This is the Personal creative development pitch project, used to help develop a pitch idea for the summer project.

The first thing done for this project was researching Pitch bibles as they help grasp the starting point for the whole project, Pendleton Ward’s Adventure time pitch bible helps the foundation of the research as it chaotic style with coherent understanding of story, character and setting building help figure out a rough starting point to the project. Pendleton’s work helps illustrate the loose nature of Pitch bibles, however it isn’t about just throwing sketches onto a page and hoping it makes sense.

Illustrations of characters, their personality and what they do in the story are essential especially for understanding the project as a whole, audience and style are also an important factor as they drive the intent of the content.

After researching some Pitch Bible’s the next thing was to establish an understanding of styles and goals to figure out for the summer project, the goal was to focus on 3D animation and creating an acting piece that would help boost up portfolio work as well as creating something in a similar style to a company that might help push the work to being a strong fit within the company. Job prospects and a stronger portfolio are end goals.

Blue Zoo was the goal, focusing on 3D works and understanding their style and what would make a project that could potentially match their interests was the goal. However the plan was to make something simple and aimed at younger audiences which is what a majority of Bluezoo’s work is, but an aspect of this was changed slightly the goal was to aim for slightly older audiences as the concept wanted to try and talk about more adult themes like mortality and loss rather than younger children problems. That being said some shows such as bluey have had discussions about the idea of death and what’s best to help someone in a younger audience understand and cope with the reality of the end.

The rough goal for an audience was around 8-12 as the age bracket allows for a lot of nuisance in the subject matter and aspects of death can be a fairly daunting task to handle. The goal is to potentially approach the subject with someone who might not understand help them understand the concept.

https://gist.ly/youtube-summarizer/creating-a-3d-animation-a-step-by-step-guide

After figuring out the rough idea and audience for the concept the next was putting together a rough timeline of the pipeline, this was put together in a gantt chart showing the potential process and timeline on a weekly schedule. The pros of this are establishing rough estimates on how much each part of the project will take to put together, how much time might be needed and where things need to be at certain stages. A pipeline helps put into categories the parts of the project needs and what to do for each part. The issue comes from the underestimation of figuring out the time needed for parts, project aspects can change and areas can fall apart so potential overestimation of time works best for situations like this.

Once the rough idea of a schedule was establish the next was working on concept work, originally the idea was an undergraduate rough idea that was only sketched out but this concept was later taken and refined for this project. The building blocks for it were crafted, early concepts had already been done however more research was needed, looking at different styles of characters, environmental work and other horror concepts were the end goal. A mind map would typically be the starting point of the idea however this concept had already been roughly drafted and needed more adjustments.

Firstly the rat concept, looking at both stylistic rats and movie rat designs were analysed, a rat was used as a symbol of the idea of death or a grim reaper like character as they’re closely associated with death. And the ghost was kept in a simplistic design both as a stylistic choice to have some appeal relating to the character but also for animating as a rig for the character wouldn’t be as complicated as that of the other character.

Environments were another aspect, the stylistic goal was to have a gloomy moody atmosphere to match a horror vibe but not with a horror story, looking at stylistic versions of grave yards, moody tones and vibes relating to the concept. Blues were that gloomy appeal were the focus of the colour pallet too.

The concept’s helps reach the goal due to the character acting and designs not feeling too overwhelming ugly, appeal is a standard and important animation principle. However the concept itself might not experiment enough with design elements as it might lean too harshly towards my own style and not the style of another to help push the work into the end goal. That being said design elements were considered with the strict goal in mind to be about character acting.

The original concept images of the character, had the character with a more humanoid body-type as the goal was to have a normal body while also making the appearance with age easier to achieve, aspects of the design stayed in later iterations but the general concept stayed the same. The overly small frame of the body had an over reliance on being thin and a lot of exposure to the ribcage and the appeal of that felt a bit off so it was later adjusted. However concepts like the ear, eyes, general colour scheme and fuzz were all kept. The original design felt too standard for a design and too “human with animal head on top” so the process was resumed and adjusted. The benefits of having such a body-type would of made human body language easier to understand however the potential style might end up too uncanny and over detail with this body type can create some unwanted unappealing designs.

