On Thursday 23rd, we presented our finished Cocoanut Grove Bathroom scene. The team was pretty exhausted but we made it through our PechaKucha style presentation with minimal awkward pauses or meanderings. Had we not still been working on the scene the night before, it would have been very good to practice the presentation as a group beforehand, but I'll come back to that.
Our final scene is pictured below. We've yet to receive any formal feedback on it but the reception from our peers has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging.
The Cocoanut Grove Bathroom, from The Aviator.
I felt we hadn't got close enough and I was frustrated by all the problems that could not be unseen. Problems that I could fix if I just had more time.
But we didn't have more time and the general group sentiment was 'I'm glad it's over'. It was disheartening to realize that our sense of relief was far greater than our sense of accomplishment. So I promptly persuaded everyone to go to the pub and talk it over...despite it being the middle of the day, in the middle of the week.
You'll have to excuse the photo, it'd been a late few nights!
We deliriously ordered some food and began to discuss the outcome of our 3 weeks of work. In our pub post-mortem, we narrowed down the projects shortcomings to two main weak points. Working independently from home, rather than in labs and prioritization.
The projects greatest flaw by far, was the way in which we all prioritized our work and managed our time. This key oversight has its roots in the initial work delegation at the start of the project.
Rough modularity analysis.
At the start of the project, we used the above image to delegate asset creation tasks. We distributed the work evenly, in a manner we all agreed to be fair. Crucially, each asset was looked at in terms of how difficult or time consuming it would be to create, rather than the contribution it provided to the final scene. For example, a set of cubicles seems easy enough to produce and relatively quick to model but when those cubicles occupy around 30% of your final image; they need to look pretty damn phenomenal!
Conversely, a light switch that contributes less than 1% just barely needs to look like a light switch. I spent around 20% of my asset creation time on making the best light switch I could make. Complete with bolts and finger marks.
In the final still, it's barely more than a speck.
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I need to switch on my priorities!
It's not that I didn't consider that no one would see it, it's more a case of not realizing how much I'd need that time later on. Just a week later, the deadline was looming ever closer and I was clawing at every minute to try and resolve the lighting. Which by the way me-from-the-past, affects 100% of the final image.
This, and many other mistakes, may have been avoided had we worked in labs together. Our lack of in-person team work was brought up as the second major flaw in our project, due to the large volume of small problems that overwhelmed us in the final days. We unanimously felt that a great many of these could have been easily avoided had we worked next to each other, in labs, for the duration of the project.
Well isn't that a bright idea...
I realize that up to this point, I've been quite negative. And honestly, that reflects how I felt on the final day. But now I've had some distance from the project (and some sleep), I can look at the work we did with some objectivity.
What we accomplished was just shy of excellent. Despite unfamiliar tools and our lack of experience working in teams, we created a final image that we should all be very proud of.
And it's during projects like these that I learn the most. Projects that push me, frustrate me and force me to experiment. Particularly a task such as this, where shortcomings are so clear cut and irrefutable.
Final comparison.
In the end, I'm glad it's over but I'm glad I did it. Even if looking at it makes us cringe, we're proud of what we created.
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