For this task we are put into groups to make a short 3d animation based on the theme “nature”. Each group member must design, rig and animate a 3d character for the animation which is to be around 30 seconds long.

The first thing we did was discuss in our group what exactly we wanted our animation to be about. Our first point of focus was figuring out our characters and working from there. After some quick discussion we settled on making our characters robots as we thought we could design them well with the assignment in mind which states the characters shouldn’t have legs.

Our next focus was where the setting of the animation would be. As the theme for the assignment was nature we decided to place our robots in an overgrown city where nature has taken over.

Here are a few of the concept sketches and refrences I made and collected to help with the designs,

When we were all happy with our character designs, it was time we came up with the story of the animation. To visualise this we made a story board as a group and split it into parts so that each member could take a scene and animate it. The scene each person got has their own robot characer in it an usually involves it being introduced.

The next step after this was to create an animatic to figure out the timing and compsition of my scene that i was animating. For this I drew assets in photoshop and animated them in after effects to give me some idea of how the scene will play out when I go to animate it in MAYA. Here are some stills from the animatic.