Title Sequence Project Developement

This semester we were given a list of fake TV shows or film ideas and have to create the title sequence for our chosen option. This is the first group project we have been given.

Our group chose to do a Bio-Pic of F. Scott Fitzgerald, best known for writing the Great Gatsby.

The idea for our sequence changed quite a bit over the first few weeks of the project. We finalised it before Easter, and are now working away trying to produce the final piece.

Working in a group has been really good, we have all managed to focus in and are working at what we are best at, and what we enjoy doing. It's also nice to have different people with different views and ideas to work on ideas with.

Our idea is centred around panning between different windows on the front of a building, each one looking into a part of Fitzgerald's life. 
We decided to mainly produce this in After Effects, bringing in assets from Photoshop. But as a group we decided to do all of the character animation, that goes in the windows, in Maya.

My job is to take all of the character and some of the prop designs from our other group members and build them in Maya and rig the characters that need it.


Rigging this many characters in such a short space of time has taught me a lot about doing it, whereas before I have done the odd character and forgotten how to do it, this time I think the workflow has stuck a lot more.
Although these characters are fairly simple, so weight painting was a quick task, compared to what it could be on a more complicated character.




Some of the props also needed moving parts like the typewriter and it keys, other interesting props was the bottle that had to be smashed and animated by hand.

The finished sequence is due on the 19th of May, we expect to have it finished a few days before then, when it is uploaded I will post more about it separately.

I quite like rigging because it is very technical, there is a lot of behind the scenes work in Maya that is just related to improving the way rigs work and they way everything is organised in case something needs to be tinkered with or fixed, and I do enjoy that.

I also enjoy just the figuring out a new way, or a better way to make or structure a rig, it's definitely something I'm interested in going forward.

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