Tom Ritchie Environment

This project has been a huge help to myself, and to the rest of the group. I've learnt a lot about communication, techniques and different skills required to make such a project like this. All of which can be used in the future.

In working with many talented people I have learnt a lot, and this is because of the different key areas the group compromised of. I have learnt how to model better, learnt how to planar map the textures, and I've learnt at what is doable in the time we had to make it. I truly believe what we created was superb, we hit all of the right notes when creating it, and that's all I can honestly ask for. Maya as a whole is far more accessible to me, before I could only really animate in the program, but now I can do a lot more. I managed to model a crane and an animated pumpjack, which I'm admittedly quite happy about.

I managed to take the skills of lighting I have in photography and apply them to the film. I could also somewhat apply other skills I have in photography to help us, much to my joy. I informed the team of what would give off a far more cinematic feel, and I truly believe using a 2.39:1 (also known as 2.35:1) aspect ratio really helped give off the feel we wanted to go for with it. I made sure that we'd go with that aspect ratio, especially since many of our favourite films use it. My skills with After Effects have also greatly improved, before I could only do basic things, but now the scope I can use to realise my vision has been expanded. Luckily for me I know a fair amount about Photoshop, and I can now see the parallels between the two applications.

We encountered a few issues on the way, most notably with the rendering side of things. For example, we had to render each shot out on our laptops in order to get it done. The way we created the textures was an issue for us, because we hadn't been told mental ray had to be used with tifs for the textures. For the most part the textures we used were jpegs. Other aspects such as lighting just didn't work with mental ray, because we weren't told of how to do it. Having said this I'm extremely happy with the lighting I managed to create, and the final renders of the piece.

I believe (and hope!) I contributed well within the group. However, one of the things I can criticize myself on was the lack of enthusiasm at the beginning of the project. This was mainly due to a few personal issues, but after a while I managed to pull myself together. In having a few issues, I was sometimes reluctant to work, but at the end of the day I've got to look past the issues and just get on with it. I also wish I put a bit more effort into the conceptual side of things, but after seeing the work of Chris it was clear to me he had the same vision myself and the rest of the group had for the project. I immensely enjoy concept artwork, so it saddens me I didn't put a bit more effort into creating some.

Although this project was occasionally quite stressful for all of us, it was also incredibly enjoyable. As I've mentioned, I've learnt a hell of a lot, and many of the things I've learnt can be applied to things in the future. The group I worked with all shared their own aspects of talent, but many of the skills we had were shared between us all. We were also all very committed, working late pretty much every day for the last 4 or so weeks, even to the point of ordering a Domino's Pizza twice in the last two weeks so that we could eat whilst we worked! I'd just like to end on saying that working with Andy, Alex, Ben and Chris was absolutely phenomenal, and although we did occasionally have our differences we all realised the vision we set out to create. Thanks for such an awesome project, and I look forward to hopefully working with you all again in the future!