In early May, I completed my senior project for the Visual Arts program at UMBC. As part of the Animation/Interactive Media track, I enrolled in a capstone course along with other cinematic arts and animation majors. During the Spring 2014 Senior Projects class, I was tasked with developing and completing a film to demonstrate the skills I learned during my undergraduate career. I chose to create a 3D-animated short film about Dilophosaurus dinosaurs. I created all of the models and animated them by myself.
Prior to taking the class, I periodically worked on a dilophosaurus model between the Summer of 2013 and the Fall of 2014.
When I first developed my story, I initially imagined it being a fantasy story about a young boy who woke up in a prehistoric jungle and gets chased by a Dilophosaurus--only to wake up at the end of the film and realize that he was dreaming during a class lecture about dinosaurs.
I eventually scrapped this idea after realizing that due to time constraints and lack of man-power, I would not be able to complete a project on such a scale by myself with the deadline that was arranged. After re-evaluating my goals and from hearing feedback from my peers, I instead decided to create a more scientifically accurate film in the vein of a nature documentary rather in the style of a feature fantasy film. With this new goal in mind, I did more research about the Jurassic time period and the Dilophosaurus and realized that the setting of the film would not take place in a jungle since the Dilophosaurus habitat were mostly deserts in the American midwest. There is evidence that during that era, the midwest had evolved from mostly jungles into mostly desert plains.
I am satisfied with the direction that my film took. I feel that it is a better representation of my skills given the time I had to produce it. This project was a positive experience for me and allowed me to further evaluate my knowledge of storytelling, animation, and computer graphics in general. I feel that I have a better understanding of what I need to improve on and what my strengths are. Hopefully I can have more professional opportunities to test my skill.