What was done with the design next was bringing it back to the drawing board (literally) and reworking the design, finding different body shapes and styles to help figure out the structure of where the character’s look was going. some concepts took the original design and further pushed elements but was quickly realised is that a bit more stylisation would help change the tone of it, as originally the concept had it be fairly dark and gloomy with not light hearted elements but was later adjusted, this meant fixing the character’s design to have him be less grotesque in the sense of being human-like. Shorting his body, adjusting limbs and making his snout larger were done to try and soften the edge of the original and create a slightly friendly design. The benefits of this help create a more appealing character for the age range, however there is potential that due to the character anatomy not being standard human or not similar to that to an animal it might not achieve similar results of acting, same with the eyes.

The ghost was mostly kept the same as its design with no limbs and a shape help keep the appeal of the design, simple is best. What was considered was the potential for emotion and the adjustment for animal elements to reflect the main character however what was done was keeping the design as is, as comments relating to the design ensured its appeal was strong. Ghoul and more human appearance was also considered to allow for full body acting. This ghost’s design strong appeal helps give it a relatability towards it, however the lack of details make it hard for people to empathise with it unless the emotionals are clear and are understood.

Environmental concepts were studied, using reference images and a focus on a blue tone to help create atmosphere with the goal of having a tone that reflects a rainy night, cold, silent but a strange sense of comfort with a mix of horror elements to help add a potential haunting feeling. Blue is a calming colour and its heavy use tries to reflect a calm but empty feeling, some yellows could be use to contrast with the blue to help give warmth in a cold place similar to that of the graveyard image. The aesthetic overall tries to replicate the idea of being in a dense forest surrounded by trees and a small woodland creature burying itself deep within.
The concepts help in establishing a cold, haunting tone however the over use of blue without a contrast in some of them give its a slightly flat look and makes certain elements of the backgrounds harder to understand whats going on, a contrasting colour for the interior might help adjust the idea of cold exterior, warm interior.

An adjustment of one of the backgrounds of the interior shots this was a more heavy use of warmer colours which helps give a cabin in the woods vibe which works better to help understand both the world and mood but the character itself as the environment reflects their personality.

Some extra emotions of the characters

The final character designs for both characters, these are the final character designs for both the ghost and the rat (now named duncan). Duncan’s design has elements from real rats, with haunches and some exaggeration to the design with his snout and tail size being increased to hopefully appeal to the younger audience, the ghost was kept with similar intentions as his simple shape design is perfect for anyone to recreate. Wrinkles and fur were left as it’d help keep him fairly soft and old looking with the hope being able to add these details in on the model itself.

These designs help create a softer tone towards the project as original the design had rather harsh overly detailed human-like proportions that might of not appealed with the audience it was aimed for, younger audiences needing a more approachable character in mind. However certain design elements may of needed to be pushed further such as body shape, as there are still a fair amount of human and not enough shape language to push the character’s personalities and appeal.

After these were created a rough script has been created following the plot, were its about a ghost that emerges from its eternal slumber and has a conversation with the main character duncan about the ideas of death and the potential of being alive in the future. The concept focuses heavily on death and the idea as well as the idea of comfort before the end-of-life a real situation people may have to face in real life. Comfort is the intent of the story, however there might be more useful elements when it comes to the idea of coping with loss and understanding of death that might make it easier for a younger audience member to understand the concept.

This is the digital portfolio blog. This began with creating a mindmap of ideas and rough sketches, talking about ideas to create. Sketching took over the page and eventually a rough idea of the story began. A frog character meeting an explosive dog. Various rough random ideas threw onto the page.

After an idea was established we researched into what types of characters and inspiration for them. It began with real animals as they’re the easiest to find reference material for as well as something to take inspiration from, after finding cartoon and various other media relating to frogs, dogs and dinosaurs all to help establish a style and theme. This is split into 3 people, one for each character.

