500 word rationale

This project's brief was to re-interpret an existing script, we were given 3 samples but I chose my own script, the Pod Race Scene from 'Star Wars'. By making it a bit different I wanted to do it in a city rather than in the desert, and as the story goes on you realize it's a game in which Yoda is the player in real life.

I chose to do this, not only because I wanted something different from the main examples we were given, but a lot happens which tests my abilities, I have had to create fire, an explosion, pod racers, a city, and I also took a different route with texturing from what I normally do. There is a cartoon/game effect in texturing, making it look less realistic, so when it shows Yoda playing, there is a difference between the game play and real life.

Within the first few weeks I storyboarded and planned exactly what I needed to do, this definitely helped me do things in the right order, I was a lot more organised than the first animation I created.

I feel I have improved a lot on this project, my modelling of the pods and characters shows this. I also found it a lot easier to rig the characters this time. As I mentioned the texturing is different, and is split into two different styles, the main piece is cartoon like, and the scene with Yoda is more realistic, this tested my ability to texture but I feel I have accomplished the difference in textures and I am very happy with how both turned out in finished renders, and best of all neither style had a big impact on render time, unlike my first animation which was taking up to 5 minutes a frame, most of the frames in this piece took a maximum of 50 seconds a frame.

There weren't many big challenges I faced in this project, I did believe I would face a few, but I managed them quite well, for example creating fire from the engines, I set this aside and worked on other parts first as I thought it would be difficult, but creating a blizzard particle system and making it look like fire, still in the cartoon effect, was very easy.
The sound was the biggest challenge, as i did not spend enough time on this and i feel it may have ruined the animation, my lack of sound editing knowledge may have let me down on this project, none of the sounds matched up with what i had created.

In conclusion I feel I could have planned the rigging and animating a lot better, I feel they may have let down my finished piece, especially if I want to become an animator. this project made me realise that maybe I should work more in the visualisation side rather than animating as I enjoy making realistic images, although I liked the cartoon effect I gave this piece. I do feel I have improved from the robot project, but I definitely have a lot more to improve on and learn before the final year.