Balls, balls, balls

So, Maya. 3D animation. Great.

Except it's not. I can't understand it. I can see where my animation is going wrong but I cannot work out how to fix it.  It is driving me insane.

I completed the football animation and felt relatively happy with it. However, my table tennis ball is just horrible. And I haven't quite the mental reserves to start on the bowling ball yet.  

Honestly, I've tried. I've watched the tutorials. I really want to understand. But my brain just can't manage it.  I'm a Maya Failure.

Return of Maya

This week we started working with Maya again. As previous rantings may indicate, I have not enjoyed using Maya as the process of thinking in 3d baffles me. What's wrong with everything being flat?

Obviously I am aware that the world around us is in fact the three dimensions, the Earth is not flat and whilst studying on a Digital Animation course it is probably wise to try and grasp the concept of 3d modeling and movement. Although I do grudgingly admit that it’s possibly not as bad as I might think, I got off to a bad start on Tuesday when I had been suffering a migraine all day and the simple process of moving my eyes from one side of the screen to the other made me want to a) cry, and b) throw up.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that Richard will go through Maya slowly and patiently as he has promised (in front of witnesses I might add). And I am hoping that he will have slightly more pity for my lack of Maya comprehension than James, who when I explained that my problem with Maya was really the fact that I didn't understand 3d, just looked at me blankly. I think he assumed I was joking.

The Art of Storyboarding

...I hate it. I hate it so much.

Hmmm.... storyboarding. Why do I hate it, Andy asks me. Well, maybe I don't hate all storyboarding. I certainly see the point of doing it, I understand its importance; how else to you ensure that everyone involved in a project is making the same film unless there is a detailed plan of how every shot should work?

The recent storyboard project we were assigned was deeply dull. I think this is probably because the script itself was pretty dull. Maybe that was the point? It's probably easy to design a creative storyboard for an exciting story. When faced with a script that you have no interest in, there is more effort involved in thinking up dynamic shots. There are of course many themes or genres you could add to the story; through the choice of shots, angles and zooms, the script could probably be transformed from horror to thriller to action adventure.

But I didn't do that, I struggled to get to the end of the assignment because the process of thinking up new camera angles made me very sleepy. I guess I'm not gonna be a storyboard artist. Another career to cross off the list.

"One of the great appeals of animation is that spontaneous ideas can be incorporated into the work at hand. It seems perverse to ape too closely the process by which live-action films are executed." Dave Borthwick, Imagine, Mar/Apr 2008