Week 6

On my first week back after the spring break we brought together our schedule and divided the work we each had to get done with deadlines, starting with building the assets that go into the final environment because dressing the set was an essential part of the process and it was important we went by our references to enhance believability, that this indeed was very much a location that was lived in.

process of adding the boolean modifier to cut a hole through the mesh for the door

I was given to model a good 18 assets that covered objects from our list of props, furniture and set dressing. Most of them were objects within the basement that included: dry stone walls, boiler, wood pile, exposed pipes, wires, storage shelves, cardboard boxes, light bulb and stairs. Most of these were fairly straightforward and simple, with the exception of the stairs and walls.

Since the walls had to specifically be according to my research into the kind of unfurnished dry stone walls of that time period I needed to model the surface to replicate that texture and not simply slap a texture on a flat plain. I found a tutorial online that explained an effective method of creating 3D rock textures by downloading a kit of brushes. That method was extremely effective and saved me a lot of time and left me with simple having to resize each plane, paint them and apply a texture.

process of sculpting the planes to form rocks for the dry stone basement walls

process of the first attempt at making the door knob

Following this I had to build the basement door, side table, light switch, cereal bowl and spoon that were added into the environment in the kitchen and hallway. I started out making the door handle for the basement door assuming it wouldn’t be complicated but I ended up setting it aside to work on later because my mesh kept tearing with each loop cut.

Before the end of this week I had to even further edit the Animatic, because the third act was still a bit unclear to us. Before I did this, we went ahead and briefly filmed the whole sequence in person during class to understand exactly the time it would take in real time to perform the actions, such as kicking the ball, running towards it, descending a stair case, and repeatedly trying a light switch. I must admit that I’m glad we did this because it really helped us cut down any unnecessary points and lengthen the shots that required to be slowed down, to the point every action seemed seamless because it was grounded in reality.

revision 2 added of the child spinning to find the toy

revision 1 of the after shock from seeing the shadow

The two frames I added in were a shot of a close-up of her face as the after shock to seeing the dinosaur shadow, and an over the shoulder frame, of her spinning to her right to find the source of this shadow. Both storyboards helped us give the viewer more clarity.