Terrene

Abstract

Hello, my name is Wes Cardwell, and I am an undergraduate student from the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University. Over this past winter break, I, along with seven other students, collaborated to produce an animation. We made it our goal to coordinate our artistic and technical efforts in a professional manner, while also working through a traditional production process. We created concept sketches, animatics, matte paintings, color scripts, lighting keys, texture maps, character models, rigs, and particle simulation. The project served as a unique challenge in that each of us sat in different parts of the U.S. and, in one case, across the ocean in Italy, visiting family for the holidays. Using our college student budget of exactly zero dollars, we employed every free Internet service we could summon to assist us in communicating information and sharing files. At one point, Federico Burch was forced to steal Wi-fi from a closed airport shop in Italy in order to maintain an Internet connection to dropbox. At the same time, I found myself sharing the tiny bandwidth of a 3G AT&T aircard with my dad to upload files, while Jose worked from his laptop on a sixteen-hour drive to Minnesota to visit family. Challenges that professionals are familiar with tested us as novel concepts. Effects failed, rigs broke without warning, unexplainable artifacts reared their ugly heads, and all of it had to be fixed on the fly to meet our established goal of finishing before the next semester. Despite all of these obstacles, we persevered and produced an animation in which we are proud.