CJ Keohane @cjkeohane - Tumblr Blog

DRS 2018 - Wednesday 2nd to Friday 4th Plus Week Four Reflection

I did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. I came to the studio and spent roughly six hours each of the three days working on the cinema 4D models on my laptop. I’m now looking forward to not having to come into the studio anymore to do my work. It will be much nicer working from home in my apartment where I can listen to music and have videos playing for background noise rather than the terrible silence I’ve had to deal with in the studio since my earphones broke.

I’m also just looking forward to having this entire project finished. More than anything I’ve learned that variety is the spice of life. Working on one singular thing for weeks just burns you out creatively and it gets harder and harder to motivate yourself. I was quite anxious when we began this project because I feared I (and my team) weren’t going to get an authentic animation studio experience and all I can say now is that I hope to god we didn't because It was pretty terrible. There’s no point sugar coating it.

I tried my very best to make the best of the entire experience but we were basically leaderless and had little to no guidance what so ever. As I’ve said before, this wasn’t the fault of the DRS people or any of my team mates. Because we had so little guidance, I bit off more than I could chew and now I’ve ended up having to continue working on something that I’ve over complicated and just ain’t passionate about anymore.

Also we we’re subjected to absolutely nothing new in the past four weeks. It’s impossible to learn anything new in an environment that is completely stagnant. for the entirety of the four weeks I worked completely unsupervised by myself.

As for working with a team. My team was great but I learned nothing new from working in a team as I’ve basically done the same stuff before in other team projects in class and I’ve worked with these people before so again, I learned nothing new.

Overall the work hasn’t been overly difficult which I’m thankful for, It’s merely been time consuming. Time that I’m honestly going to admit, I feel has been wasted. I haven't grown in any way, shape or form in the last four weeks, try as I may. All I learned was crap from Youtube tutorials and I could do that anytime anywhere.

I can tell from reading other peoples weekly reflections and daily diaries that what myself and the others in Georges Quay experiences was FAR from what a real animation studio is like so I continue to hold out hope that I will somehow grow from this ordeal and eventually get to experience the fun of a real animation studio some day.

DRS 2018 - Tuesday 1st

Met with the DRS people over in UL at 12pm and showed them the work we had done so far. Over all they seemed happy with how we’re doing and they pointed out a few adjustments they’d like us to make.

Muirreann also introduced us to Ciaran and he showed us the XR stuff that hes been working on.

I also told Muirreann that I would stay on longer to get my 3D work finished for them.

After the meeting I took pictures of the Concert Hall for reference pictures when I start working on that model once I finish King Johns Castle.

DRS 2018 - Monday 30th

While I was home in Cork over the weekend I started working on the King Johns Castle model so I continued working on that today.

I also told Dave that I’m going to tell the DRS people tomorrow that I will continue working for them until I finish what I’ve started.

Week Three Reflection

The past week has been rough. I’m starting to get tired of doing the exact same work every day. I kind of feel like I’m learning very little, even though I’m trying my hardest to make the best of this situation. The work is starting to become less and less enjoyable as time goes on. I can’t help but compare myself to everyone else who’s out on work placement. While they’re all off enjoying new experiences I feel like myself and the rest of my team are just doing the exact same stuff that we do in class on a day to day basis anyway. In fact I’d argue we’re learning less because all we’re doing is using the knowledge we already have to make stuff for the DRS convention. We’re not being exposed to anything new so there’s nothing for us to learn from.

This isn’t the fault of the DRS people at all. They’re incredibly nice and understanding and enjoyable to work with but the work feels very much like freelance work. They’re not animators so they seem happy enough to just let us work on whatever we feel is best because they trust our judgement. We’ve only met with them once in person so far and although we keep in contact by email, I feel like I’m working in a bubble.

Also at the rate I’m going, I don’t think I’ll be finished working on the models before this work placement is finished and I can’t leave it half made so I’m going to talk to them about continuing to work on it until it’s finished. I don’t like to leave work undone and I feel obligated to finish it now.

DRS 2018 - Wednesday 25th

Coloured and finished the Strand hotel Model today. Took ages but I was determined to get it done today because I have to travel back home to Cork tomorrow for Personal Reasons. I’ll be bring my laptop with me so I can continue my work.

DRS 2018 - Tuesday 24th

Got some bad news from back home yesterday evening so I worked from my apartment today.

Continued working on the Strand model today. Got most of the hard work done on it yesterday (the awkward shapes and what not that I had to make myself) so today I got into the nitty gritty small details which is always the most tedious part but they’re worth it in the end.

DRS 2018 - Monday 23rd

Ciaran the fourth year design student still hasn’t emailed us back so I emailed him again today to remind him and let him know that we’d be happy to go over and meet with him whenever suits him best since we won’t be meeting with Muirrean this week.

Began working on the Strand hotel model today. It’s not as bad as I thought it was going be. I’ve realized after looking at my reference photos that it’s basically just three big cubes.

Week Two Reflection

I feel like a got a lot more accomplished this week. I learned that when it comes to getting reference shots you can’t be lazy and just get them from the internet. Actually going to the locations is way more helpful in understanding them and makes things way easier in the long run. Also when you go get them yourself you can leave out all the unnecessary stuff that you don’t need and focus and what you feel is the most important.

