#y3a2

Regardless, in my ILP I said I would animate the cat and the item it chases, not ‘the cat, its accessories, and the item it chases.’  I do feel that the animation worked out quite well and pushed my limits to do better, as I could not have done something like before, but it could always be better. I feel it gave me a push to be more interested in 3D animation in general. The rendered version is a massive disappointment to me, and perhaps it is my fault for not communicating more, but I felt so put down that I did not want to communicate anymore after submitting my work to be dealt with, and I feel my thoughts would have been dismissed with more ‘don’t tell me how to do my own job role’ again. It is either that, or the ending was deliberately tampered with to make it appear as if nothing happened from that angle, and as if I were lazy with it, which I was not. It was a quickly wrapped ending, but the plot ending is there, which is not shown from the back angle Anisha chose. The facial expressions and pivotal moment where the cat calms down are not shown. I wanted that moment to have a feeling of wonder and it does not translate across whatsoever from the back. I feel this will be blamed on me at the showing, if we have one, and I cannot do much about it.  Overall, I am happy that I learned more about animation in this project, but the group work ruined things a great deal. I would have been able to wrap things up better and faster if I had not been waiting on Anisha, and I regret asking for others’ input into the plot change after the squirrel rig was found to be broken. Perhaps that sounds unfair, but as I animated everything, I could have avoided a whole lot of trouble if I left the plot of what I was animating as my decision as well, which is why I did not ask for input in the final change and said I would wrap it up as I could on our short time. 

Cat Breathing As in the beginning, I thought it would be a nice touch to animate the cat’s breaths, making it so that they are heavier at first right after chasing and shaking off the leaf, but slowly calming down. I did this by spacing out the keyframes.  The blink the cat does at the end at the leaving leaf was supposed to be a way of her saying they are ‘good’ now in response to the kiss, as cats tend to blink as a way to show you love. That would have been the cue to fade to black after this point if the camera had chosen to stay with the cat at the ending. 

For the kiss, I then added in little touches like how the cat’s ears go back in surprise here for a second. 

I wanted somehow combine the ‘you can’t fool me’ element where the cat finds where the leaf is with the kiss, so the above is the first version of this, where she finds the leaf and it immediately kisses her. 

I looked into different ways to animate them. They tend to fall slowly, twirl around themselves and shift side to side. 

I asked Anisha to rotate the environment so that her work would be seen, she agreed but after a week I asked her about it and she claimed she didn’t understand what I was saying, although others in the group clearly did and helped to make it clear. She then became argumentative, claiming I was speaking to her badly and I shouldn’t be telling her what to do with her job role. However, my work at this stage directly interacted with hers so I needed to know how things would be set. I had figured she would be rotating it in the time she had said, and had gone about creating another tester tree cylinder, as above on the right, her original on the left. I did this so that I could set for myself exactly where the tree would be once rotated, using the Channel Box to set it exactly in reverse of the first tree. It later became news to me that she meant for the cat to be further to the right on the grass, nowhere near the first left tree. I had asked her earlier on which tree I should be crashing the cat into and she had no qualms about me using that one, which implied to me it would be near to it in the first place.  End Plot Change Things took a bad turn with the argument and she became so horrible to work with that I stated that I would be changing the ending, wrapping it up as fast as I could, and that the cat would not be interacting with the environment and that this would be best for everyone. This was so that our roles would not have to interact and so that I would not have to ask for her help, as I would not receive any if I did. She replied normally to this only for me to later find out that she never understood what I was saying, again, and apparently that was too vague for her. I am not sure what she understood ‘best for everyone’ to mean, in that case, but I was trying to state that it would be best if our roles stopped crossing. I could not work with her past that point and she proved with her backlash at me for changing things that I did the right thing.  I changed the ending so that instead of the cat crashing into a tree after chasing the leaf, the leaf instead kisses the angry cat on the cheek and she calms down, then it flies away. She claimed I was being ‘immature’ about changing this, and that my work affected others roles, but no one else complained at me about it. I had already stated the obvious that this would happen. This happened over a week after I had posted my final version, with an accompanying video - which she never bothered to watch - for everyone to see how it ended, but mostly for Chandi’s sound reference. Furthermore, she had already stated much earlier in the project that she would be animating the trees to sway, so if I ‘affected her job role’ by not having the cat crash into the trees, she could very well have gone ahead and still done this, but chose not to. I thought she understood what I said when I said the cat would no longer interact with the environment - which was not planned to be in any way other than the tree crashing. I tried to say it in a tactful manner. She could have asked if she did not understand my meaning.  I could have informed the group in more detail how I was changing things, yes, but having to deal with her was affecting me mentally. I said I would wrap things up the way I could and wanted to move on from dealing with her. It only became a ‘group issue’ when it was someone other than her doing something ‘out of line’ yet she could not see her own faults and how awful she was to work with. 

Ball Leaf Replacement Once the leaf was done, I set about blocking in its movements as in the above, animating it to follow the movements the ball had followed.  In the final version, having the ball as the reference placement may have made the leaf movements look a little strange. As I was setting the ball as a bouncy item, I had to then go back and adjust the leaf’s sequence into something floatier. 

Plot Changes Due to the squirrel breaking, we had to move on from the squirrel idea and onto something else for the cat to chase. We were quite a way into the year and at this stage I should have just told the others that I would continue with the cat chasing the ball and that would be it, but I asked for their input instead of what they would like for the plot to change to. The ball idea was presented, and we thought over having the cat asleep, dreaming of chasing a magical ball, for its movements to make sense from so far of what I have animated. However, another idea was presented, of the cat chasing a leaf.  Anisha stated she would create this leaf, which took her a week, which would have taken anyone else a day, and did not update anyone on it, getting snappy when asked where it was by the end of the week. When Pia volunteered to quickly create a leaf instead, Anisha stated it would affect her job role and the arguments became worse from there later on.  I sincerely regret letting any of the others have any input on the plot at that stage. If I had just animated the cat chasing a ball as I wished to, things could have been gotten done much quicker. This is why I stated much later that I would be changing the ending and dealt with the how of it myself, although I did state what it would affect.  Meanwhile waiting for the leaf and idea changes, I continued with animating the third jump sequence for the cat.