Category: Animated Narratives

Semester 2 Animated Narratives

I was very scared to start this module as, before this year, I had never done any 3D work. I found watching previous year’s animation jarring as I didn’t think I could create something that complex. To my surprise, I found it more enjoyable than 2D animation. There was much more work to complete which was overwhelming at times. However, I liked that there was so much to learn. I found this module very interesting and even the things that I found more difficult, such as rigging, I liked learning and practicing as it allowed me to improve my skulls a great deal.

Year 1

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first year. I feel like I have become more confident due to the amount of group work we do. I find it easier talking to people I have never met and communicating my ideas and opinions. I have also become more confident in my art and animation skills, as I find it easier to show people my work. My favourite part of semester 1 was learning about character design as I learned how to be freer and more creative with my designs so I’m not focusing too much on small details in the beginning. In semester 2, my favourite parts were learning about retopology and lighting as I find retopology very relaxing and love to see how even a small change in lighting can completely change the look of a shot. Seeing all that I have achieved this year makes me very excited for next year.

We finally finished our animation after many things going wrong over the past week. There were many problems with the lighting not working and camera angles going wrong in file transfers, so we each had to add our original camera angles manually into the Masterfile. Sadly, my blendshape keyframes for scenes 2 and 5 didn’t transfer properly. However, after spending so long on fixing other aspects of the animation, we agreed that it wasn’t noticeable unless you knew how the original files looked, so we chose to render the Masterfile. I am still so happy with everyone’s scenes and feel as though all our different skills blended well together to create this final animation.

(317) CEMETERY S’CARES – YouTube

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:

This semester, we started off my doing some animation practice. Using a ball and a wall, we were re-introduced to the 12 principals of animation. I enjoyed 2D animation last semester, so it was fun using the same principals in 3D.

I then used the same principals to create this blob jump. Using the controls for this shot were a little trickier than the ball, but I still enjoyed animating a proper character this time.

On week 6, Mike taught us about point and orientation constraints. This was my favourite animation so far. By parenting the wheel and seats to their own controls, and parenting the seats to the wheel, I was able to create a moving ferris wheel being disturbed by the wind. It was also fin to make the ferris wheel move in a loop on Maya by copying and pasting the first keyframe to the last keyframe, meaning while playing on Maya, the wheel never stopped moving.

This week was a little more difficult. We were shown how to parent joints and bind them to a mesh when rigging a character. After doing this, I then parented controls to the joints, so I wasn’t adding keyframes to the joints. I didn’t enjoy painting on skin weights to our mesh’s as when I painted on one joint, the rest could change, so it took a very long time to get them balanced so the mesh didn’t distort or move when a weird way when animating.

I didn’t think I would enjoy creating the Jurassic Park Previs as much as I did. It was very satisfying to me comparing the movements I created with the camera and characters compared to the actual scene in the first Jurassic Park movie. It was a bit tedious sometimes as it took a long time to create. It did, however, make me excited to create my own Previs as it was fun moving the characters without worrying too much about in-betweens and small details.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t complete much of the lighting exercise as Maya kept crashing when I entered render view after adding a new light and changing the intensity. I was able to render a single frame when I turned down the render settings, but at the time our uni computers where we sat weren’t working, so I had to keep the settings very low on my laptop. I enjoyed learning about 3 point lighting for characters and as well as this, I was able to create an Arnold sky dome light along with a spotlight coming through the window. I feel as though I learned a lot through these tutorials, even though it took much longer than expected to practice them.

As I modelled a skull for my 3D digital literacy assessment 1, I was already familiar with the basic shape of a skull. I used the same reference model to create the model. Even though my skull had exaggerated features, such as larger eyes and a smaller nose to make him look cuter, using the 3D model of a skull really helped when modelling mine in blender.

I created a sphere and used the draw and draw sharp tools to create his face at low resolution, then increased the resolution so I could carve out his nose and smooth out the whole skull. I feel my practice modelling skulls before was a large benefit when sculpting this skull, as it didn’t take me as long as I thought it would.

  

Reference:

After exporting the skull as an FBX to Maya, I started modelling the petals. As the petals had to be wrapped around the skull, which wasn’t a perfect sphere, I could not use the duplicate petal tool, meaning I had to model them separately. I used smooth preview and the multicut tool to create the curves in the petals. I wasn’t sure if they needed to be straight for rigging, so I saved them straight down in one file and folded at the bottom in another, so I was prepared for when it came to rigging.

I couldn’t get the shape of the petals just right, so I imported them into blender to smooth the mesh’s, however, when importing them back into Maya, the polycount was too high and I couldn’t reduce it in blender, so I went back to the original file and converted smooth mesh preview to polygons. After receiving feedback from Alec, he said that my petals didn’t need retopologized and I could begin rigging the folded petals once I finished retopologizing the skull head. I also included a short spine connecting the skull head to the flower petals like in one of my previous designs.

