As Conor had completed the final concepts of the Death model, I decided to look into potential ways on how we may create the shattered effect for Death. As progress on the death model’s physical skull hadn’t been started, I researched into potential ways we could “break” it, I mainly looked at Maya’s physics properties and ran a decimate function over a rough block out I had made this feature provided clear results that seemed to look fine but caused a bad issue as it caused the computer to crash several times. I also attempted to use Maya’s toon filter to see how that would look and realised that it could be a viable option if needed for a backup. Conor then suggested he would try sculpting pieces of geometry separately instead so that was passed off to him to work out.

Getting started on the asset modelling I started designing Death’s boat. This boat would feature in a little over half of our scenes and therefore could be considered a major character but didn’t need any overly complex details etc. I modelled the boat in maya going through a few designs before ultimately deciding on taking inspiration from a Scandinavian long ship and a Italian Gondola, the row boat aesthetic I felt fit well with the original source material of Charon the boatman (although not fully considered an incarnation of Death depending on the source material he is referred to as a reaper and therefore we wanted to outright state our boatman is Death and he has a much more complex job, directly retrieving the souls himself and being their guide into the unknown.

 

The boat model was my main source of testing looking at the texture style in Unreal, Substance Painter, Blender and back in Maya, I took the boats normal map into Blender following a tutorial that would give a brush stroke effect to the model normal map in hopes of creating a model that looked painted before adding any colours or extra details. Blender gave a clear example of how it would look and was easily brought out so it could be used elsewhere but because of the high level of complexity in the boats shape it caused many issues and looked wrong as though it was broken and i felt substance painter was the better direction to move forwards with. The version I attempted in Substance painter was a lot more successful with the use of a blur slope to fade edges and a water colour filter to make the boat feel like it was covered in spots of ink instead of solid colour this was a nice middle ground we felt bridging the gap between 3D Comic and 3D Painterly.

    

 

Due to issues with our story’s pacing and timing we were advised to look at our roughs and revise them and while the drawings were Conor’s responsibility I was in charge of writing the direction and camera shots (the script for all intensive purposes) this was to better help Conor envision the idea I had and also save time as I was faster detailing a shot and drawing scratchy version that he could then flesh out better. We also rolled with the idea of using voice acting, because death is a unique character I attempted the use of a voice modifier to record some different versions of dialogue, but it always felt like it was too much. I recorded some rough dialogue that could allow for some clearer narrative for the skeletons the hope was to use rigs to either add blendshapes or full facial rigs like Coco.

It was my responsibility to create the animatic we would base our short film on, this was supposed to be straight forward because the drawing were done to the prompts I had made so it was just remaking camera effects and adding sound effects but Conor opted not to make individual frames or separate as well when sending them to me so I had to crop each image first, for future revisions and changes I told Conor I would not accept them unless this was already done as pre-production had already started and there wasn’t enough time to do this when I was researching and working on other tasks. These versions of the storyboard however would be the only main versions with changes being discussed through meetings about the pacing.

I began working on the overall themes and layout for our main environments. The Forest Grove environment was designed by both me and Conor with us discussing the idea and overall layout as well as how it could play out with the characters in the scene but after discussion it was given to Conor to make mock-ups. I took the concept of the River Styx and researched into the mythological side to better know the source material that the environment would be based off, this in turn also meant I could make better informed decisions that could save time later as to why I felt certain things were necessary for certain shorts. A time saving technique I used also incorporated AI in the use of generating a contrasting set of images based on the prompt name “Death Character in River Styx Cave” (This proved pretty useless as “Death” is blacklisted but I did gain 1 image that worked as a quick way to think about colour space), using my own knowledge and this prompt I blocked out a series of rough environments that I could begin designing a more shot oriented and conscious layout for the storyboards.

As Conor had concluded his final version of the Tom concept featuring a more fluffy and rounder design (living version) We also rewrote the storyboards to reflect a 3rd version of the model that would be fully skeletal showing off 3 versions of the model being the “Living”, Spirit and Skeleton Cat. We were aiming to model the Skeleton in a clear way that allowed us to rebind the rig to save time as well as potentially keep all models contained within the same hierarchy this was the same with the Death and regular skeletons this meant we would only need to work out issues with 1 rig having 2 models and 3 texture sets. 

Being the lead researcher, I began properly exploring the physics assets we might need in unreal firstly being grass, Unreal allowed for a single blade of grass (modelled in Maya) to be duplicated thousands of times to block out a full plane of ground. I also tried importing a tile made in Maya using XGen (for the first time) this provided a much denser product that made the ground plane feel full but never felt stylistically correct and therefore also was abandoned as the style was more important to keep. At the same time, I was also able to access a texture pack that featured many props and foliage assets deciding this would be the faster approach I did decide to only hold onto the Blender files as a backup choice as these models may not fit our aesthetic in Unreal.

As Unreal was the chosen pipeline I looked into more physics simulations that would be used within our scene such as fog to add to the underworld aesthetic, due to the support Unreal has for particle simulations this was a simple as following a tutorial that would then not need further research upon finalizing the scene, the fog also meant we could use it as an emanator from the chest cavity of there was issues with clipping from the rigs etc.

Something that had also been discussed was Death’s signature cloak and I wanted to look at what approach I would need to take that and make it a reality. I acquired a license from a friend who was paying for Marvelous designer, this allowed me to build a cloak model that would react accurately to 3D geometry moving within my scene and it allowed me to also see how that would affect animation as so much of Death would be covered, I started by learning the basics and then seeing how a cloak would work pattern ways. I designed the cloak using a template of a cut and stick patter for actual fabric to get the model on properly first then I added some trim detailing to make it more realistic before also changing its physical properties to have the effects of actual fabric being that of a cotton twill as I wanted something that felt heavy and reduced its swing to feel more long lasting and solid, this cloak did have some issues such as the clipping through the holes from the bones and the pinching on the Centre of the models waist. I also made the colour a temporary purple hue to better see how that would affect the pattern of the material and it was noticeably lost in the model unfortunately this would then be put on hold to start rigs.

     

To prepare, I looked into Quadruped Rigs as I already had experience with bi-ped rigs (I had the most useful videos saved so I could reference them when making the rig). I looked at 3 separate Quadruped rigs all at various levels of complexity to understand not only what was common practice but also necessary for a 4 legged rig. After narrowing down what rig would be the best to look at closer, I began working on an animation Test to better get a feel for how different the walk cycle would be in comparison.

 

Before we fully began animating and I wanted to make sure some of my assets were textured to make sure Conor wasn’t doing them all and as to better help with seeing how the final version would look in the final scene altogether. The process for texturing the lantern was quick as I built up dirt and gold seams before reducing them to ink spots with the blur slope and water colour filter. I then refined this colour palette and tested a few alternative colours at this time. This process was to be the same for the grave model as it was a background asset not much more time was spent on it but due to necessary caution, I had to leave it and focus on the rigs.