Hannah Gregory: May 2011

Our finial project brief was to interpret an existing script. I decided to choose the Frankenstein script, the book by Mary Shelly. I chose to do this script, as I wanted to focus more on the visualisation side of things, rather than a great deal of animation, such as The Matrix script. I also wanted to improve on my modeling skills as I feel my last project was slightly basic.
To re-interpret my chosen script, I decided for my environment to be set in space. I included two characters, an alien – the scientist, and a human – the creation the alien makes come to life.
I started off by sketching and storyboarding what I needed to do. However, I made several environments throughout the project, mainly due to file sizes being too large, causing the corruption of my work. This made it very difficult under the time constraints. By starting various environments over, I feel my ideas did however progress and improve from the previous ones. There are still areas I would of liked to improve on, having had more time. There is a lack of animation, which I feel doesn’t portray the story very well. I would of also liked to of concentrated more on using effects, such as smoke, fire and particles, effects I originally wanted to include. I feel these factors would have definitely enhanced my project. Although I spent too much time trying to perfect my characters and lab, I am fairly happy with them. It is a definite improvement from my last project.
With the animation I do have, it took me a while to get to grips with. Eventually I had a reasonably good walk cycle for the alien. I also had a living object inside one of the tubes, which I created bones for and animated wriggling. I also unwrapped this, which was something new and challnging I had learnt.
Adding sound was also a challenge. I found many ‘lab’ sounds, such as bubbling, but I felt there wasn’t enough animation to add a specific sound to. I therefore found a track to play in the background.
In conclusion, I have enjoyed producing this project. I feel I have learnt a lot, and I am more aware of timings for specific tasks. I feel lack of animation has let down my project in terms of the story. Although the script I chose is more of a visualisation piece, I would still like to become a good animator. This project has made me feel that I have a lot to improve on, which I am enthused to do before and throughout next year.