Before I retopologized my skull, Alec did show me how to bend the petals without needing to change the shape of the actual petals. By going to deform, nonlinear and blend, I was able to change the low bound, high bound and curvature assets to fold the tops of my petals.

Reference:

To include in our environment, I created a patch of grass that could be placed in front of headstones in blender, then added a green standard surface layer in Maya.

After I uv mapped my character, I imported it as an FBX into substance painter, where I added a candle wax layer to the skull that was recommended by Cloe. Instead of creating actual dark eye sockets for his head, I added a layer of dirt by creating a fill layer and black mask and painting in all the creases on his head.

I still wanted the skull boy to resemble a tulip, so I looked up reference images of red tulips as I wasn’t sure how the red and orange colours in their petals blended together.

Petal Reference:

Alec sent me a tutorial on how to rig my character using NURBS circles and the bends I created before texturing. After parenting controls to each petal and the whole character, I created a new attribute in the channel called fold to each of the petals and set a driven key so when I turned the fold attribute to 0, the petals would unfold and when I turned it to 10, they would unfold, exposing the whole head. I also parented 3 joints and bound them to the spine and skull head, so I could rotate and move the head in a more realistic way.

Once my character was rigged, I attempted light trials so I could see how my textures would look in the final render. I also added blendshapes to the skull, allowing the animator to change his expression to whatever fits the emotion of their scene. I am very proud of the character I created as I feel he is exactly how I imagined him to be and I love how the lighting brings him to life.

Blendshapes:

Storyboard:

I felt that my character’s expressions were an important part of this animation. He goes from feeling scared to sad to angry to happy in such a short period of time. In the beginning of my storyboard, I have a close up of the character, to show his intentions through his expression. He wants to scare this worm. He tries to, which we see with a long shot of the two characters. A close up of the worm then shows he is unphased by the skull boy. He gets scared and hides himself in his petals. However, seeing the other monsters scaring a creature gives him the courage to scare the worm. Last semester, I feel as though I took too long as I was trying to make it too detailed. I wish I had time to go back and complete this one, however, I think I’m making progress in terms of the time I took on each panel. We ended up going with Jorja’s storyboard as we felt her panels told the story well.

Originally, we had the monster scaring montage in the beginning of the storyboard. However, after receiving feedback, both us and our tutors agreed that it would make more sense to have the montage in the middle of the animation, as after seeing them scare, this gives the small monster the courage to scare the worm. If we had kept the montage in the beginning, it might have been confusing to the viewer why he gained the courage.

Jorja’s Storyboard:

As a reference, I used an image from one of my favourite tv shows when I was younger. I remembered a shot from the bloopers of Teen Wolf where the main character appears mysteriously from behind a wall. I felt this would be a light-hearted way to as a bit of tension to the animation.

Reference:

Animatic:

Our group decided to do an animatic each to see which direction we wanted to go for our previs. I began mine by creating shots 1-3 and Jasmin a couple more than me. However, we were both then told to only do a section of the animatic each to save time. As Jasmin had completed more of her animatic than me, I decided to finish the rest of the animatic. I included my shots into one version of the animatic and Jasmin’s in another to give the group options on how we wanted the animation to look. There were a couple of shots of Jasmin’s (6 and 7) that I had to edit based on our feedback and changes we wanted to make in the group. I feel that both of our animatic drawings work well together and it is easy to tell what is happening on screen. To create the final shot, I traced Jorja’s final storyboard image and moved the third monster’s arm to show that he is giving the small monster a pat on the back.

 

Previs

When it came to making the Previs, I asked if I could create scene 1 as I felt doing that scene would make me more familiar with my character as I would be animating him more than anyone else. I started by creating a simple headstone shape using a squashed and stretched cube. I then created a simple form of my character with a head and 2 petal shapes as his body. I also used the sweep mesh tool to create the worm.

I’ve had never made a Previs video before, so I felt it quite strange to not make the characters and their movements too detailed. I created a simple jump and stretched and rotated my character t show him scaring the worm and stretched him again when the worm scares him before he hides behind the grave. So the camera shots didn’t become too confusing during the Previs when everything was put together, I kept my scene to a long shot. This also shows the actions of both characters. As they happen in such a short period of time, any camera changes might have been too chaotic to watch on screen.

Unfortunately, after we finished our Previs, we received feedback from our tutors and were instructed to change our Previs back to our original storyboard idea where we have the scare montage at the start of the animation. As this put us behind, Jasmin used the environment her and Cloe had made for our animation along with what we had modelled of our characters so far to create a new Previs.

