Lessons Learned

Making an animation is not something that can be done in a
few days. After I spent more than ten hours for the first
10 second's opening scene, I know how many sleepless nights
will be in front of me. Clips from "Toy Store 2" keep
lingering in my mind, and I have also referenced many
animation's for ideas. I feel deeply appreciated and
respectful toward their excellent works. Especially for
those people from Pixar.

Besides understanding of the modeling tools, bring concepts
to final execution needs exercise in planning, a lot of
creativity, knowledge of lighting, camera setting, time
control, and a lot a lot more.

It takes countless time from preparation to actual
implementation, afterward editing and making real
production. I feel really happy to have the chance actually
finishing such a big task even though I might have to take
a very big rest after final presentation. Not only a
tremendous sense of accomplishment do I gained from
implementing this final project but it also gives me a
really firm understanding of the whole process and skills
needed for producing an animation.

I know how hard it will be when the idea of this final
project first came out. I was not successful in finding
enough team members to work with, that's a pity.  After
some hesitation at the first week, I decided to go ahead
with this idea and try to do the best I can. Developing an
interactive game style application using 3D graphic
technology is a new but exciting field to me. It's a little
too ambitious for me to do animation and interactive
controllable system at one time. However, I still decided
to split the effort into two parts. I hope I could
experience the modeling and animation process but also
learn some interactive 3D programming methodology.

The goal of doing an interactive style character
application has not reach satisfactory result. The problem
we should deal with is not harder than I expected, but in
the time available, I haven't successfully overcome all the
difficulties. I regard this as a precious learning
experience. As for a class project, I might be able to
challenge myself to goals exceeding realistic possibility,
however, I realized how time management and realistic
milestones are important to a successful project.

Throughout the night and day working in this month, I've
learned currently available 3D APIs, feel much more
confident in dealing with future challenges in graphic
field as well as windows programming. I also gained more
experience in C++ programming language. Now, I 've learned
the mechanism of doing an interactive 3D application and
know the limitation at current stage. I believe that can
serve as a foundation stone to me for future possibility in
this area! I will keep working on this direction after this
semester! As to the animation part, now, I couldn't stop
myself from thinking about the production whenever I see
advertisements, TV , or movie titles using 3D graphic
techniques. I couldn't express how enjoyable in doing this
project. It's really great being able to fulfill the first
step here!