I spent a good amount of time this week watching Cinema 4D tutorials in my own free time at home. It’s clear that I still have a lot to learn but I feel like I’m slowly improving and its certainly ignited a passion in me of 3D work, which is something I used to be apprehensive about working with.

I’m also very grateful that the rest of my team has everything covered when it comes to the promotional gifs for advertising the DRS convention because it takes a load off my shoulders not having to worry about that stuff getting done. Since I’m the only one working on the cinema 4D assets it’s good to know that everything else is be handled so I can focus on what I need to get done.

DRS 2018 - Friday 20th

Got an email from Muireann letting us know that she wouldn’t be around at all next week, so we’ll meet her the week after instead. In the mean time I’m still waiting on a reply from Ciaran the fourth year working on the VR project to get back us so we can organise a date and time to meet up.

I also got help from Dave today becuase I couldnt figure out/find a tutorial on how to bend text in Cinema 4D. Even after Dave helped I decided to abandon that idea as it was working out the way I wanted it too and its not very important anyway.

Other than that, I continued to work on with good old Cinema 4D.

DRS 2018 - Thursday 19th

Worked on one of the Macs today instead of my laptop. I found it way easier working on the Mac because I could keep Cinema 4D and my reference photos open at the same time. The bigger screen also put less strain on my eyes and back so I plan on working on a Mac as much as possible from now on when it comes to Cinema 4D work in college. I actually got an entire model finished today from scratch so that shows how much easier it is on the Macs.

DRS 2018 - Wednesday 18th

mostly just worked on the King Johns Castle model today but learnt a very valuable lesson about saving more regularly. I lost a considerable amount of work today when my Laptop suddenly died without warning.

I also learned how to make transparent glass like material on C4D today so I think I might incorporate that into my models from here forward.

DRS 2018 - Tuesday 17th

Today I went to King Johns Castle, The Strand Hotel and Flannery’s Pub to take reference photos of them. I had a bad day all due to stupid mistakes that were entirely my own fault. When I got to King Johns castle and took out my camera it wasn’t charged so I had to go back home and charge it and when I returned to King johns castle for the second time I forgot my SIM card back at home so I had to go back home AGAIN and get it. By the time I had gotten enough photos of all three locations and returned to Georges Quay I was wrecked. It was also REALLY windy today so that was also annoying but atleast it was sunny.

I worked on C4D modeling for the rest of the evening in college but found it hard to concentrate due to a mixture of being tired and it was sunny outside.

DRS 2018 - Monday 16th

I spent the morning at Clare street taking pictures of the building for references. When I got back to Georges Quay I spent the majority of the day building the Clare Street model and have a rough outline of what the final model will look like. It just needs to be coloured and all the small finer details still need to be added.

The Fourth year student in UL finally emailed me back today to let us know that he would be running (very buggy) tests next week and would love for us to go and have a look at his work so I told him that we would meet him next week on the same day we plan to meet with the DRS Team to have a catch up.

Week One Reflection

This project is not at all what I expected it to be like. We have much more creative freedom than I expected and it can be a bit daunting at times when the client isn’t 100% sure what they want and is willing to trust you to come up with what you think is best.

I’m looking forward to seeing the Fourth years XR project that Muireann told us about. Hopefully he will answer my email soon and we can arrange a day to meet up. I wasn’t really sure what XR was at first but after going away and reading a bit about it, it sounds super interesting and will be a nice break from our own work

I’m also really enjoying jumping back into Cinema 4D. It was a bit rough at first as I’d already gotten a bit rusty after only two weeks of not using it but it didn’t take long to get the hang of it again and as usual the more I mess around with it the more familiar with it I become. Plus I’ve started making a catalogue of Youtube tutorials that I find useful and can dip in and out of whenever I forget how to do something (which is more often than I’d care to admit).

Communication amongst my team is fairly good. We’re all happily working away on our stuff. As long as we keep this up we’ll have more than enough to show the DRS Team next time we meet them.

DRS 2018 - Friday 13th

While the rest of the team continued to experiment with gifs I reacquainted myself with Cinema 4D.

I had to email Muireann and ask her few questions about the locations they wanted me to make in Cinema 4D, (LSAD, The Concert Hall, Flannerys, King Johns Castle and The Strand Hotel) I wanted to be super sure of what exactly they were looking for before I started working on them.

I started compiling photos of each location and plan on actually going to each location to look at them myself so I can get a better idea of what they look like.

DRS 2018 - Thurseday 12th

We sorted out the best means of communication within the group opting for a mix of G+ and a facebook messenger group.

Also Muireann sent me an email letting us know that one of their 4th year Design students is developing an XR project and is looking for designers and animators to test his designs and asked would we like to have a look at his project. After discussing it as a team we decided it was a super interesting prospect so I emailed the 4th year, named Ciaran and let him know that we’d be interested in meeting up with him.

DRS2018 - Wednesday 11th

Muireann had emailed me on all the information for the DRS conference yesterday evening when I got home so I sent on all the info to the rest of the group.

I asked Dave if he could send us on the rendered copies all the animations the DRS team chose from our class so we could start making gifs from them and he emailed me on a link to where I could get them on the drop box. I then forwarded them to the rest of my team.

We discussed ideas for the promotional gifs and Ronan and Mairead made a few test gifs.

we had a bit of confusion over the text used by the DRS team when Mairead couldn’t get it to fit in the grid they made, so I went to Dave again and asked if he could send us on the exact Font the DRS Team used.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

CJ Keohane