During our tutorial session with Henry this week, we were able to receive more advice and guidance for our project. Henry allowed us to begin thinking of certain aspects of our project in a new light, predominantly, the areas of animation and research. In this blog post, I will go through the points and advice he raised with us and how this will impact us as a team moving forward.
"Look at flight attendances and how they explain safety procedure"
Henry suggested to us that if our waitress begins the narrative explaining and showing us the Pit Stop, it would be best if we looked at individuals who do that quite calm and almost robotic like. He gave the example of a flight attendant who is explaining the safety features of an airplane before take off. This was especially helpful for me as I have the first section of animation to complete and this example and research with benefit me as I seek to achieve a realistic and high quality appeal for our AI waitress.
"Waitress or Instructional – be more clear – little extra than current motions"
Another point that Henry raised with us is that our AI character appears to be both a waitress, and very instructional. He feels that this is a contrasting and almost, not realistic aesthetic to pursue and has suggested we pursue one or the other. Either a waitress who doesn't get too involved or an instructional helper who exists mainly to guide and help us.
"Have the Girl preform, slump in her chair, full kid"
It was suggested by Henry that instead of trying to animate the little girl to the standard way we were picturing her reacting, a better way may be to make her perform. To push her boundaries and see how dramatic and explosive we can make her. We as I team liked this idea and so will be using this feedback to feature new attitude, personality and motion to the character in the narrative.
"Posters/Loading – Borderlands"
Henry pointed out an area of our poster design that we were beginning to look at already. The design for the Borderlands posters as well as the loading process and display in the game are also quite distinctive and poignant for us as they are similar to the design we want to achieve as a team.
"Study – nurses walking 1930s – films popular were war – French walks"
Henry gave us another good point about the time period we are aiming for in our storyline. He brought up a study that was carried out based on the way nurses walked during the 1930's. This study found that at that time, within popular movies, most of the woman and nurses who appeared in these movies had french walks. A dramatic and strong walk that showed confidence and pride. It was found that the British nurses who had watched these films had actually begun to walk the same way these woman did in the movies. They had a huge influence and this was interesting to us as a team, not just the physical action but the psychology behind it aswell! It is these 'french walks' that we want to try to achieve for our AI waitress character.
"if surprising glitches happen, keep them"
We were worried from our initial animation playblasts because it seems that our settings are messed up or our settings just weren't matching up with what we were expecting. Due to this, our playblasts glitched in places and sometimes our saved animations (or so we thought) would save correctly and would move characters for a split second to somewhere else in the scene. As a team, this frustrated us. Henry, on the other hand? He encouraged it. He told us that if it glitches, keep it! Thats the style we are trying to achieve. A glitchy, uncertain vibe. If we want that, then why get upset about the programme actually glitching for us!?
"switch some items to texture planes if they are not moving"
One of the final things Henry suggested to us, was the same point Brian had brought up with us also. The necessity to ultimately optimise our scene. He suggested taking out, where we can, objects that could be represented as a texture plane instead of a full 3D object. We are working on this at the minute and plan to replace quite a few of our models with image planes. This in turn with make our render time less expensive and allow our scene to run smoother and more effectively for our users.
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