The entire page full of reference material, moodboard thoughts and rough ideas of potential ideas. This helped figured out aspects of the characters we wanted to keep and what to remove.

The initial sketches relating to the frog, he was originally fairly humanoid with more realistic anatomy, shoulders, chest, thighs etc. but taking the approach of wanting his limbs to be more exaggerated to allow for cleaner movement when animating, and to help push the arms and feet helped give him more cartoon proportions. The character had to be kept fairly simple mostly to help others on the team as the experience level of 3D animating was mixed so keep the design overall simple helps with only having to focus on the character and not other elements of the design, such as small objects that would move depending on follow-through and overlapping action.

The variations of colours of the character, going overly brash with the colour choices wasn’t an option cause the goal was trying to not over stimulate a younger audience with the short. Another aspect is the design was the outfit, the cowboy hat, holster and star were all aspects to  have for the design however the star didn’t make it into the final design mostly an element that was forgotten about as the boots, hat and belt were enough to convince people of the design being related to a cowboy.

The start of the sculpting process, Zbrush was used to create the model as it makes sculpting an easier process. Beginning with simple shapes then then adding rough silhouettes to the shape to create the body then once everything is established on the body next we add extra details such as face refinement, sharpening aspects of the head, body and limbs and then working on the other parts such as the hat, belt and tongue.

What might be done next time is figuring out a method that could more closely reflect the ref sheet as parts of the face, some of the side of the head had to be changed during the process due to it not completely matching up with the model.

After sculpting next was retopology, UV mapping, texturing and finally rigging retopology was done to ensure that when creating the rig, it’ll deform in a way that makes sense and ensuring that no extra work is needing to clean up the rig later down the line and making weight painting easier to do because of the solid geometry. What would be best for next time is making sure the geometry is clean throughout as certain edge loops are awkward and made the rigging process awkward at times. Another element with rigging was having to do two different rigs, one was for maya then the second was for Blender. The blender rig was the one that was focused on more as everyone would need to use the rig to animate. Getting comfortable with Blender’s animation tools was a complicated process and took several weeks to feel even a minute amount of comfortable as I was with Maya.

During the process of creating animation for the main character, the dog needed to be retopologized, UV and textured as it needed some work done on it before Rigging. Rigging was sent off to another member of the team and was done. A fur texture was done on the model as well as the TNT, adding black to the nose and eyes would  hopefully hide some of the model’s shortcomings.
For the future, rigging the character for the project would most likely be the best course of action with the most experience in that area and cleaning up weight paints would of helped with parts of the process however the final rig works for what’s needed for it.

These were the rough beginnings of the animated scenes, the first scene was the most focused as it was the longest. Follow-through, overlapping action, easing in and out, squash and stretch, anticipation had all been considered throughout as they were important factors when animating a scene. Squash and stretch help exaggerate some of the body movements too like when he jumped, even though its unrealistic it adds a bit of imperfection when it comes to reality as taking it straight from reality would of been fairly standard when the design idea was to be cartoony.

Exaggeration helped throughout too as the expressions in the second animation gives the sense of panic well however it could be argued that holding on a few frames to help establish shock would help push the shock more.

The use of live-action reference helped figure out the walk to some extent, and other parts of the animation as the full scene was full acted out to help understand movement and gestures. Lastly the jump was also filmed, helping understand the timing and movement of the spring-effect of a jump.

After animation was rendered out as two seperate pieces it was brought into after effects to be done in post-production. The character render was placed on top of the background render and then the background was blurred, added bloom and fire/smoke were also edited in with similar effects to help try and blend the entire scene together. Depth of field was the goal of blurring the background.
This process came together to create the finished scenes, smoke to help establish what was going on in the scenes the fire because of the context and the blur to create a depth-of-field effect.

The final film with sound and credits. The final film overall is solid the scenes come together to create a narrative although, what would best be figured out for next time is creating a pipeline that gets everyone onto the same page way before the small deadlines of each part was needed because elements of the production were rushed to try and get it finished for the deadline. However the animation work done helped create a cartoony 3d short which was the goal of the production overall.

