Category: Animated Narratives

Final Outcome and Reflection of our 30 second Animated Short

For this assessment we were put into groups of 5 and were asked to create a 30 second animation short based around the theme of ‘escape’. My group consisted of Alyssa, Amy, Dara, Shane and myself.

Our first idea was to produce an animation on bath toys escaping from a bathtub. However, on reflection, we thought it might be too hard to animatd water at our current skill level.   So, after a bit more of a discussion we settled on a Haunted House Theme.  The initial story idea was “Two ghosts enter a haunted house and come face to face with a scary monster. They escape the house in fear, and it’s revealed that the monster isn’t real, instead it’s just a coat rack”.

This initial story later changed after a bit of feedback to having a 3rd ghost playing a prank on the other ghosts instead of having a monster.

Final Outcome

I feel that the final outcome of the short is a success.  Our group is happy with the overall effect of the film and character wise we equally contributed to the animation.

For the most part, we followed Dara’s 3D previs for the camera angles and the timing.

The colour palate reflects the mood of the short.  Our colours are desaturated and muted in keeping with the spooky setting.

The background music was royalty free from Bensound and I think it contributed to the spooky tone of the short along with the sound effects that we used.

I do find working in a group stressful at times but I am pleased with how we all worked together to produce the short film.

Reflection

A lot of the work this year has been in collaboration with others.  I understand that this is a skill that is necessary, but I do find, at times, group work quite stressful. This is something I will need to work on and find ways to manage stress more effectively.  This time I was working with a group of people that I know very well as we all went to tech together, with the exception of one.  This has an advantage as it is usually easier to work with friends.  However, I think going forward working with others would be a good way to make new friends.  Generally, our group did work well together but there were times when I felt stressed and frustrated while waiting for others to complete their part of the project.  On the whole, however, it was a positive experience, and we did have good fun working together.

Each of us had to draw out a storyboard for the animation project and collectively decided on which storyboard we were going to base our animation on. Once we had decided on a storyboard, we each had to animate a 3D previs of our animation short. A 3D previs is the process of visualising a scene before creating it (3D version of a storyboard). When everyone’s 3D previs was done we decided we were going to go with Dara’s previs for our animation.

After we decided what our story was going to be, each of us had to design and model a character for the animation.  Shane and Amy had a ghost each, Alyssa and Dara designed and modelled some of the objects in the Haunted House and I was tasked with designing and modelling the monster, which later on, turned into the third ghost in the short.

With that out of the way we could then focus on the 3D modelling of the room, characters and assets.

As I had the most powerful computer, everyone imported their animations into my Blender file.

I really love the challenge of 3D animation and I took time to try and improve my ghost animation with various versions until I was finally happy with my character.  It is so enjoyable to see something you have created come to life on screen.  I feel like my skills in 3D animation have really improved this year and I feel more comfortable with Blender than I did at the beginning of this year.  I am also better at fixing any issues or problems that might come about.  I definitely prefer using Blender than Maya!

My overall contribution to this short includes two character designs and two character models.  I also modelled a chair, pillow, small table, coat stand, chest and door, wall candles, windows, trees, bricks, the floor, a coffee cup and the portal.  Not to forget modelling the room and the layout of the room.  I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Out of all that I have learnt this year I have been surprised by how much I really enjoy 3D animation.  I know I have a long way to go to improve my skills, but I will happily use blender in my own free time to do 3D animations for myself.  I hope to further build on my skills as the years go on.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this project, even though it had its ups and downs.  Working collaboratively with others, although challenging, is something I know has positives and I need to learn to manage the stress that goes along with this.  For me, the hardest and most challenging aspect of this project, indeed of any project is writing the blog and compiling the reflection.  I struggle a lot with spelling and grammar and need my writing read over by someone to point out where I have made mistakes.  Then I need help to redraft the work so it flows and is cohesive and reflects what is in my head.  Getting words onto paper is a struggle.  The drawing, modelling and animating side of things is what I thrive on and thoroughly enjoy.  I have enjoyed my first year at Ulster University and look forward to further developing my drawing and animating skills in both 2D and 3D animations.

I decided to draw a title card for our group project animation. We came up with a couple of name choices for our animation and in the end we went with Fright in the Night.

Amy and Alyssa came over to my house and animated their characters here with me.  I sent Shane and Dara a copy of the blender file to animate their characters.  Once they had done their animation, they sent it back to me.  So, once I had all the characters I appended the characters into my original blender file.  I did a quick render test to see how it looked and got everyone’s input before I did a final render.

 

With the animations rendered out, I then started to put it together in After Effects.  We wanted a close up shot of the possessed object’s reactions so we decided to do a split screen of the characters. This way we can have both characters in the shot and see them clearly.

When I came to add in sound, I asked the others to send me audio files that they wanted in the final animation.  I then imported them into the After Effects file.

I did a couple of rendered out mp4 videos before we settled on one we all liked.

After the animation I in put credits to show who modelled and animated the different characters.

My final Storyboard

Final Monster Design

Monster model

Final Ghost Design

Ghost Model

Objects

Painting frames (Drawings by Alyssa)

Chair, pillow and table

Coat stand

Chest and Door

Wall candles

Windows

Trees

Wall bricks

Flooring

Portal animation

Coffee spill

Test animations

3D Previs

Animation before Feedback

Final animation

 

The feedback we got after our presentation was to change the lighting so it was brighter.  It was also suggested that we fix the timing and make it clear that the ghosts have possessed the objects. Another suggestion was to add more sound effects to make it more obvious why the ghosts are scared.

For week four we did some camera exercises.

Once I did the camera work exercise, I then did the 3D previs exercise.

For this camera work exercise we learned how to switch camera views in an animation by using command B. Using the command B with different cameras I can switch between views to show the animation from different angles.

For week two we did some 3D animation exercises.

 

The first exercise we did was a ball bouncing using squash and stretch.

For the second animation exercise we had to animate a pendulum with follow though.

When animating the pendulum I can set it to individual origin.

With this last exercise I used both squash and stretch and follow though.

 

 

Once I’d had modelled the 3rd ghost and had textured it I then added some bones to do a test animation to get a feel for how the character should move. (The rig is only a temporary rig as we are going to learn how to do some more rigging in Thursdays class)

With a newly rigged model I did some more character animation tests.

Portal Animation

At some point it was mentioned that the ghosts should come into the room through a portal. I decided to research how to make a portal animation in blender.

I did a test animation to see how the ghost coming through the would look like.

 

Coffee cup animation

I thought I would be a cool idea if we had a coffee cup spill over when one of the Ghosts leaves the object,

so I modelled a coffee cup and animated it being knocked over.

I watched a YouTube video on fluid sim in blender to have the coffee spill out of the cup once it’s knocked over.

Video reference:

Split screen animation test done on After Effects

Now that my character is fully modelled with textures and clean geometry I can now start on rigging the character. I started by adding bones based on how I want the character to move.

Once I named each bone I went into pose mode and changed the bone shape to a circle (empty).

I duplicated the ghost model to change it’s facial expressions by altering the models and by changing the vertices and joining them to the first model as a shape key (blend shape).

Once the bones were in place and I then parented the model to the bones with automatic weights. Now that the ghost is rigged I will need to correct the weights by weight painting.

After the weight painting I went into pose mode and changed the viewpoint display of each of the bones to one of the empty shapes.

To rig the face I needed to link the shape keys to a controller by using bones and creating a driver.