DTC-335 Final Chess Project
Channel: Justin Williams
Date: 2015-05-05

This is an animation I made as a final project in DTC-335 while attending Washington State University Vancouver.  My original intent when I had started this project was to make an animated scene from an old western style shootout using chess pieces as the characters.  As my modeling progressed and moved into animation, I ended up completely switching gears and made an animation about two unlikely lovers (Queen and Pawn) meeting on the other side of the board, and in the end finding love for one another.  Modeling the chess pieces was fairly straightforward, for me the difficulty came in actually making them come to life.  

 The beginning of the animation shows the entire chess set lined up and ready for battle.  As the scene progresses, chess pieces are eliminated and disappear/fall off of the board.  A pawn is shoved through the board and ends up on the other side, followed shortly thereafter by the Queen.  Even as the camera turns to view the underside of the board with the Queen and Pawn, the rest of the chess pieces continue to battle until none are left, leaving just the Queen and Pawn on the underneath side of the board to find each other and dance to find their love for each other.  

 Overall, I’m happy with the way the animation turned out.  There are a couple of parts where the camera makes a couple of unwanted/fast/glitch movements, but almost completely how I wanted the camera movement to turn out.  The main issue I have with my completed project is that the chess pieces appear to move through the material I created for them, rather than being perfectly attached to them.  I had gone through the steps to “bake” the materials on, and didn’t’ see the issue until I was already through rendering the sequence of images.