This is the animation production module in which a pitch is created for the intent of presenting it to a major network, the intent is to create something with an audience of younger kids between the ages of 6-12 and the focus is on being humourous for them with themes of “Don’t judge a book by its cover” the intent is to create something simple for younger audiences and easy to draw, fast editing, random humour, slapstick and wild energy is the overall sentiment.

This’ll be broken down into a weekly summary of what was achieved and break down aspects of what was done.

Week 1 – 27th January

The start of the creative process, the team got together and created a large piece of paper, discussing the ideas for the project, the first idea pitched with the potential of two banana characters in a war cutting between reality and their imaginative world.

However Joe thought of an idea of a dog made of dynamite that everyone believed to be the most entertaining pitch as it allowed for a lot of creative visuals and gags.

This was when we began sketching ideas to follow the idea, thinking of characters, expressions and motivations of each of the characters and roughing out the intent of the story involving each of them.

Taking the moodboard, after researching realistic and cartoon frogs it helped influence the design to be a bit longer and goofer, allowing for more character acting animation.

The advantages of having the body longer helps people identity the limbs better, able to see the other parts of the body more such as fingers, toes etc. However this type of design also suffers from being being too loose as the design was aiming to be semi-realistic.

A mood board was created by myself and was used as the basis for everything, finding all sorts of references of character designs, colours and environmental designs as well as potential direction of the characters and setting.

The goal was to focus on character design, researching amazing world of gumball, rango, and a general assortment of styles and ideas. Realism was also a focus as gumball’s idea of design revolved around realistic, stop-motion and cartoon styles all blending together. The general audience members for this short was younger so nothing overly gorey, offensive or disturbing would be considered for the design and the elements taken away from the research.

Colour was another aspect researched, as all the characters could have a range of different variations.

A way of communication was also created with Discord being the main hub for all the information and production elements put together.

After sketching on the paper, designs for the frog character were roughed out and the personality of the main character was focused on. Creating sketches of a more realistic frog and with some stylisation to give him a way to express and emote in a more cartoony way. Making the 3D animation cartoony and expressive is the end goal of the designs, supporting that with large eyes and long limbs helps give the characters a way to focus the action and acting on their body language. The downside is that its difficult to balance the idea of uncanny valley as humanoid proportions and animal anatomy is a hard blend to create. The size of the eyes is also a factor to consider as large eyes are good for cute characters but you don’t want them for a serious character, as comedy is the focus a middle ground is fine. Smooth, round shapes also help the design give it a friendly look, the balance between the two is the most important thing.

After the Frog’s design the dinosaur was then sketched up, originally we had one person on the frog’s design (myself) and no one was designated with the dinosaur or the other characters so sketches were created of the dinosaurs as well, however later another member of the team took over that design and the main character the dog.

The dinosaur’s design was focused on realistically, however later it’d be revised by Joe to be simpler which would help later for modeling and rigging and potential animation, as realistic would have a lot of unnecessary details as this character wouldn’t have an overly prominent role compared to that of the frog or marshmallows. Sometimes simplicity works better, as this designs have too many small details that would either be too small to notice or not worth the time and effort to implement.

Week 2 – 3rd February

Further sketches exploring the frog character with some stylization from other how’s featuring frogs (Amphibia show from Disney) and other ideas and exploring a design idea previously been explored by other members.
Some of these sketches were designed to push the design of the character, bring up proportions and adjust what was needed and another design aspect was the stomach area as other members of the team requested him to be larger, most likely to give them the appearance of being overweight and clumsy and this was adjusted to the design. Once the character’s design was established the next was figuring out colours of the character, seeing what worked and what didn’t, the idea of him being extremely loud in colours was discussed in the group.

The toon designs would of helped establish the frog as being a goofy and not as serious of a character so pushing the design further might of helped with exaggerated the personality more however the thought was to adjust it to allow for cleaner, clearer animation overall, similar to the reason why the character only had boots, belt, star and hat to limit the amount of props he would have but also the research in the mood board with cowboys, establishing classic iconography. The problems come from the lack of more prominent iconography from the inspiration, cowboy boots for example they could of been more established or a pistol.

