also try to start rendering at a much earlier stage then what we did now. Maybe as early as the instant the animation is done. Just to get more room for error.

Not sure what I would do if we had more time on this project. If we suddenly got an extra 2 weeks at the end I would most likely have rerendered a lot of shots in passes, to make it easier to work with in post. I'm not sure if things would have been so much differently if we had been given an extra two weeks in the start. We would probably have had a little bit more time, but in the end we would have made the same mistakes. But maybe we would have had time to correct them.


As for inspiration with the movie we did look a bit at how Meet the Robinsons looked like, mainly for buildings. And we looked a bit at The 5th Element for ideas for the apartment. I also found some random pictures that was inspiring.

Liked the dirty look for this, and wanted something similar for the apartment.
We wanted something big for the guard design. And the middle guy in this picture was something we looked at.
We wanted something similar to the above picture for JDs look.