Over easter, I completed my part of the animation. I found it extremely fun to see my character come to life the further I got with my animation. I started off by keeping the movements of the character quite simple so I could block out where I wanted him to go without making things too confusing later on. I used his petals to give him a push into the air since I wasn’t allowed to give him legs to squash and stretch, making the jump look more natural.
I also watched a video on how to animate vibrations as when the worm scared him, he didn’t look very scared as he hid behind his petals, only sad. I thought by making him look like he was shaking would read better on screen. This is the first time I had attempted vibrations in animation, and I am very happy with how they turned out. It was quite simple to do as I just needed set keyframes. of him standing to the left, and every other keyframe move him to the right
(318) Animation Tutorial – Easy Vibrations – YouTube
I then continued to add more in-betweens to his movements to make his jumping and landing look more natural. When he jumps after the worm, instead of looking at the worm as he jumps, I chose to make him have one last look at the large monsters, as if he’s looking for that last little bit of courage from them. I also gave him a wabble as he lands due to his round shape and used a YouTube video as a reference.
(318) A Wobbly Twig Vase – YouTube
After a discussion with the group, we found that there was a bit of confusion. Where the skull boy stands at the end of my scene was different to where he stood at the start of Cloe’s scene. It seemed the best option for me to change the end of my scene, so instead of him standing in the same spot when he’s scared, I have the skull boy move swiftly back and hide, landing in front of the grave where Cloe had him.
I also thought that after looking at the monsters, the skull boy felt sad, however, that wasn’t Jasmin’s intentions. They agreed it was fine the way I had already animated it, but I thought to give us options I would make him look up at the large monsters with a ‘wow’ expression the way Jasmin imagined him. I wasn’t very happy with how it looked as I felt it didn’t read well when he heard the worm behind him after looking at the monsters, so I tried to incorporate the two expressions. After he has a look at the monsters, he then becomes sad, as he doesn’t have the ability to scare the way they can.
Once Lydia uploaded her finished character, I began animating the worm. Up until this point, I had been using my worm model from my original Previs shot, so I roughly knew the timing and placement of her character when it came to animating it. Unfortunately, there were no blendshapes on her character to change his expression, so I tried my best to show his mood through his movements. There were quite a few controls on the worm, so I found it a little difficult sometimes when moving his head and tail. I started by having his head raised when he was moving, however, it didn’t look like anything was pulling him, so he looked too stiff.
I researched a how a real worm moved by watching a YouTube video on the Nuffield Foundation YouTube channel. Because of the short length of the worm, I wasn’t able to move it the same way as an actual worm, however I did try to make it look as though the head was pulling the worm the way an actual worm’s does, just a bit faster than a normal worm so the timing was right for the animation. I was a bit pushed for time with the worm as I only received the file the Sunday before our submission date, however, I feel as though the scene reads well and I’m happy with how my first 3D animation turned out.
I ran into a problem when adding the textures onto the hedges in my scene. When I opened the uv editor, I realised that the uv map didn’t transfer when I downloaded the environment. Jasmin sent me the OBJ file with the correct hedge to use, but the texture still didn’t apply properly. Around this time, we were told that there were too many inconsistencies in our environments, so instead of rendering our separate animations, we all sent our files to Jasmin who imported them into the same Masterfile. This meant that my textures and lighting weren’t going to be used, therefore I didn’t need to worry about the texture not working. If I had more time, I would have liked to fix the hedge, so I had my complete animation.
Once I finished texturing and animating, I moved onto lighting the characters. I found this much more enjoyable as the first time I tried lighting. Even though my lights weren’t being used, I still wanted to practice lighting my character. Early on, our group decided to use a Simpson’s horror episode as an environment reference for colours. I tried to follow this colour palette for my lighting, whilst still making it suitable for our animation. For me, the reference was a little too bright, however, I did like the blue tones in the grass, so I gave the lights a light blue hue and use render view every time I moved the lights. I wanted to use low key lighting as our animation is set at night and I felt as though it would give the scene a little more mystery. Also, the only light sources in the animation are the moon, stars, and a couple of candles throughout the environment, so using brighter lights would have looked unnatural.
Environment reference:
All frame render tests:
I made the lighting on the worm a little bit lighter than my character, and I preferred how it looked as it highlighted the characters more whilst still looking natural, so I moved the cameras closer to my character.
The original plan for animating was I was to animate scene 2 and Lydia was to animate scene 5. Unfortunately, we couldn’t use Lydia’s scene as it didn’t follow the Previs how we wanted. The characters were not standing in the same place as in everyone else’s scenes, there were limited movements in the characters and the changes we needed were not made. Due to this, before Jasmin began rendering the Masterfile, I spent the morning animating a new scene 5. I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked on the scene as we were extremely limited for time at this point having been the day before our submission date. However, I feel it reads well and follows the Previs how we wanted.
Scene 5:
