Undercover ASSignment Update

A more substantial update for this week! With feedback from last update, I've settled on the story for the movie, and I've written up a rough draft of the intro. It is set after the end of Mass Effect 1 but before the destruction of the Normandy in Mass Effect 2. Thinking steps ahead, the Illusive Man wants data on the Collectors and arranges a deal with Aria. Miranda must work with Aria to earn the data. Miranda isn't given any specifics. It's only on Omega that Aria tells Miranda just exactly how she'll earn it. A pretty fun power move by Aria. Miranda, the exemplar operative, accepts.

The difficulty was making sure everyone involved was reasonably in character and it still made sense canonically. Overall, I think it can still using some refining, but the key elements are in place.

I want to emphasis that the Illusive Man is shady by not providing many details to Miranda. Either he knows how Aria wants to utilize her, or he doesn't know but doesn't care. He just puts pressure on her to get the data. It's an easy assignment. Work a mission for Aria in exchange for the data.

Aria is probably the easiest. The data on the Collectors isn't worth much to her. Cerberus isn't exactly the kind of people she'd like to deal with though. She can afford to have some fun at Miranda's expense and yet still earn credits from her work.

The trickiest part, which is probably what still needs more work, is how Miranda accepts the deal. I want pressure on her from the Illusive Man and Aria, but I don't want her to be completely coerced into it. I want her to be reluctant but determined. She's not initially going to like having to work at After-Life, but she will get the job done at all costs.

All the work into the intro has helped a bit on the motivation front. I think it can provide a stronger atmosphere for the movie. Pictured above is some early work of the outside of After-Life. I have to get pretty creative with the models available. The building of After-Life itself is a Geth dreadnought's gun.

Mainly, I need to work on the revamped VIP section of After-Life to get the rest of the movie going. It's also worth mentioning that LordAaardvark is working on a Miranda short of his own, and with it seems to be an update to her model. It may actually work out well in that I can finish a lot of the scene building work before the model is done, and then I can continue animating with the new one.

One other thing I want to talk about is secondary content. As I've said, I want to get more stuff done in combination with the movie, but it's difficult if I want to make significant progress with the movie. A simple animation loop can take me around 20 hours, which is easily most of my time in SFM in a week. That doesn't leave much for the movie. Yet I still want to be relevant with other stuff.

What about posters? Aside from commissions, I've mostly shied away from posters since I started animating. I think, through those commissions though, I've really improved on my posters. I can do a poster in just an evening. It takes about 3-5 hours to do one from scratch. I could potentially do a poster or two a week, and still have the majority of my SFM time dedicated to the movie. They would be much less of a distraction from the movie. It would also allow me to experiment with stuff much faster, and I could occasionally animate the best of them.

Let me know what you think.