Post 2: Regaining Scope & Chopping Away

This week I pitched my story to other faculty and students and came to the conclusion that our current story is way too long and way out of scope. I got feedback saying how something short and polished is better than something unfinished. I had someone point out that student animations tend to be more long and boring because of unnecessary filler. I also discovered our industry recommends students work for projects like this being much shorter, some suggesting animations being as short as 10 seconds long.

I discussed this feedback with my team and we agreed that we want something we can actually be proud of to be in our portfolios. Personally I've been rather disappointed with most student work that comes out of 445 and 545, including my own. I'm hoping by reeling back the scope my team can create something they're proud of and can display in their portfolio.

Editing and cutting stuff out is a big part of storyboarding

So now for the fun part. Cutting away at what we have! I feel absolutely terrible for our storyboard artist, Paloma. Every week she has been told to add more and more while editing the storyboard, only to find out she's going to have to scrap most of it. That's storyboarding though and important not to get too attached to a story because chances are it's going to change a LOT from start to finish.

I still need to remove assets and add due dates for UVs and texturing

I'm glad to say my modelers won't be too heavily impacted due to the adjustments. Luckily most of the assets that are going to be cut weren't scheduled to be completed until next week. I'm proud to say that my modelers are staying very much on task! Even after I edited their asset list so they have to get more done sooner. Maybe I'm still underestimating them, but I don't want to push them too hard. I know they have other classes and work that needs to get done.

Maybe I should make a template for students?

I on the other had am going to have to scrap just about everything I've done so far on the shot list I made. Oh well.

Here's a quick dragon test I did: