Concept Art:

Storyboards:

3D Character Models:

Props:

Environments:

Animations:

Final Animation:

Moving onto post production, I was excited to put everything together and see the final project. I was unable to access AfterEffects at home which was unfortunate but probably for the best as I was already cutting it very close to the deadline and am not exactly comfortable with that software yet. Instead I used a free Microsoft software called Clipchamp. Unfortunately this did limit what I was able to do with my section but in the end I am still very happy with the turnout.

I used a website called freesounds to gather royalty free sound effects.

Here is the animation with the sound effects!

I then handed my edited clips over to my teammate Sam, who took charge in editing everyone’s parts together and adding the background tracks to the project. We didn’t know what music we wanted in the background but we knew we wanted it to match our overly cartoony ‘spooky’ vibe. So we looked up royalty free Halloween music and shared what we found with each other through discord. Additionally, we thought I would be a good idea to look at the things that inspired us so I looked at the soundtrack for various Tim Burton films and the OST for games like Luigi’s Mansion and Mario 64. I also found some songs from my favourite game Night in the Woods which I thought fit in perfectly for the vibe of the short. 

Moving onto the production, we started with modelling. Having quite a few characters in our short, it was decided that some of us would have to model more characters than others. To balance this out, those with fewer models to make would focus more on creating props. The work load was spilt like this:

• Max: Modelling Ghost Hunter 1, creating props
• Kain: Modelling Ghost Hunter 2 and Shyguy Ghost
• Sam: Modelling the Demon and Beerbelly Ghost
• Me: Modelling Lil’ Ghostie, creating props

I was worried about the modelling process as it was something I struggled with last term but thankfully the character I was assigned had a design that wasn’t too complicated. Down the line I ended up modelling the Beerbelly Ghost as Sam was working hard on the Demon model (which turned out amazing!) and the character design was simple enough for me to create in Blender. Another plus on the Ghost character were that they could be textured in Blender. As a group, we were trying to figure out ways to colour the ghosts so that they would be visually different from the Ghost Hunters – experimenting with making them transparent, parenting light points to them to make them glow – and then Mike told us about the Fresnel shader, which would give the Ghosts a glowy outline and give the illusion of the model edges being transparent. We agreed this would be the best option as it wasn’t too complicated to set up.

For the Ghost Hunters, we wanted something of a similar vein – to make them visually stand out from the background but also make them different from the Ghosts. Max and Kain had the idea to experiment with Toon Shaders, something that would make the characters look 2D, and after watching some tutorials we decided to apply this to those characters.

Rigging was surprisingly my favourite part. The process wasn’t too difficult, the only issue I really ran into was systemizing the bones but it was easy enough to fix. Thankfully my models were simple and didn’t require much armature.

What they did need, however, was expressions. As the Ghosts don’t have mouths, all the emotion had to be translated through the eyes and funnily enough I kept forgetting what facial expressions looked like and had to sit in front of a mirror while I made the shape keys. Still, I felt like I wasn’t getting the feeling across. I brought this issue to my friends in the course and one, Ciaran, showed me a way to add a displacement modifier to the model so that it would make it ‘blobby’ for lack of a better term. Below are some animation tests I did with this modifier.

Being able to change the effect allowed me to get the emotions of the characters across so much better.

Each member of the group were in charge of making the environments needed for their scene. Originally, there were only supposed to be 3 environments; The living room, the attic and a hallway. However, Max brought forth the idea of there being a section between my part and Sam’s to show the ghosts travelling through the house up to the attic, so he took charge of that.

My environment was the living room. I wanted it too feel like a stereotypical haunted house: very decrepit and empty. I had very few props in my section as I wanted the house to feel abandoned. All the props I did make – a sofa, a lamp, a chest of drawers and a staircase – I wanted to have an old look to them so I looked up antique furniture and tried to copy those to the best of my ability. I struggled a bit when making the sofa as I didn’t notice the model had quite a few N-gons which made the model deform massively when applying a subdivision surface, but this was easily fixed.

Another thing I was worried about was using Substance Painter. I had totally forgot how to use it! Thankfully, Mike’s tutorials from last term are still available and were my saving grace through the entire texturing process. I used smart materials, especially on the walls, to give everything an aged look and I kept the colour pallet limited to purples, browns and greys to keep with that dark whimsical aesthetic. It took many hours, but I am proud of the living room I made. I also modelled and textured the outside of the house for the intro.

Finally, before starting the actual animation I did a small test to ensure all the rigs and modifiers were working.

And here’s the final animation! (without sound)

Overall, I am happy with how my animation turned out, minus a few errors I’ve only noticed after rendering. For example, the Ghost Hunters’ movements could have been smoother and more fluid, I could’ve made some secondary animations – like their hats bouncing – a bit more noticeable and the camera movements can be janky at times. I do really like how the modifiers on the ghost look in the render and I feel like they worked in portraying the emotion of the ghosts. I wish I worked a little more on the Hunters’ laser gun, if I had experimented with shaders and modifiers a bit more I could’ve made that section more effective and clear as to what was happening but I feel like it comes across OK once I add the sound to the video.

This assignment we were tasked with creating an animated short based on the theme of ‘Journey’. I was placed into group 13 (Lucky!) along with Max, Sam and Kain.

Our first course of action was to, obviously, come up with an idea. We were limited in our concepts though, as one of the criteria for this project was that our characters could not have legs so we started by thinking of things that didn’t have legs we could turn into character. In the end, we came up with three ideas:

• The Quest for the Stone of Harpilla Valley: a robot not only has full knowledge of everything. But lost someone close that was caused by the main antagonist who is also after the stone in the background of the over arcing story. The robot became empty and hid himself from everything else to mourn and heal from his lose. (Concept art by Max)

• You Got Snail!: A snail postman who has to travel across the garden to deliver a present. (Concept art by Me)

• Ghost Problem: Three ghosts must defend their home from the paranormal investigators trying to capture them (Concept Art by Kain)

In the end, we all agreed that we liked Ghost Problem the most. 

As a group, we communicated mainly through Discord. It was ultimately the easiest option as everyone had busy schedules that didn’t line up often and it helped us keep in contact and easily exchange ideas. After deciding on our idea, I went to research potential style references and inspiration which helped me put together a mood board for our short.

For the overall aesthetic, we knew we wanted the characters to be very cartoonish and comedic, so we looked at the Luigi’s Mansion game series for inspiration when designing the main characters.

As for the background, we wanted a more dark, whimsical atmosphere. For this we looked at the movie Monster House for the interior settings and Tim Burton’s architectural art for the outside of the house.

Each member of the group split up and designed their own version of each character (of which there were 4). That way, we would have a lot of vastly different and unique designs to chose from. Below are my designs:

In the end, we decided to go with one of my designs for the green ghost

When designing the antagonists, the initial designs we came up with were generic however we received feedback from the tutors that something about the designs felt out of place. Max then designed some more interesting and stylized designs.

First Designs

Max’s New Designs

I also did some concept art for the set designs

To decide who made what part, we divided the story into 4 sections and each member chose which part they would like to do. I ended up with the intro/starting section. 

Here is the original synopsis of our short: Three totally un-scary ghosts have their home invaded by two paranormal investigators, who captures one of their friends. The two remaining ghosts must go to an elder ghost across the street to train how to be scary and rescue their friend. However, as we hit the storyboarding step, we quickly realised that this was far too ambitious to fit into the time frame. To fix this, we decided to have the elder ghost (now a demon) live in the attic, and have the demon be the one to scare the ghosts away. 

Before animating, we had to create a 3D Previs to roughly visualise what the final animation would look like. In my previs, I made a few minor changes to my section. For example, instead of the Beerbelly Ghost jumpscaring the audience after the intro it’s now the Lil’ Ghostie as I thought it would be funnier; and instead of the two smaller ghosts jumping out the window to escape the ghost hunters they faze through the roof.