After the sketches and design were established next was to move onto the colours, trying a variety of them. The process was test his design with various real life frog variants and some extravagant ones to test to see if they’d work. The blue neon and green was based on a real life frog however its colours were extremely garish as would potentially stick out the most might be seen as too much visually as its over stimulating for anyone beyond the target audience of being for younger people at 6-12. The other colours followed the same problem, which is why a more standard colour was picked overall but with some adjustments to give it some unique flair. Green is softer and friendly and associates with greenary, yoshi from the mario bros. series was inspiration for the colour choices too especially with the red boots. Yoshi has an recognizable design and his influence helped establish the colour choices, however this comes into the problem of being potentially too recognisable and compared with other sources however familiarly works best with younger audience members.

Created an asset list and a production list to keep track of each shot and what was all needed for each one to be “completed” and making a checklist for each part.

The hope is to use this to track all the shots, who does what with the assets and what will be needed for the scenes. The layout of the excel sheet helped make the process of marking off each scene as simple as clicking a box, the problem came to actually getting individuals to use it as the other priorities took over, however for potential future projects this excel sheet would help.

Week 3 – 10th February

Once everyone was satisfied with the design the next thing was to create a character sheet for them, which finalised a lot of the elements created and discussed earlier in the project. Welly boots, belt and hat were also figured out for the design and put in accordingly.

His final design brings together the elements from the mood board that were important, the realism from the frogs, the skin and texture that was needed the iconography from the cowboy theming and the simple silly addition of the booties creating a contrast between the realistic and the goofy. Certain elements of the design could of been pushed further specifically the anatomy following more frog proportions could help with animating him more frog like and less human, but it’s a situation of figuring out the balance between human anatomy and frog as going to far one or the other might cause an uncanny valley effect and remove it from its more cartoon focused design.

Once the character sheet was ready the next thing was creating the 3D model of the frog character, this involved using Zbrush to create the model’s body, limbs, head and eyes and merging them all together and then sculpting the shape and details from the designs out of him this task was finished when the model and all the parts relating to him were finished.

The sculpt followed the design sheet, sharpening the hard edges for the hat, the body etc. What would be done next time is softening areas around the eyes as it the current design might of needed more space to allow for stronger brow movement as current the lack of space causes some merging of lids and brows making it hard for the character show facial expressions. The tongue’s shape and design could of been further refined as it current design is squashed and difficult to to animate. Lastly the booties could of been pushed harder with details, the general shape works but the details and refinement is blurry.

Created an overall product list to help keep track of everything needed for the project and a checklist on what has been done. A second list for getting the assets created, each step with a checklist and a percentage for each part.

Week 4 – 17th February

Once the character was finished with sculpting the next was re-topologising him to make him easier to animate and rig for later, lots of circles around the important parts of the anatomy. This will help deforming when rigging later, bending correctly and making the influences of the rig easier in the long run.

After the model was finished and UV’d and topology the next was creating the texture for the entire thing, this involved doing what was done with the body with the entirety of him, belt, hat, tongue, and shoes all ready for texturing.

The texture work, especially the eyes were influenced by the research earlier real frogs have a rectangle shape and the use of a type of paint brush helps keeps it from being too realistic. The skin overall follows the idea of a realistic frog, it has small amount of normal mapped bumps that are similar to that of scales helps establish the roots of the character’s design of being a frog.

Once that was done all the parts were brought into substance painter and were painted according to the ref and their real life counterparts, so leather for the belt, rubber for the wellies etc. once that was done it was brought back into Maya to be adjusted as needed.

One of the important changes to this model compared to others was the use of UDIMS for the body, this allows for even higher level of detail with the texture as it uses several blocks of a texture map and not just a single block.

Last thing done was to adjust the mouth so its closed and helps with rigging the next stage of the model.

His final overall design now in 3D, the design followed the sheet as close as possible however there are certain aspects that were difficult to follow some muscle groups don’t follow the same and the head shape was complex, the sheet failing to completely establishing what was needed for the design so compromises were needed to create a solid headform.

