It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog post. Over winter break, our team got SO much done: from shading, modeling, layout, rigging etc. everything they did was absolutely amazing. I am honestly so amazed, humbled, and proud of the dedication my team has towards this short. No matter where they were, what they were doing, or what other plans they had, they always made time to add something extra to the project and I’m so grateful. As a PM and their friend, I feel like I have the perfect team.

I did my fair share of work over break as well as in the past two weeks. I modeled several background characters for the market, worked on transformation blendshapes for grandma Ping, iterated the spin with more detail and a rendered pass, and worked on layouts for the 2nd half of the short. I’m really proud of everything both me and the team has done, and I really can’t wait for the 2nd semester of CNM!

So we have performed many operations and emergency surgeries to fix Grandma Ping’s topology, and at long last, we put our meshes to the test. Abby and I made a blendshapes between the two versions of our grandmas. At first, MANY things went horribly wrong for the blendshapes (at one point, our grandmas started growing wings out their backs). After a few more operations, however, we FINALLY got out blendshapes to work and it was so beautiful. I think I almost cried out of relief and pride: this has been a semester of long and hard work for both of us and it is finally starting to pay off. We still have the youngest version of grandma to blendshape, but for now, I am very proud of our work.

I also got the chance to do some prop modeling for the short. I haven’t done much of that since I’ve been on character modeling the whole time. But it was really nice to take a break from that and create something with so many subtleties in it. Next week will be more texturing and shading, and even though that’s one of my weaker aspects of the pipeline, I want to do my best to learn more this time around.

 

 

Modeling season is almost over, and as hard and overwhelming as it has been, I will certainly miss it. Grandma Ping is looking better than ever and she’s (almost) there.  She looks a LOT more consistent to her older versions and she has become a very dear person to me.

I will take the chance to make some last changes but after that, I think we can close this chapter of CNM. After this is rigging and shading and I’m curious to see what I can contribute to either side of the production…

 

We also had a fair share of issues to fix with grandma this week….unfortunately for some unknown reason, she had a hole in her left hand that wouldn’t go away. We tried some tricks in zbrush and that seemed to fix it for a while…until…I brought it back into Maya and saw the horrors myself. The topology was scary beyond all imagination and at that point, we had to pull some desperate tricks. Abby and I spent several hours today performing “surgery” on grandma to attach a new, beautiful hand with clean topo while having the EXACT same number of edges, faces, vertices etc. As you can imagine, it did take a while and it was touch and go for a while, but we managed to do it together. I was so proud of our teamwork and I am so grateful to have Abby as one of the people I get to collaborate with!

On a wonderful bright note today; we had a critique from Christina Faraj from Pixar and she was such a bright, optimistic, and kind person. I was so inspired by the work she did and the path to her current career at Pixar (and also the fact that she’s a huge nerd). She LOVED our animatic and our story, and it felt so rewarding to see that all of our hard work is FINALLY paying off. After so many weeks of confused, unenthusiastic, or critical responses I was starting to think that there was something wrong with our story. Her response reminded me that, at its heart, this story is powerful and resonates with many people. The Night Market team has been through a lot and has put in a lot for this story; we should all be proud 🙂

So we’ve been modeling for quite some time now and I feel like I have been looking at this face for so long that I can’t remember how faces are supposed to look. We’ve gone through MANY iterations of both Jackie and Grandma and unfortunately, we had the concern that our character’s style doesn’t match each other. Beverly and I have been working hard to collaborate on our characters and make sure they compliment each other while managing to remain unique and distinct from each other. It also seems like an impossible task when you say it out loud but I know it can be done. Our characters are almost there (I can feel it), but we still have some work left for us to get there.

 

 

On the bright side, our other versions of Grandma have started developing finally and I am SO excited to see what the transition will look like from an elderly woman to a young lady to a child. I have always been so interested in the idea of aging characters on screen, so I am thrilled that I had the chance to develop the character design and transitions for Grandma earlier in the semester.  I know that the other amazing my team will be able to create something wonderful and I can’t wait to see it!

