Maya Has Broken Me

I think that it would be very easy for me to just slag of Maya for the entirety of this entry but I shall try to restrain myself and be a little bit constructive. Right, as you may have guessed, I have not got on particularly well with Maya this week, just as the ole’ flour sack thing seemed to be chugging along smoothly and I was on the verge of becoming a convert, a huge great dirty spanner was thrown in the works and completely buggered up everything as the anchor point things suddenly decided to go forth and multiply. After wasting a day bodging everything back together I encountered another little gem; for some reason whenever I move something to animate it, everything that has already been animated moves too, despite it being keyed. At this stage I don’t know if I these problems are a result of something that I have done or something that Maya has done. So to cut a long story short I have thrown the towel in and given up – Maya has broken me.

What have I learnt, well, apart from the fact that I never want to animate in Maya again and fail to see why anyone else would (I salute anyone who can though). It can be a surprisingly amusing programme to use whilst half drunk, although the chances of producing anything worthwhile are slim. Also, in the right hands (clearly not mine) I grudgingly acknowledge that you can do some interesting camera work and the like, but I am still not overly keen on the whole 3D environment that you can create.

Where from here then…bring on stop motion I cry! I have started work on my little pet project (sketches and so on and so forth) and plan to raid the library tomorrow to learn how to do things. Updates next week.

And finally, to conclude, my little review of A Scanner Darkly, mentioned last week. In terms of plot the film was OK if a tad curfuzzeling but it normally takes me a couple of attempts to understand most things. The rotoscoping was interesting, highlighting for me actions that animation can’t or doesn’t capture and also showing what animation can bring to a storey. At first I didn’t see what the rotoscoping brought to the storey but Rosie (correct me if I’m wrong Rosie) pointed out that the way that the characters ‘floated’ about (which I put down to dodgy rotoscoping) was meant to enhance the whole stoner mindset in the film.

Next week I will revisit Maya when I have had time to cool off and have a better look at my experience with it.