1/31/2024

Things are moving fast. Already in Week 3, and we're up for a Production Pass on Monday. The alien has reached a state of near-completion, but there is still work to do for the main character before he can look presentable. Part of that is on me - I have been working on the clothing still. The shoes in particular have been rough to work on, but the rest of the clothes are ready for re-topology. The other issue is that we are still trying to implement the hair. Kayla and Isaiah have been running into issues trying to get it to work, which sucks because it's a very foundational aspect to the character design, especially with the facial hair. We aren't at a point of distress yet, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling the deadline looming over us. At this point though, I'm still relatively comfortable focusing on what I need to get done.

On a more positive note, I have been re-drawing the storyboard. This is still a side-focus as it won't have much broad impact on the film itself, but some of the shots have been re-timed and our main character is acting with facial expressions as well as body language. Logan is pretty uncomfortable about re-timing shots, which I do not blame him for because of his work on the Nuke pipeline and the collaboration with the audio students, but I believe it will be worth it once the changes are implemented. They aren't too drastic so far either, so I don't think it will be as big a deal as he may think. To be honest, I get the feeling that all of the troubleshooting he's had to deal with in Unreal Engine and Deadline is starting to get to him. I'm not as technically savvy as he is and I will have a lot on my plate going forward, what with doing animation stuff on top of other course work and job applications, but I feel a bit guilty about being complacent in letting the project reach this kind of scope. But I'll stay strong, for his sake as well as the teams. I just hope we can get some good stuff to show on Monday.