An Entire Production in 22 Weeks

My Duties: Prudction Manager, Texturing Lead, Character & Set Modeling, Animation, Rendering & Compositing

The final project for my graduating class, Scourge of the Vampire went from concept to completion in less time than many shorts have for their concept phase.

From the start, those of us on the management team knew that it would be necessary to remain organized and focused as our production schedule was going to be extremely tight. Also, our team would be under immense pressure due to their status as full-time students-with-jobs.

This meant limiting the scope of the project. The setting of a stage for a third-rate horror movie was perfect. It eliminated camera moves entirely, allowing each animator to animate to the same camera and meant we only needed one set, one lighting setup and one background. Normally non-trivial elements such as composition could become trivial as the spatial thinking could be approached from one angle. And, perhaps most importantly, file sharing between team members was made far easier as the initial base scene was the same for every contributor. It was the establishment of the static camera shot that allowed us to complete the project on-time, even without access to a reliable render farm.

My individual contributions to the project were as follows:
- As one of two Production Managers, I maintained the group task list and kept track of asset progress throughout the production pipeline.
- Texturing Lead on this project required organization of size and format for every texture and quality control on both textures and UV layouts.
- I contributed the Debutante model and a few of the set pieces
- I animated the Vampire and Debutante in the final two secens.
- As part of our small team of Render Wranglers, we set up and kept track of all render passes on all scenes. Later, I would do most of the compositing and the final audio mix.



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