Assignment 6 - Final Project Plan
For this assignment you will put together a plan for your final project. You can feel free to change your plan later as you work on your project. I don’t need to see any revised plans nor do you need approval to change your project. This assignment is an opportunity to think about what you want to create.
Create a MS Word document and put your name at the top. If you are working in a team, you can have up to three people. List each person at the top. Select someone from your team to turn in the final copy. Please do not turn in three copies of the same plan.
Everyone in the team will receive the same score for this project plan assignment. For the final project, if a team member fails to contribute they will be dropped from the project and not given a score, or have a significantly reduced score.
Your project plan will be divided into three sections, described below.
Section 1: Artistic Expression
What is the idea behind your project? What is your artist’s message? What is the aesthetic? What elements and principles will you use?
For this section you need the following:
Think up an initial working title for your project.
List two artistic messages for each person on your team, and how you plan on accomplishing them.
For example, if you are planning on creating a suspenseful aesthetic, that would be a goal. You could accomplishing that feeling by using lighting that creates long shadows and adding suspenseful music to your video. You can write about the artistic elements of color and how you plan on choosing dark colors. “Lighting” is not the goal, creating a “suspenseful atmosphere” is. By using the elements of shape, jagged shapes, you can make things seem dangerous. Images can have balance, or if you want suspense maybe we make the image seem unbalanced. Refer back to Principles and Elements of Art for other ideas.
Note
Clearly label the ‘what’ and the ‘how’
This is the most frequent place people miss points. Make it very clear what the message is (awe, suspense, happiness, dogs are awesome, etc.) and how you plan on creating that message (use color, make dogs look cute anf fluffy, happy expressions, etc.) Remember, two per person. You’ll revisit this in your final submission to see how you did.
Things that are not goals/messages: color, texture, detail, realism, reflectivity, mood, balance, background
Things that are goals/messages: A person is happy, a person is moving fast, a person is about to fall and therefore in danger, the environment is outdoors and cold, hope for a better future, a strong storm, pride one feels for your school (school spirit)
Section 2: Technical
Now is the time to think about how you plan on technically accomplishing your artistic goals. Take some time think about what you’ve already learned and know how to do. Look at tutorial sources like Blender Guru, Blender Cookie, CG Geek and more. Figure out which ones might apply to your artistic goals. Looking at the tutorials available might produce ideas for artistic goals.
For each artistic goal listed above, think about technically how you plan on accomplishing it. If you’ve found tutorials that will help, list those tutorials you plan on using. For example, if your artistic goal is to create a feeling of cold, you could use a tutorial on how to create frosted glass.
For this section of your plan:
List two technically challenging items for each person on your team.
List any tutorials or resources you plan on using to learn how to accomplish those goals.
Think if you might want to create a still image, a scene with a moving camera, or simply a still image.
Section 3: Project Plan
There will be two weeks to work on your project. Create a project plan for what you will do during these two weeks.
I recommend planning your project in “stages.” Create your project in a rough form that isn’t very detailed, and then plan on what you’ll sink your time into.
For example, if you are looking to have a car drive down the road, start with a rough box-model of the car and animate it and light it. Then plan on spending two days adding detail to the model of the car. Another two days on animating it going down the road. Two days on creating a landscape. A day adding in smoke from spinning tires. Another day adding a sound track.
If you get behind, make sure your plan allows you to still have a viable project at the end. One year I had a student create a wonderfully detailed tire, but ran out of time to create a car that went with it. So at the end there was just an animation of a tire rolling down the road.
For this section of your plan do the following:
Create a day-by-day schedule for the rest of the term. Remember that the last day will be presentations, and it will not be a work-day.
List two items for each person in your team that you plan on spending a lot of time doing detail work with.
Tips
Grass: If you need grass in your scene, there are two ways to do it. If your camera is from far away, just throw an image of grass on a plane that represents the ground. This is easy to do, and fast for the computer to render.
The other way is to follow the tutorials where it shows you how to model each individual blade of grass. This is slow, and takes a while to model. The computers we have don’t handle that many blades of grass well. It takes a long time to render.
If the grass isn’t important, do it the first way. If grass is important, then model it the second way.
People: Creating a person is difficult. Animating is even more difficult. Creating a semi-realistic face could easily take you the entire time. Creating a body also could take several weeks. Rigging and moving the body could take quite a while. You can create cartoonish looking people in a reasonable amount of time.
Examples
Submitting
Before you submit: Check you spelling. Check the grammar. Make certain your plan is well organized and easy to read. Bullet points and lists are ok, but the entire thing shouldn’t be lists. There should be some written discussion of what you are creating.
Warning
Double-Check
Make sure you have name(s), date, and title on top. That you clearly explain each artistic message, and how you are going to deliver it.