Week 5 – 24th February

This time around was to use advanced skeleton to create the rig of the model, this would help with animating in maya as a lot of the controls and possibilities of the rig can be done quicker and with more flexibility when animating as well as using animbot and a picker to help make the process of animating faster.

The many stage of going through advanced skeleton, an important factor is to make sure the mouth and eyes have perfect topology as it makes the process of advanced skeleton easier to fix up and have ready.

The finished rig now capable of adjustments and clean-up of the rig would be next.

After this was created a discussion with the group was done to figure out if the rig was needed as feedback from one of the tutors suggested we make an exclusive blender rig, mostly to help unify the groups efforts as everyone seemed interested in animating this would mean that maya would need to be dropped for blender as the time to learn a new software wasn’t in the time frame we had.

The Maya rig was designed to allow one of the members to use maya for animating however it was established that blender was the focus for animating. The maya rig specifically was capable of a lot of minute details of the face, being able to pull and push certain small areas as well as having the brow be flexible however its lack of compatibility with blender makes it difficult to transfer over for others so it was needed to be scrapped. Another problem with the maya rig was its complexity, Maya offers a lot of tools to make the selection process easier however there are still a lot of very small specific controllers not needed and it could confuse people while animating, simplicity helps when it comes to a large group of people and the rig for blender achieves this.

The finished blender rig using rigify, this was a similar process to that of advanced skeleton however the clean up and changes weren’t too bad of a transition as once thought of, the final rig is as capable as the previous one and can be pushed far.

The blender version of the rig has a lot of similar controls to the maya one (a lot of facial ones especially) however for next time it’d be useful to follow familiarise what is possible with the controls and see if more or less were needed for the project. Weight painting is another part of the process that could of been better adjusted as the main core of the body had some minor deforming issues, similar with the feet and shoes.

A simple quick animation of the rig in action, moving his arm to illustrate the use of the body and how he could potentially move in the final animation work.

The simple animation establishes aspects of the character early on, the movement of how parts of the body works as well as figuring out what was needed to be adjusted from the rig’s own controls. Head movement and neck had to be adjusted as by default its on a seperate setting then hips were needed to be adjusted. The animation itself doesn’t push the rig’s controls and struggles to show problems with the current rig as the movement isn’t pushing parts that might show problems, arms, legs, feet etc. and doesn’t try and replicate influences ideas from the moodboard. For future projects establishing emotions, movements and body language with the help from the research would help establish problems that should be adjusted to help push the cartoon-y nature of the character.

Week 6 – 3rd March

After the rig was finished with and minor adjustments were needed other parts of the production was needed, Dynamite dog needed a texture and retopolised as he was a fairly dense model originally and would need some adjustments if he was going to be animated as well as colour the eyes and jaw. Lastly similar to when working on the frog topology should follow specific ways to help bending and deformation easier, however Mike had had a discussion with the group about how topology doesn’t need to be perfect for certain things as not everything will deform or animate, this will be brought into consideration for future projects and understanding.

Week 7 – 10th March

Another Frog animation, him snapping his fingers with an “Ah-ha” expression, this one was done to create a finalised version of the rig to figure out if he was animatable or not. Limbs, body, head, etc. all parts were moved in some way minus the legs, which was checked outside of the animation. In future checking of the model and animation a run/walk should be created to help establish the movement of the character and ensure that the entire body is correctly fixed and ready.

The second part is an image of using the storyboard/animatic to create the starting poses of the animation, this one had a shocked expression to be begin so the model was adjusted. Eyes, mouth, body language was all considered. The mouth placement and its shape were also important however in the future when working with the storyboard  the facial features could of been adjusted further, tricks with the camera were possible to push expresses similar to that in anime.

Land of the lustrous is a 2017 anime that used a mixed media approach of 2D and 3D elements, this was an example of pushing the facial to closely replicate that of how 2D artwork would do it, even though it doesn’t work on a mathicly sense of 3D, artistically it establishes a stronger visual appeal.

