Role Definitions

Course Direction

- Barbara (Director/Instructor)


Technical Assistants

- Works with individual students, teams, and group leaders of those teams.
- Assists with evaluation of the student work.
- Provides guidance and a professional, constructive attitude toward technical problem solving and workload completion.
- Provides technical assistance by presentation of technical material and technical troubleshooting.
- Works closely with instructor to ensure that the students learn to work well collaboratively and get their individual work accomplished in the most productive manner.


Production Assistant / Student Producer

- Take notes during dailies which are reviewed by the director.
- Emails out notes or has them posted online.
- Drives the production schedule.
- Identifies and manages lab resources.


Pipeline Managers (Unity)

- Sets guidelines for importing and exporting assets.
- Tackles issues that arise with exporting from Maya and/or importing into Unity.


Group Leads

- Collects daily reports from the those in their group.
- Sends weekly synopsis to the staff mailing list.
- Recommends reference throughout the film and ensures their group members are on track and up-to-date.
- Assigns tasks to team members.
- Keeps staff updated on all meetings.
- Maintain notes and tracks the team's progress.


Story

- Develops the story of the film, including beat sheets and story breakdowns.
- Creates storyboards that visually tell the story, and creates a storyreel.
- Creates character descriptions for each character that outline their background and personality.
- Build a motion bible for distribution to the class that visually and verbally describes each shot.
- Maintain written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Concept Art

- Creates schemes and ideas for each prop model and character model through drawings, paintings, and other customized art.
- Produces color schemes in conjunction with the lighting group.
- Creates visuals to help clarify the story.
- Designs look and feel.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Reference

- Gets reference for all scenes and models (based on the real world and other media).
- Works closely with concept art to maintain the look and vision of the movie.
- Coordinates with prop and character modelers.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Animatic / Layout

- Layouts shots faithful to the storyboard using stand-ins for the props and characters.
- Adds any appropriate camera motion.
- May add rough animation so the production team can get a feel for the timing of the film.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Surfacing

- Assigns color and texture to surfaces that are true to the look and feel of the film, concept art, and real life objects.
- Designs and tests animated shaders, and determines how to approach surfacing objects with complex features such as reflection and refraction.
- Creates (paints) backdrops and background plates in necessary shots.
- Works with lighting to ensure surface detail comes through in the lighting.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Lighting

- Produces color schemes for scenes with the concept art group.
- Uses lighting tests to portray mood, emotion, or intent of a scene.
- Sets up the final lighting for a scene.
- Makes sure character lighting is dynamic and highlights the action of a shot.
- (Unity) Responsible for executing the light-baking and other real time specific techniques.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Set / Prop Modeling

- Creates all models which are not characters.
- Works with reference team to obtain references for the models.
- Works with concept art to maintain the look and feel of movie.
- Keeps models well labeled, clean, and rid of histories before importing into final scenes.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Character Modeling

- Models the characters in the film.
- Creates clean topology to ensure it deforms and animates properly.
- Works closely with the rigging group to make sure models are built correctly.
- Creates different designs/models for testing characters, as necessary.
- Creates multiple models for each character, as needed, to be used for different shots (jumping/running, extreme close-ups, etc.).
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Rigging

- Creates skeletons for characters and rigged props.
- Adds weight painting and ensures proper skin deformation in a variety of poses.
- Paints weights on a per-shot basis to fix clipping (hopefully not needed).
- Sets up controls for animation (IK, blendshapes for > facial expressions, etc.).
- Works closely with the motion group to ensure animation controls are easy to use and all necessary animation can be achieved.
- Creates and tests blend shapes to develop appropriate facial expressions (working with concept art, motion teams).
- Maintains written feedback in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Scripting

- Sets up Maya shelves with production scripts.
- Makes sure the rest of production knows when a shelf is updated, how to deploy it.
- Scripts changes to production hierarchy as necessary.
- Addresses scripting concerns as they arise.
- Maintains written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Motion

- Animates characters, creatures, and props in the film.
- Defines the qualities of each character and their role to ensure consistency in how the character is animated.
- Analyzes acting and action for both the film as a whole and for individual shots.
- Creates or finds reference and creates planning sheets for each shot.
- Ensures the character's actions and acting is consistent.
- Continually sends in shots for critique and updates the shots based on the feedback.
- Maintains written feedback with lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Facial Expressions

- Defines facial expressions and facial motion for all shots in the film and coordinates with the animators to implement them.
- Determines facial extremes and creates a style guide for consistency of facial expressions throughout shots.
- Tests expressions extensively to ensure they work properly.
- Maintain written feedback to the lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Poster / Title / Credits

- Designs, renders, and adds approved text on a movie style poster appropriate to the needs of the film.
- Works with the Director to make sure posters are printed in a timely manner.
- Designs small leaflet-style credits for screenings.
- Creates an interesting and unique presentation of the title for the film.
- Organizes and creates the credits for the film, ensuring credit is given appropriately and everything is correct.


Render / Renderfarm

- Understands and supports the renderfarm as necessary.
- Checks renders as they begin to make sure they're rendering properly.
- Understands how to use and when to apply motion blur, layering, compositing, etc.
- Organizes renders so they are easy to find and are static for the compositing team.


Effects

- Creates methods of implementing special effects as needed in the production.
- Ensures consistency of effects across shots.
- Makes sure effects are seen through to completion.
- Maintains written feedback with lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Audio

- Adds sound and foley to movie.
- Ensures that all sounds are legal to use. If audio are copyrighted, determine how to obtain permission to use.
- Maintains written feedback with lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Editing

- Maintains an updated Adobe Premiere file that includes the film in its entirety, and updates this file as shots are completed.
- Develops the timing and pacing between shots to deliver the story in the best possible way.
- Maintains written feedback with lead in the form of critiques and progress reports.


Post Production

- Sets up a post-production pipeline.
- Performs image processing on final renders to ensure consistency and desired look.
- Composites layers and various other elements.
- Exports final project.
- (Unity) Creates final build of project.


Outtakes

- Collects and organize technical mistakes and intentional bloopers.
- Finds new and creative ways to use the characters and setting in original outtakes, time permitting.