The beginning went very well.

I made a mindmap on a website:

mindmapfree.com
and I came up with my FMP idea in it. I started with something huge and much, much bigger than
what I could handle. Nevertheless I still wrote it all down and I expected it to be helpful information
later. With that idea came a train of thought on how I made my previous projects from over the
years in college and how I improved skills with each one leading me to my decision to improve 3D
modelling.
I later decided on a new idea which I stuck with and slowly changed overtime.
The next step was research for me. However we were also asked to choose 1 or more from the list
of 8 subjects:
E=MC2
The Meeting
Tea for Two
Segregation
Division
The Box
Rose Tinted Spectacles
Cross-Over

https://uk.pinterest.com/pangys_agha/
I knew what I wanted to do however I had to make it relate to any of these themes. I had only one
choice in order to use my desired idea. Create an excuse that I chose one of these themes using the
most tenuous connection possible.
I chose E=MC2 because Sciencey Cyborgs and The Meeting because there will be cyborgs
meeting to fight and Cross-Over because there will be a Cross-Over of science since a Cyborg is
both Biological and Mechanical.
Fool Proof! Now to research.
This went quite well. I made my FMP mindmap vague so I can have as much freedom as possible
without changing my idea too much. Cyborgs Fighting is the vaguest I could have been.
And so I did research on cyborgs from VideoGames and Movies. Thats... thats as much as I can
say really other than I did some human and some animal cyborgs.
In my FMP mindmap I also said I wanted to do a Who Framed Roger Rabbit thing by green
screening real things to be alongside the animated stuff. The closest I got to it was how I took
photos of a town close to me and then Photoshopped it into Background and Foreground as well as
put my animated Cyborgs onto it. It... didnt come out too well. More on that at the end.
Next I needed animals to turn into cyborgs. To make things interesting I decided on extinct animals.
Something to give worth to the animals being used.
After Googling extinct animals in the last 100 years, the first result was a top 10 list:
https://www.google.co.uk/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi-
7vvupuXTAhUDBcAKHRW_C9QQFgg8MAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aol.com%2Farticle
%2Fnews%2F2016%2F04%2F22%2F10-animals-that-have-gone-extinct-in-the-last-century
%2F21347328%2F&usg=AFQjCNHP7d_RNt-PxV2D2mBvsTB1LJvElA&sig2=_rtvrcf-
rOLXrW8SWSJodQ
Despite the title, I counted and it has 9 animals on the list. I still decided to use all of them though.
I knew that making 9 cyborgs was a big challenge so I went for the next best thing. 6 Cyborgs.
I designed all the cyborgs to have defining features from a Dolphin with a gun on its head to a Deer
being redesigned into a helicopter. I.. started running out of ideas by the time I got to the Deer
which was at the bottom of the list I was processing. The first design was the Thylacine dog and the
Baiji Dolphin which are both the most detailed designs.
During the making of the 3D models I left out some details from the original design such as the
band around the leg pivots on the Thylacine design. In some cases this was because I forgot to put
them in. The main reason for some of them is because it would be difficult and time consuming to
make them.
For some of the models I got premade models for the organic bodies:
https://free3d.com/
Only half of my models did. The rest were custom made. However the model I used for the
Pyrenean Ibex (Deer) somehow bugged out the model making them entire model hued blue from
the blue background I gave it to ChromaKey with (green screen terminology). Due to this it does
not appear in the finished animation. Its a bit soon to be saying this but because of the outcome of
the Thylacines animation, I also cut it entirely from the animation as well but since I already edited
in images of the Thylacine model to imply it exists at all, I made a custom sprite to overlap it to
show that it is not currently operational.
Since these amendments made the size of my project smaller, I thought I might as well keep going.
My environment was going to be a town called Diss. I dont live there but it is close-ish and bigger
than the village I live in and the neighbouring village. I was planning to take photos of Diss to use
but I ended up limiting the area I was taking photos of to a small area around the mere of Diss.
The size of the project continued to decrease. Before I even started 3D modelling, I decided to not
use the actors I was planning to use.
The story was that 2 rival mad scientists who compete in an arena where creations are pitted against
each other decide to settle their differences with one last large scale assault. I mentioned I decided
on 6 of the 9 animals to be turned into Cyborgs. These 6 would be halved to give to each scientist.
With experience from my last course doing filming, I realised that not everybody is good at acting.
Especially when reciting lines. To compensate I designed my storyboard to accommodate no on
screen voice acting but instead explain their rivalry using a radio broadcast with voice actors
instead. This broadcast would explain the events preceding what will happen. Once again I dropped
this to avoid commanding actors to do something right. One quote I picked up well from my last
course was Do not rely on anyone. Just because if you need someone for something then theres a
good chance they cant make it. Its better to handle things yourself.
The new story is a basic assault on a city gone wrong but with a sprinkle of narrative. The narrative
being the logo on the desktop background implying an organisation of Evil doers. Theres only one
featured evil scientist whose only perspective is from the computer hes working on starting up.
I regret degrading my original idea to such a small size. But not much could have been done to
improve what I already made.
Premiere Pro editing was a bother. Once I finished I rendered it in 1080 but it came out with a
terrible resolution. After rescaling my clips instead of relying on Scale-to-fit I rendered it again. It
still looked awful. I had one of my peers, Chris, to look at it. Apparently my screen was set to 360
instead of 1080. Its quite a large difference to render something thats not 1080p to a screen size of
1080p.
Ive recently had to jump back into Premiere Pro to fix a problem I had with the password input clip
which I recorded and cropped using Bandicam. I laso used Bandicam for the GPS clip which was,
or course, Google Maps. I do not endorse or recommend anyone use Bandicam.

Overall I dont like the final outcome. It looks sloppy and it doesnt at all look as good as I wanted
it to. Ways I could have improved it was by having better textures for the models as well as
spending more time on the animation. in-fact the lack of time I had to work on the animation lead to
the inevitably short run-time of the video.
Earlier I briefly talked about the photos I took to put my 3D models into and how it didnt come out
well. The final outcome video is solid proof why it didnt work. Some other factors were its
improper lighting and how my simple design on paper came out almost monstrously in 3D and in a
real environment.
I never took Art GCSEs for one reason. I knew that theyd make me study and do realistic
drawings like portraits of other students or drawings of flowers. I never was good at it. I grew up
with Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon so my instinctive drawing style was always cartoony. Now
that I think about it, this whole animation would look Alot better if it were drawn and animated on
my chalk board at home like I did with my previous project since my hand drawn style could thrive.
However it wasnt all for naught. I gained experience from 3D modelling which was my main aim
to begin with. I say it was a win for the right reasons. I improved and made a video!