This project has been a huge help to myself. I've learnt a lot about managing my time, techniques and different skills required to make such a project like this. All of which can be used in the future.
I must say I'm incredibly happy with the final outcome, and I'm also very happy with the response from everyone I've shown! As I had intended it has caused quite a few laughs amongst the people I've shown it to. I believe I managed to animate the UFO quite well, especially considering I did not use Maya Live. As I had mentioned earlier on in the blog I wanted to animate it without using Maya Live since I believed Maya Live would've caused a lot of issues for me. I also like to animate things manually instead of something that is automatic and bound to cause issues for myself. I believe a fair few also did the same in this sense since it may have been a bit too hard to learn a new thing such as Maya Live in such a short amount of time.
I did however encounter a few issues on the way, most notably with the rendering side of things. For example, I had to render the film twice on Maya, which was quite a pain. The way I animated it required me to have the film in the background to keep the same focal distance. It took quite a lot of tries, and I realised rendering without the camera was not possible in the time I had. For some strange reason it was moving the model around to places I did not wish for it to be. In order to rectify this I rendered the film once with the plane as it was originally shown, and once again with the spaceship. In After Effects I had to mess around heavily with the cutting to ensure it was as I had originally envisioned.
If I had the chance to do this again in the future I would make the animation a bit smoother, since I had a few issues with the blocking out of the spaceship. But honestly it is nothing that I couldn't have done, I just didn't have enough time to work on the issues. Especially since I had the environment project along with this. Overall a fun project, and I'm extremely pleased with the final outcome!
A brilliant term I must admit!
Friday, 5 March 2010
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
After Effects progress!


It's taking much longer than I thought. But this is mainly due to the fact I have not really used After Effects that much before, so it's no wonder it's taking a while! It is good since I am learning a lot about After Effects, and the best way to go about things. In order to show what I'm doing, here's a sneak peak of the lasers in the film composed directly in After Effects!
An issue I had was making sure the spaceship was over the plane properly to hide it, but so far I believe this is going quite well. I look forward to showing everyone the finished product in the next few days!
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Maya progress so far!
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Animation is now accomplished!
Wow that took much longer than I assumed it would. I'm really very happy with the final outcome, and I'm also glad I did not use Maya Live since I believe it may have caused a few issues along the way. I went with something I knew, and that's why I animated by hand since I felt it would be the most beneficial to me to do it like this. I hope everyone will also agree with me in when they see the final animation!
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Sound? Sound!
I have been looking on Sound Dogs and I believe I have found some sounds which suits the feel of the movie. I have also ensured the sounds are somewhat 1950ish to fit in with the time the film was made (1959). I wish to go for sounds that are somewhat stereotypical and tacky, and I believe these fit that very well.
Engine sound
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/2186/mp3/172093_SOUNDDOGS__sp.mp3
"Swoosh" sound
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/58/mp3/549527_SOUNDDOGS__sw.mp3
Lasers
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/2186/mp3/172021_SOUNDDOGS__gu.mp3
More lasers!
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/50/mp3/567031_SOUNDDOGS__ra.mp3
Engine sound
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/2186/mp3/172093_SOUNDDOGS__sp.mp3
"Swoosh" sound
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/58/mp3/549527_SOUNDDOGS__sw.mp3
Lasers
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/2186/mp3/172021_SOUNDDOGS__gu.mp3
More lasers!
http://www.sounddogs.com/previews/50/mp3/567031_SOUNDDOGS__ra.mp3
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Model is now accomplished!


Here is the finished model! I had quite a few ideas for it, however in the end I just went with something basic, and something that everyone would find suits a UFO well.
I chose not to texture it for several reasons, but it was mostly because I felt having a nice clean spaceship would probably look best. That and since it'll be going quite fast on the screen you would not be able to see any of the textures I was going to apply to it.
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