I’m more than happy with this shot, I may even use it as the first shot on my showreel. It took me ages to build the set and I’m very proud of it. I have to say that my FMP shots have only gotten better as I’ve gone on- the cowboy shot took me four weeks and looked awful before I revised it, and this one took me about five days and I love it. I feel as if every new shot I create is my new favorite.
For the purposes of my thesis, I think it works well; the ending adds a little lighthearted factor that mirrors the ending of the cartoon version (the tiger shot). I also intentionally gave it a sort of video game style aesthetic, with Street Fighter in mind, which will allow me to further test whether adults favor a video game style in animated, realistic content, or whether it must remind them of such to not be considered juvenile.
When building the set, I also wanted to stick to that Street Fighter environment as much as possible; if it looked too much like real-life Tokyo or Hong Kong that would open the door for critique on consistency to the setting and time period. For this reason I did not use the background plate at all, but kept in the original camera track. However, I did add my own animation to the camera on top of that to fully showcase my animation. As a result, this shot incorporates my motion tracking abilities the least out of any of the shots I’ve created. For the purposes of my FMP, however, this isn’t necessary, as my focus and data collection for this project rests more on the animation styles (realistic vs cartoon) than the motion tracking.
I am now finished with the animation for my FMP. Before I decide it’s done-done, though, I want to fix the shadowmatte a little bit on the Dana shot. Perhaps I’ll revisit some of the others, too. I’ve been tweaking them as I’ve been going and they’re in good shape at least.