I'll start with some good stuff first.
Progress on the bull dozer, which is the last "required asset," though I would like to continue modeling and texturing in my free time.
The Rockstar meeting went really well! I quickly went over what we've been doing and what is next, and then the progress I've made on the forest level.
(Same area without the shadow maps)
The RDR2 vegetation director really liked it and gave me some good insight into what I should do next. Vegetation studio totally broke on me, and after spending too much time trying to fix it, I decided to just do some set dressing examples. I was surprised to hear him suggest that I should just hand place everything, but that was kind of my plan at this point.
He also mentioned that I should "walk" down the path and stop at short intervals to decide composition for each point. For example, if I didn't want to show the bridge at the first step, I should put some trees in front of the camera's eye line. Then I can go down a couple steps and work with the same idea. I'm very excited to put those suggestions into practice this weekend.
One comment I continued to hear at screenings was that I needed to work on my compositions. Although I already knew that, the suggestions I received yesterday gave me a better, more nuanced path forward.
I was a bit overwhelmed this week, but I reorganized the Trello and found that we weren't as behind as I had first imagined. Because my developer has midterms this week, I'm going to just give him critiques on the camera angles so he can focus on those. I will also be critiquing the work my editor has done based on what isn't working for me and the comments I received at screenings and we can continue iterating on the film.
Screenings were also not as painful as I thought they would be (though I can't say that for all of my classmates, some of them were absolutely BODIED.) A lot of comments were about pacing and composition, and the other critiques were about smaller stuff that we just haven't had time to fix yet - we just don't have the same production schedule as everyone else does. I feel like those were less constructive, but it still helped to confirm we were going in the right direction.
I have pulled on a second developer onto the project. I've worked with him before on other games, and I just wanted him to take a look at the project and see if there was anything we were doing wrong and could do better. I will be meeting with him this week to discuss any advice he has and if he would want to continue working on the project. I think he would be working on the game, while my original developer focuses more on the film side and refining it more.
I have also contacted my game's sound designer and will be meeting with her and Tom Davis, the Composing for Games professor, this afternoon to discuss our next steps. My plan right now is to have her start collecting sound effects and looking at the music compositions we received from the other composer. I really like the work he has done already, and I think any corrections we would have would be about "gamifying" it and creating more of a looping track. After that, we can discuss diegetics and if we want her to work in the Unity project itself, or just give us the sound effects and we can implement it for her.
Once I have a little more work done on the quarry and forest, which is my next task, I will be going back to my professors and getting more critiques. I also want to talk to my lighting and rendering professor about improving the lighting so it supports the story more.
I do not have a concrete production schedule for the game yet, because I have to talk to my new team members and see what work they will be doing. For the film:
Week 8 and 9: Finishing the set dressing and composition for the quarry and forest levels. I want to have those done by the next Rockstar meeting on the 25th. After that, I will continue to iterate on them as we get more feedback from them and the professors I contact.
Sean will be continuing to work on the camera movements. I will give him critiques for those two weeks so he can continue to make corrections.
I will continue to critique and iterate on the editing. A lot of the work that needs to be done on the film right now is fixing the pacing and shot order so it's more cohesive. We will work with the same footage until Sean can give us more updated versions, but they are still able to work somewhat separately as the editor tries to get the shots in the right order at the right time.
I will also speak to the composer week 9, once we have better timing to the animatic. I like what she is doing so far, but most of my critiques are about timing and transitions, which needs a clearer animatic.
There will be a lot of iteration and critique sessions these two weeks.
We will be starting special effects at this point, while we continue to iterate on the camera work.
Week 10: Continued iteration. I would like to at least start to have rendered footage, and judging by the pacing we are working at now, I believe it will not be difficult to get shots with post processing on them by this week. At this point we should be relatively finished with the environment layouts and lighting.
There will still need to be critiques on these items, so that will continue into this week.
I would like to continue work with the composer to tweak smaller and more detailed parts of the compositions. We will start sound effects and diegetics at this point.
Week 11: I want to have picture lock by the end of this week.
We should be finalizing the special effects at this point. We will also continue to work on the environments, but they should be only small tweaks at this point. I want to meet with more professors to get critiques on composition and camera angles, but the timing of each shot should be finalized.
We will work with the editor to do any effects in post and make sure those are finalized as well. For example: I want the eye blinks to be iterated on and finished by the end of this week.
Week 12 and 13: Buffer zone. At this point, there should be no major changes being done to any parts of the film (camera angles, timing, music, etc.) We will be working on the game a lot at this point, so all footage should be rendered out and only having final tweaks done.
All shots and music will be "done" by the end of week 12. I imagine there will still be small fixes, but those will only happen if we are on track and have the extra time. We should have the minimum viable product of the film completed - we should be at the point where we could turn it in with no other edits and be content with what we have done.
We will start these at the beginning of week 12, and by the end of week 13 I want to have title sequences, credits, and subtitles completed.
The final mix of the music should be completed by the start or the middle of week 13.
Week 14: More buffering and editing. We need to make sure our audio and video meet the correct technical standards before we turn it in.
Over all, I've been swinging wildly from stressed to content with the project. Now that we have an organized trello board and the final team members for the game are joining, I am feeling much better about it.
Once I speak with my new team members, I will have a better production schedule for the game and will post it as soon as I have it.
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