Reflective statement | Major

Third year has definitely proven itself to be a year of new experiences for me. In ‘Pugwash and the Young Adventurer’, I took on a project full of new opportunities and challenges to create something entirely out of my comfort zone.

I wanted to use this self-directed project to push my understanding of what Maya could do more and to broaden the way that I could produce work. Creating a 2.5D world definitely provided a new system to work in, as well as lots of challenges. Not being able to rotate characters in the traditional sense, and only being able to use the front view definitely made me think about alternate ways of working. I couldn’t build a scene and then choose my camera angle, the scene had to be very specifically designed and built in order to create the shot I was intending. This was very different to working in a traditional 3D pathway. I have also gained a lot more understanding of the limitations and differences that a 2D rig has compared to a 3D rig. There are some movements that simply don’t work, and there are tricks and work-arounds that can be used to create optical illusions. The 2D elements also bought the challenge of working in rendering software that we haven’t previously used. Maya software is older, and uses an entirely different system for lighting and has different colour management needs, so this was all a learning curve too.

Overall I’m very happy with the amount of new techniques in maya, as well as new elements of compositing that I have learnt to bring together this short film. That was my main focus of this project, rather than the finished film, to learn new techniques that I can use in the career I am intending to progress into, projection mapping and stage projection. This project has made me consider in much more detail what needs to be modelled in 3D and what can be 2D or composited in to projects to save time, something that will be very much welcomed in that particular area. I intend to improve the animation a bit and correct some elements that I can see are a bit dodgy, but I am very proud of how much I have learnt in the course of this project and it will build on this more in the future.