The start of this new semester has been a hectic one. One of the biggest parts of the new semester was reorganization of our schedule and positions. At the end of the last semester, most were focused upon pumping out assets for us to build scenes with. Because of that, we had a lot of things made, but not placed anywhere.
As the semester began, I helped with reorganization efforts, helping to decide where to spend most of our energy and time. One of the first things I said needed to be done was the sets being modeled and laid out. I had several people then in charge of getting each of our 4 locations laid out and lit, at least enough to present during our group presentations.
The next item I thought needed to be done as soon as possible was the keyframes of our animation. We didn't necessarily need anything fancy for the poses, just a major idea of where the characters would be in each scene relative to the camera in there. Davis said that he would get right on that, and Johnny also created a demonstration with the motion capture software. He was able to create a shot of saint George walking through the forest with Evan and Ethan working beside him.
After the help of organizing and creating a schedule, I began work on one of the major props in our scene: The Wagon. It needed to be large enough to hold enough books to bring into town, but also be stylized in such a way that it felt like a fantasy merchant cart. I went online to look for several references.
After getting a general idea from the group what we were looking for, I started to create the basemesh for the cart. What took the longest was making sure the proportions were something that the group was looking for, especially making sure that it matched up with both the sizes of the dragon and George. It had to be large enough that it wouldn't be hard for the dragon to handle, but not so large that it looked cartoonishly large next to George. Once I got the general idea for the size of the cart, I got all the pieces named and beveled to make sure it was ready for sculpting.
The next step is to go into zbrush this week and get the high level details that I'm looking for. Alongside that, I'm getting it all ready to be textured so that it is ready for rendering next week.