Hayley took on the role of making the stand for our animation. This is one of the key elements to our short film because this is where the character will be and what they will be intreating with most of the time. Therefore the holes of the hoops had to be wide enough and the stand had to be high enough for both of our characters. I loved how Hayley put the stand together and the little fish toys that she has made to make the stand look even more carnival-like. She has also made some tennis balls as well to clutter the stand up and make it more realistic.
Because Hayley wanted to get on with making a fence now for our environment, I decided to UV map and unfold the tent so that I could add some colour to match the rest of our scene. This was very simple to unwrap this time, partially because I have unwrapped so many things in Maya now and also because the object was constructed very nicely. Hayley and I picked yellow and purple for out stand theme, and I quickly did a test of the colours on the UV map on Photoshop to see how it would look when rendering.
And I actually love it! I think the clashing yet vivid colours compliment the scene extremely well, especially because our scene is now set in the dark. I also think because each object has certain colour elements from one another, the scene looks and feels very competitive and perfect for a rivalry animation.
Whilst I had some colour on the stand, I decided to import both Hayley and I's characters into the scene just to double check how they would look up against it! I think are looking exactly like we had imagined, though I think I am going to go back in and thicken the arms and legs of my character because in comparison to Hayley's they are TOO thin. So whilst I want her to be spindly, I also want the audience to be able to see her arms and legs as her throwing the ball very fast is results to the whole ending and loop of our animation!
I then added a spotlight to the scene to highlight the silhouette of the characters up against the stall and I thought they looked very noticeable and like our original plans and storyboard which I am very pleased with. So far Hayley and I are really coming together to bring our scene to life. We are thinking of even more ideas of objects and props to add to emphasise the carnival and rivalry themes of our animation and we have progressed a lot further for this point in time than I thought we would have by now, so our timing skills are paralleling quite well!
I also then added the fence that Hayley made into the scene which was a perfect dimension for the grass, and because of the lights we have in the scene, it makes the flags almost 'glow' in the dark which is a really clever element we encountered.
Also, whilst we had just been given a tutorial on how to use cameras in Maya, I quickly did a little 'tour' of our scene as well as just a simple quick test for myself to see if I could actually use it, and I really enjoyed seeing how versatile, yet sensitive the camera is. It moves extremely smoothly, but if you do the key frames to close together is can move too quickly, something that made me feel quite dizzy whilst working the camera around the environment. This is something I am going to have to get better at with practice, and I especially don't want my final animated piece to make people feel dizzy at how fast the camera is moving. Thankfully, Hayley is working with me to help combat this.
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