During the week after our group was formed, we decided to each draw concepts of our favourite idea so we could decide which was our favourite. I decided to draw 2 character concepts for my elements idea. I took inspiration from actual elements of nature, and cartoon symbols of the 4 elements. Even though they didn’t get picked, I am still very happy with them and feel as though they would be simple to animate if we choose to use them for a future project.

References:

After everyone showed their concepts, we decided on a plant who is too cute/shy to scare like his peers. By the end of the animation, he learns how to scare. The armature of the animation, which is the lesson of the film that the creators want the audience to think about whilst watching the animation, is everyone develops at their own pace. We all then began drawing concepts for this animation. We decided there would be 1 small monster who couldn’t scare, 3 large monsters who the small monster looked up to, and a small creature who the small monster would try to scare throughout the animation. I began researching scary plants to use as references for the monsters, specifically the 3 large monsters. On the planteria group website, I found the top 10 scary plants. The ones I found most interesting and felt as though I could incorporate into a character were the cuscuta – strangle tare, bladderwort, white baneberry (doll’s eyes), the corpse flower, and the brain cactus.

I then looked up other plants such as tulips and plant bulbs as I felt like these rounder and ore colourful shapes would work better for the small creature. As a group, we also decided we wanted to incorporate skulls into the character designs as we felt a graveyard would be a good environment for the animation. This would then link the characters well to the environment. As coco is one of my favourite movies, I researched designs, models, and film screenshots to base the characters on. I also found images from an old Disney animation called ‘the Skeleton Dance’ to base my characters on.

I first drew a concept design for the small monster character, as I already had an idea for him, and he sounded like he would be my favourite character from out group discussions. At this point, we didn’t know how the environment was going to look or how it was going to be affected by lighting, so I simply chose colours that I thought would work well with the character. I began by doing a couple of sketches of tulip petals, so I could get the right shape and form for designing the character. Through my research, I found that the red tulips were my favourite, so I drew red petals so the characters body and folded them in half so the head would be revealed. I wanted him to have bright eyes to contrast with the dark, hollowed out areas of the skull. I took inspiration here from the main villain from ‘league of super evil’ so that even though he was a cute character, he had an evil element to him. After I finished these designs, I changed the colour of the petals to blue to see which suited him better. Everyone from my group agreed that the red suited him more.

References:

I also drew four quick sketches for the other characters and developed my favourite ones further. For this monster, I used the flower of the bladderwort for the head, the white baneberry for the eyes and skeleton and the corpse flower for the arms, incorporating 3 different scary plants into the design. I feel as though giving him long, thin pupils instead of large, round ones gives him a creepier look, as if he is focusing on you and only you.

For this design, I kept to the same body design as the previous monster, but gave him a skull head instead, so there were similarities between both the small monster and the other monster. I changed his eye colour to red instead of keeping it yellow/amber like the small monster, so he looked eviller. As our characters are not allowed to have legs for this assessment, I gave this character large, flat hands as a way of moving.

For my final character design, I imagined the small creature who the small monster tries to scare as a worm. Something so small that seems easy to scare, yet he still doesn’t succeed. Even though I wanted him to have exaggerated characteristics such as a large head and eyes to show his expressions in a better way, I still wanted him to look like a worm, so I researched images of real worms and used a colour palette similar to them. At the end of the animation, the small monster would gai the confidence to scare the worm, so I also drew different expressions to use for the animation.

For the environment, we had agreed on a graveyard so me, Jasmin and Cloe designed a graveyard each for the animation. There is an old graveyard near where I live, so I took images there to use as references. I began by drawing a quick sketch, then doing a line drawing on top of that so I could get the right shape for the gravestones as there were a few different shapes. There were many gravestones in the graveyard, so I took some out so there would be enough room for the monsters to walk/move around. I then added some colour to the environment. After finishing the first drawing, I felt as though there wasn’t enough contrast between the highlights and shadows, so I re drew some of the colours to give the image more depth. I’m happy with how the final product came out and feel the environment looks quite creepy.

For the final monster designs, we decided to stick with Jorja’s skull design. Everyone in the group chose their favourite character, and we’re each going to design and rig our favourites. I was allocated the small monster, Jorja, Cloe and Jasmin are creating the three big monsters and Lydia will be creating the small creature. As the small monster is my character, I re-drew him to fit our new design. I kept the same basic body, however, I took away his eyes and gave him large teeth instead of a mouth. The others are giving their monsters 4 teeth, however, I decided to give mine 3 as I thought it would make him look younger and a little cuter than the other monsters. I also thought it would look a little strange to have his head simply floating above the petals, so I sketched out two different neck/spine designs to fit with the style of the character.

