Week 3 – Pitch Presentation (Project Idea / Style references / Rough Designs / Storyboard)
In the brainstorming stage we really wanted to get our ideas down on paper not worried about making our page look clean or committing to ideas or designs to early so we went with old fashioned pens and paper, We started by using the story blocks. Any random ideas that we thought were interesting or wacky we wrote them down.
From here we started to expand and discuss a few of our favorite concepts from the sheet and found the idea we were all passionate about while sticking to the necessary requirements needed for the film. This part was great as everyone contributed to the brainstorming, twisting ideas from things we loved and eventually arriving at the idea of a Gnome escaping from a bunch of Cannibal/ zombie like Gnomes.
Design Stage:
My Gnome Design concepts:
Lee’s Gnome Designs:
Lee’s Storyboard:
Lucas Storyboard:
My Storyboard:
Cates storyboard:
Combined Storyboard:
In our storyboards, Me, Cate and Lee were successful in staying in contact with how we wanted the film to progress and we had the general order of how the story was gonna be told. However in the end we decided to combine Cate and lees storyboards together, as creating a fire animation seemed a bit daunting and opted for taking that aspect out. We also felt going with my storyboard incorporated scenes that would’ve been too dark, so instead of opting for an entirely night scene, we wanted a transition from night to day. Going with the combined work of Cate and Lees storyboards benefited us, as in their storyboards we got to see a lot of the world and environment the gnomes live in. But I’m glad we opened ourselves up to many options and interpretations.
Week 5 – Pre-Production – 3D Previs, Final Designs
This is the stage were we filled out our scene, adding buildings, ponds, bushes and trees. The work for this was very much carried by Lee and Cate with a few subtle additions I added myself. I added my gnomes into the scene allowing the area to be populated and add some life to the scene.
We knew needed a stylized almost cartoonish, warped look to fit in with the set and the low poly look. This was mostly done to add backdrop to the scene, so that the camera wouldn’t see any cut offs or blank areas in the background
Week 10 – Production Progress
Week 12 – Finished Animation
Animation aspect of the assignment the project was difficult. I had animated and rigged my gnomes however with technical issues getting in the way i did my best to animate aspects of the gnome despite the use of a rig due to the time constraint. We moved ahead with that part of the second act for any animations and camera work. The file was shared on discord allowing anyone to butt in and work on, sending updates on the project as we moved forward. The camera work was difficult in sense as exacuting the look of horror movies/shows, The Walking Dead was a huge inspiration on this section of the short film.
Final Reflection
Going into the 2nd semester, it started well. As group we had effectively communicated on the project. Discussing our interests and trying to flesh out and find a unique idea for the short film. Doing the concept art and working the storyboards to visualize roughly how this film would look and how it would play out. Mixing and matching each other’s ideas and seeing it come together was a lot of fun, and the engagement was what made it much easier. However, we did seem at the start to have difficulty communicating with other members but assumed it was a one-off thing as we all get busy and our lives are complicated, and that the contribution would come later into the project. At this point I believed that this would’ve been the chance to better myself at Blender and finally get a grip of familiarising myself with the programme. I soon found myself struggling and still finding difficulty with as we got into the lectures and the tools and addons we had to learn. Sculpting and creating items was generally fine with most things being easy enough to create. However, going into the later part of the semester and beginning to familiarise myself with the cameras and rigging was something that took me a long time to get a grasp of, especially rigging. A lot of the times I tried to move my character or object, it would then become warped and unnatural, I got picky and all together very frustrated with the heat maps resulting having to rush my model into the project with no rigging and having to animate his movements, essentially having him waddle around. I believe I let my team down in aspects in contributing to the actual final project. However, I didn’t help that some of our members didn’t show up either basically leaving me, Cate and Lee to scramble to get this film done with little to no communication. I believe that going into next year, I need to utilize my time on the homework side and spend as much time in the earlier stages in understanding how the tools like rigging and the cameras work so there is no stress hitting certain deadlines and no stress on teammates. It was my own fault and definitely something I’ll work on going into next year. I commend and thank my teammates Cate and Lee as they really carried and helped me through this project. I will take a positive from this experience and improve going into my 2nd year.