PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
An Overview of my Personal Schedule and How I Conduct Myself Professionally to Achieve the Necessary Objectives of the Module.
WEEK ONE – Planning
In order to complete all necessary tasks for this module, I decided to begin by organising my assignments per task per week schedule for landmark deadlines. I began by breaking down the tasks to be accomplished by the first review, which were Tasks 1 & 2, with Week 5 for Independent Study and Week 6 being the review week.
After being satisfied with my schedule, I created a new timetable specificing my organisation of time during the week. Dividing my necessary time between Classes, Development of Tasks, Research and Personal Time.
I put Tuesdays and Saturdays as “Break Days” because I wanted time off from my work and focus specifically on my own personal life and other classes. If in case of any schedule changes and my attention would be necessary on a day where I planned to complete certain tasks, I would instead empty that day and transfer all of my tasks to one of my break days. In addition
to this, I decided to take days off from my module work to return back with fresh eyes and a new perspective towards my work.
I plan to give specific updates to my progress and update on my achievement on my Term Schedule where necessary. I plan on giving two other updates: one on Week 6 after my formative assessment to delve into my schedule and any appropriate changes I should make to achieve my end goal, and the other on Week 10 before my final submission to form an overall review on the Module and my successes, failures, lessons learned, specific aspects to improve on and more.
WEEK SIX – Review & Update
In the beginning I focused a lot more on the research aspect before moving forward with my tasks. Although I was pretty well on schedule, I prioritised my research in the first two weeks before moving forward with my work. I managed to keep up with my work with Stepped and Splining the walks and pushes.
I found difficulty with catching up with my planned research since I experienced a lot of personal issues going through this. I struggled a fair amount through these tasks and mostly completed the research and some poor completions of my animation. I found myself fairly disappointed that I couldn’t accomplish everything I set out to do, but after some conversation with my peers I realised it was a good thing I outlined this issue and would make changes for the future. I didn’t appreciate that perspective until my peers showed me.
I completed a fair amount of research on my Push and Walk, but to reach completion was one thing, while completed and good animation was another. Even in the review week I experienced technical and physical difficulties making me unable to either (a) show my work; or, (b) receive real time in-depth criticism about it.
I do not like making promises I cannot keep, so I will attempt as much as possible to complete the work I outlined in my schedule but based on the projected time and effort required, I do not expect most of the research portion to be completed apart from some of Keith Osborn’s “Cartoon Character Animation in Maya” and an extent of Richard Williams’ “The Animator’s Survival Kit” since those would be fairly important.
WEEK TEN – Submission & Review
This is the end of the module for Human and Creature Mechanics.
I completed my tasks and am currently wrapping up my work for submission. I have a few takeaways and overall review on this term and the course: what happened, what I can take away, and my failures and successes.
I am fairly disappointed with what I couldn’t achieve. I set myself a lot of work, and didn’t achieve most of it. I realise that this is due to me being unable to identify my own limits and now that I have identified them, I will be able to make a schedule that I can keep to.
I have completed all my work and I am mostly satisfied with it, but if there’s one task I was struggling with, it would be Task 4 - UnReal Engine since it required a fair amount of knowledge and polished understanding of UnReal Engine to accomplish and barely understanding the basics of the system made it challenging.
I understand Maya and how to work in Maya, so although Tasks 1-3 required a lot of effort from me, I was aware of how and what to do with my work in Maya.
The content in the class was good and very well presented, but I struggled with the Lion and UnReal Engine since the tasks took four weeks building up to the deadline. I think if more time was given to this, it would have felt better spread. At least in my opinion.
I did find certain improvements this term as opposed to the last: I improved my understanding of Timing with Easing In and Easing Out since I struggled with that last term. I also was able to understand how to Exaggerated poses a bit more to really have a clean piece of animation.