The world builders project was an insight to the Pre production stage and the planning of a production rather than that of a project that would focus on the production side. During the stages of this project some things went well while others did not.
Things that went well
1.
Due to the actual world that was created, it gave me a lot of freedom to try different shots for the project.
Because i have written a world that has some depth to it, i have been able to actually experiment with a lot of different shots that could take place within the world. There was a lot of thought put into how this world works and how it is before i started doing any concept work for it, for example, I knew from the start that the setting was a dwarven styled volcano with floating city and rocks around it, but i didn’t really know how that’d work until I wrote a narrative for it. Because i took that extra step into finding out for myself how this environment would work, i got a better grasp to create a better shot. So this would be one of the things, that if i were to do this project again, I’d look into.
2.
Another thing would be the colour concepting for the final shot. From this I got an understanding which colour pallet would best suit the mood and ultimately what would look best for the final shot.
After deciding on the final shot of the storyboarding process, colours where needed to set the mood for the shot. For this i made 3 different iderations, one that resembled a more realistic tone, another stylised cool coloured tone and the last one saturated with warm colours. The first one, while realistic seemed a little bland to me. While the cool coloured one didn’t really fit the mood for the dangerous vibe that i was going for, it had a more mellow feeling to it. And finally the last had the right feeling but it was a bit too stylized for what i was going for. In the end however i ended up using and combining both of these colour pallets to create what is shown in the final project. So i find if i am ever to going to start colouring something again, instead of instinctively going for what i feel is right, I should always experiment first.
3.
Getting reference, while it seems not to be a very crucial part of the pipeline, it was still very important to get a sense of what the visual would resemble.
As a visual person, while it may not seem to be an important thing in the scheme of the project, it was very essential to creating the final piece of work. For this process i used Pinterest as a main source as that has many pictures relating to another, and as the title suggest you can pin it to create your own collection. From there i could use these images as reference to get a greater sense of scale for the world that i have created. While i could’ve used some other sources i still find that going on pintrest and gathering reference material and images worked out for the best.
Things that didn’t go well
1.
At one point in the project i lost all of my work, due to lack of knowledge of the program i was working on (unreal engine). It may seem stupid but i had thought that i had figured it all out.
I thought that it was saved, but when i opened the project in the morning after a long night of working, suffice to say it was all gone. This could’ve easily been avoided if i had just double checked, but I didn’t and i had to face the consequences. Because of this the already rushed project was pumped out in the morning of presentations, and while it wasn’t all bad, it could’ve been a lot better.
2.
I had spent too much time on planning the shot rather than actually creating assets and texturing for it.
In total I spent about 1 week actually making the shot and the remaining weeks on actually planning it out. In turn this made the final deliverable suffer. While it was most certainly well worth the time planning it all out, the lack of time in actually building the shot forced me to source models and settle for things that didn’t really work for the shot.
Throughout i did too many concept works for things that didn’t even end up in the final project, I focused more on building the society of the world rather than what i would actually was going to put into the shot. For example the main part of the story was that the dwarves exploited this god like rock to advance technology, but in doing so the mountain exploded and made collections of floating islands. None of this was illustrated within the final shot, instead it looked like a generic volcano entrance when i could’ve used this story to its full extent. Next time, i will take into consideration the story i wrote and focus on actually showing that story through shots.
Hypothetically, if this project was a large scale production, what production roles and/or procedures do you think it would require?
Of course the first thing that i’d look out for is the time spent on planning and the time spent on the shot, have some people making concepts while some people make the assets for already concepted for example. All in all with a team i’d segregate some people to the pre production and some to the actual production, hence much more work could be complete and at a much higher quality and playing to each team member’s strengths keeping everyone happy as to not force them to do a section in which they don’t like doing.
Another major thing would be doing more than just one shot, actually have some story telling with the shots that i’m doing. Not only just have one shot of the bridge and the giant doors, but actually show the history of the place, the floating islands just so people who don’t know the story behind it get get a grasp of what’s happening and what this world is.
With a team as well, that gives many opportunities to discuss with colleagues what and how to do it. Getting feedback from many people involved is very important and a huge improvement as to just doing it by yourself and only getting feedback from a select group.
Overall if this project was to be scaled up, it would involve a larger team and the deliverable will be to a much higher quality with a diverse range of shots throughout telling the story in greater detail.
What would be the most crucial role?
I think I’d find that all the roles are almost if not equally important. You wouldn’t have a good final shot if you didn’t have a good storyboard, and you wouldn’t have a good storyboard without good concepting. Everyone in a team relies on one another i found, that’s why it’ important to be in a team with everyone who pulls their weight. In short, i don’t believe that some roles are better than others because in the end to produce something of quality needs everything to work together smoothly.
Conclusion
Although I think that i had done the pre production stage right, there is still much more to improve on. More concepting would’ve worked better to do. Shots most definitely could be improved to tell the story to a better extent. And most importantly managing time so i could’ve spent more time creating the 3d shot to get a better quality final deliverable.
Zack McNaughton, animation 