9/20/2023

The second Production Pass is coming up and we've got lots of progress to show. I am happy to state that, if there aren't any major suggestions in the group presentation, the storyboard is finally in a completed state! Well, as close as can be - we'll be locking it in at the end of next week so that the team and I can focus completely on the production phase. In the meantime, I have also been working on the model for the UFO, seen above. The primary and secondary forms are in great shape, and there's no need to work on tertiary forms until we have the baseline for the short. What's important after the Production Pass is that we focus on shot layout and making our characters move how they should in preparation for the animation stage.

Josh and Anna are still working on the main character and the alien models respectively, and with great progress I might add! The alien could even be ready for rigging now after some tweaks to the geometry. As for the protagonist, the design of his facial features could use some more tweaking to fit the more cartoon-ish style of the short. We've been conflating realistic textures for realistic aesthetic, and we need to get more comfortable with stylization. Logan and Isaiah are still doing great work with Terragen. Logan's planetary shot continues to impress, along with the vfx concept for the lightspeed sequence he showed me. Isaiah is currently working on whiteboxing now that we have strong concept art for our settings, which is also greatly appreciated. I feel like Kayla is running a bit dry on passion for the project, but she's willing and able to do the smaller texturing work that Logan has been sending her way. I'm hopeful that she'll find some more work that she'll love later in production. Overall, we're starting to move forward in a big way, and now that the storyboard is complete, it'll just be a matter of bringing it to life.