So last week our team suffered some TOUGH critiques: they ranged from harsh to disheartening and it was honestly a bit tough to get past the emotions and think objectively about their concerns. But funny enough, those critiques and problems brought our team closer together: we worked harder to improve our story, storyboards, and character models. We made a LOT of revisions, and even though I am sure that there are more to come…I am very proud of us 🙂

In addition to story revisions, we have continued to work on our models. I must say that it’s been a bit stressful getting her base model ready for the rest of my team. I really wanted to get the character right, but I also wanted to give them enough time to work on it. Last week was a little overwhelming because of that, but after a lot of work and helpful critiques, I have the base model ready to go. I still need to work on the details of the character since we are trying to finalize the style, but I feel less overwhelmed by the task. I can’t wait to see what she’ll look like in the future.

Modeling has continued into its second week. I have to say that I am VERY happy with how good our models look: everything from sets, props, and characters looks like a lot of love and detail was put into it. I am particularly happy that Grandma Ping has been developing so well. I have to admit I was very nervous about modeling her at first; I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do her character justice, but I’m very happy with the work I’ve put into her character.

 

Unfortunately, not all of our news has been good this week…we had two guest lecturers come in and watch our short. One person didn’t seem to understand most, if any, of the story and left “with almost nothing” on his first viewing, and the other fundamentally believed that our story was “broken” the way that it is. It would be an understatement to say that these words were crushing to my morale this week. They were fair and valid concerns, but they made me feel like we were climbing up an impossible hill. However I know that this is all a part of the process of storytelling, and it is never easy to tell it right the first time. I know our team can do this: we are all intelligent, talented, inspired creators who care deeply about this story, and I hope that we will be able to tell it in a way that is inspiring for other people. We have a lot of work to do…so let’s get to it. Back to the drawing board!

Modeling week has arrived! This is probably one of my favorite parts of the pipeline (besides animation) so I am THRILLED to be working on character models. Learning zBrush has been quite interesting…. I do love it a lot, but you’ve got to wonder why they made it so damn hard to use

Difficult or not, it’s helping me do some very cool stuff: I’m not exactly an expert yet but I’m really enjoying myself. Although (full disclaimer) my model is nothing spectacular yet, I can’t wait to bring it to life as Grandma Ping.

This week of CNM was mostly focused on the character aspect of pre-production: that meant creating detailed character sheets, drawings, and expression sheets for everyone in the short. I mostly worked on bringing Present-Day Grandma Ping to life (we finally named our characters by the way)! I got to draw her expression sheets as well. But, the most fun I had this week was being able to draw the different versions of Grandma Ping throughout her life. There was something very magical about seeing this elderly woman transform into different stages in her life, and actually being able to see how a young child grows into a mature, wise woman. It almost felt like I was going through the same experience Jackie does in the short. I hope when people see this short they will feel a similar awe and inspiration by Grandma Ping.

 

So here we are: deep into the pre-production phase of CNM. Last week I may have felt bitter-sweet about my story not progressing, but this week I’ve been filled with optimism and inspiration. The story, environment, and characters of Night Market have become dear to me, and I have been trying my best to contribute as much as I can to this stage of the pipeline even if it’s not what I’m “famous for.”

I’ve always been most interested in creating characters: there’s something thrilling about building a person from just an idea. So this week I’ve dedicated a lot of time to help the team come up with some character designs for the stall worker (names are in progress), and the grandma. I particularly had a lot of fun comparing the stall worker to the youngest version of the grandma and drawing the differences between the grandma as an old and young woman. I can’t wait to work on her transformations in Maya (blendshapes here we go!)

Beyond that, Yuan and I worked a lot fo revising the animatic. The vision of the story was clear and inspirational for us, but we wanted that image to be clear for everyone. So we spent a long time working to make the animatic clear and more developed. 

Of course, I can’t take as much credit as Yuan for these beautiful drawings, but I did contribute to a significant portion of them. Hopefully, these changes improve the story in other people’s eyes: it’s already a winner in mine 🙂