Pre-Production

1/12/2019

So after we completed “Besties” we went back to the drawing board and evaluated our art style and technical process of producing characters. We found several things we wanted to improve upon. 

First, we wanted to change how we handled the Textures and Materials of the characters. Half way through producing the chapters for Besties we discovered a different method for creating character Materials in both a technical aspect but also from a lighting and color balance perspective. At that point we weren’t able to change our pipeline based on our deadlines for the competition. 

Second, we were not happy with the hair on our characters. While we did the best we could, as we were producing final renders, it became clear that the style of hair did not look as good as we wanted. Since then we have been doing research into other artistic and technical methods of creating hair.

Third, rigging is always a challenge because it is both highly creative and intensely technical. An artist could dedicate an entire career to learning and mastering different methods for creating control rigs that are both efficient and easy to use. What we had attempted to do is mix pre-built tools and hand built facial rigs. The result was less than ideal because the pre-built tool tended to break on us during production. As such, we are training ourselves to create reliable rigs from the ground up that suit our needs. This takes time and practice but the payoff will be worth it.