Groups designs – Cloe:

Jorja:

Jasmin:

Lydia:

 

This week, we were told to form groups of 4-5 so we can start thinking of ideas for our assessment 2. For this assessment, we have to create a 15-30 animated short based on the theme of ‘nature’. For this assessment, I am working with Jasmin, Cloe, and Lydia, who I worked with last semester, and Jorja, who I have not yet worked with. It was only me and Jasmin on campus this week, but we were able to talk to the others on discord to come up with ideas for our animation.

We decided to split our themes into 3 categories. Animals, plants, and others. Jasmin’s first ideas involved a snake cowboy and penguins who mate for life. My first idea was to have the 4 elements (fire, earth, air, and water) fight to see whose powers were the strongest. Cloe also had the idea of doing plants and flowers inspired by D&D. Everyone, however, agreed we wanted to do a more light-hearted animation, as our animation last semester was more serious.

By the end of the lesson, we all agreed that our favourite ideas were the 4 elements, a new idea from Jasmin involving a Mexican wave from cacti at a football match and Cloe’s D&D plants, inspired by Tim Burtons.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working in a new group on our Narrative Studies Presentation. The assessment was to analyse a short, animated film whilst considering the Hero’s Journey, Mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound, editing and how the animation evoked a reaction from the audience. We were given a lecture on narrative and technical details, and how different areas such as plot, structure, theme, style, lighting, camera movements, sound etc. change the emotions in an animation. I learned about different camera shots, such as close-ups, long shots and POV shots, high key and low key lighting, and diegetic sound (sound whose source is visible on screen) and non-diegetic sound (sounds only the audience can hear).

My group included me, Milo, Caitlin, Dan and Alexander, and our short animation to analyse was called “Late Afternoon.” It is an Irish animation about an elderly woman who is experiencing memories from her past, whilst being brought back to the present where a woman is looking after her. At the end of the animation, she remembers that the woman in the room with her is her daughter Kate, suggesting the woman has some form of memory loss, such as dementia.

We first thought about allocating one area to each person, so I would talk about the hero’s journey and Milo would talk about sound etc, but we then decided to split the animation itself into sections. I was allocated her final cluster of memories, where we see her running to her husband, to her calling for her daughter at the beach.

Through my research, I found out many interesting things, such as how it relates to the hero’s journey by crossing the threshold and encountering challenges. Colours are also a large part of the animation, as they are seen many separate times in different settings, both in her subconscious and the physical world. In her subconscious, the colours make the audience feel trapped. However, the soft colours at the beach in the physical world make the viewer fell calm and at peace. Diegetic sound is heard multiple times throughout the animation, such as through character dialogue. During her memories, non-diegetic sound is played. During tense times, the music softens, enabling the viewer to concentrate on intense shots.

Links:

Script

Assessment 1

Before classes started this semester, we given the task of creating a 3D cactus in Maya. I was nervous to begin this task as this was one of my first times using Maya and there were many things with which I was not yet familiar. Once I started the tutorials, I found using Maya easier than I thought I would, although there was still much to learn.

To create the pot for the cactus, I started by creating a cube and using the smooth button to create more faces. I then turned the divisions up to two to smooth the cube put even more. To create the base of the pot, I then deleted the faces of the top half of the smoothed cube and flattened the remaining faces using the scale tool on the left hand side of the screen.

I then learned how to extrude the edges of the flattened shape by going to edit mesh and extrude and selecting the move tool to move the edges up. Once the sides of the pot were made, I widened the top of the pot, and continued to extrude the edges until the basic pot model was finished. I also smoothed and bevelled the edges of the pot so there were sharp edges. Alec’s tutorial also taught me about how pressing 3 on my keyboard wouldn’t change the shape of the mesh but shows a smooth preview.

To create the cactus body, I created another cube, smoothed it, and placed it above the pot. The reason I did not use a cylinder was when I used a smooth preview, there were dents throughout the cylinder due to the long, thin triangles at the base and top of the cylinder. A cube is much smoother and there are no unwanted dents when the edges are smoothed. I then deleted the faces on the bottom half of the mesh and extruded the bottom edge to create the desired height of the body. Then, by using the multi cut tool, I added more edges throughout the extruded part of the body and used the B shortcut to create a soft blend when I made a section of the mesh wider.

I then created the eyes and arms. To create the needles, I created a single needle by using a cone mesh, then used the placer tool so I could “paint” the single needle across the whole body, making multiple. Creating the body of the cactus took more time than I thought it would, as I was getting used to using Maya, so creating the eyes, arms and needles was the furthest I could go with the model. I feel as though I learned much from these tutorials and will hopefully be able to finish this model during the semester.