Week 8 – 17th March

Two animations were roughed out this week, the first one was the frog (now named Marshal) pointing and shouting “Dynamite dog” which was established in the animatic and the second one is the character freaking out from what he was seeing, the face was adjusted for the second one.
The first rough animation is helps with the simple concept of him pushing and shouting, the finger dragging slightly helps push the dramatic aspect of the shot. However the facial expressions have a slight sutter and awkwardness to them which could of been smoothed out and adjusted to fit the body language better.
The second animation was done in stepped to speed the process up, the expressions and movement work well exaggeration used throughout, but could of been smoothed out with a spline however the fast pace and sudden nature of the animation helps with the idea of a panic going on. Some timing also had to be adjusted to best fit the animation over the animatic.

Week 9 – 24th March

The roughing out of the next scene that was focused on, this scene having the frog walk up to the dog and confront him. For a starting point it establishes that he has a goal in mind and the follow-through to help the sudden stop of him. Then a confrontal point to show where he’s pointing. Next time adjusting the pose to have a sharp silhouette to help the placement of him within the scene as a strong silhouette helps easily read the character’s movement.

Mouth movements will be done later as there isn’t much dialogue at this stage.

Week 10 – 31st March

After continuing to animate the character, now with a point to the other direction then establishing the second half of the scene of him jumping up to the dog and showing the chaos. However unlike last week this time was focus on gaining some life action footage to create something with a reference and using the walk, point and pointing out the chaos were acted out and used as reference. The jump and panic part of the footage helped to figure out the speed and timing of a wave.

However other parts of the footage wasn’t referred to specifically the walk and even though the follow-through was complimented by the tutor it could of been followed most established rules relating to a walk, such as hips sway, and using more referenced images from Richard williams about how to walk, but the walk is still solid enough. Hiding the feet with the camera helped the slight float it has when you see it below the camera.

Week 11 – 7th April

A further working on this same scene, this time adding a jump to him to climb up onto the dog. Reference footage was done of jumps to help figure out the timing and body language to understand how to properly jump from a frog position. The placement of hands, how far the body is pushed down are all considered and thanks to the reference footage helps understand where that goes.

Footage could of been done to help with the transition between the thought and then the jump action, as its difficult to figure out what sort of transition would be fast enough to transition. The camera was also adjusted to be lower down, this was created to establish that the dog’s size is a lot larger than the frog and it takes some work to climb up to his level.

Week 12 – 14th April

The scene being worked on more, this time now with a transition between the thought and the jump, it was decided to have a zippy cartoony transition mostly because previously established and researched this was designed to have cartoony movement more than realistic so squash and stretch on the limbs to have them push and pull along and make the character seem more elastic overall. However, with future reference finding a solution that works better for acting rather than a quick cartoony take might of been a stronger way of working the animation.

21st April – 28th April

The last parts of the animation cleaned up and fixed up, movement smoothed and acting all established now onto fixing up the final parts of animation and then into getting the scene put together.
This last part of the animation had a lot of easing in and out to help smooth out some of the movement especially during the zip across from his previous standing position to the new one and the hop has a limb stretch to full a squash and stretch motion. What could be changed for next time is pushing of smaller overlapping action items and follow through with it to help push some of smaller details, like the hat could potential shift slightly. The holster on the hip does flap but could of been done several more times to give a sense of weight.

After the animation was done the next was putting the scene together this required taking Sarah’s background and putting it into the scene, due to wanting to put the scene together and work on some post-production the character was split apart and rendered separately. So the characters were rendered as one sequence while the background was another but the background only needed to be rendered once due to the very intense nature of the background. The fog, high amount of items on screen was a difficult thing to manage as it needed some trimming in future, a moment would be needed to sit down with the artist and help optimise the scene so everyone could render the scene out correctly.

This was the post-production method, splitting the scene into just characters with lighting and background allowed for rendering the scene out as two seperate pieces which would later help in post-production. Characters being on their own allows for just the background to be adjusted and viceversa on the characters.

5th May

This was putting the renders together, taking the foreground and background and then combining them together once that was done next was adding a background blur for a sort of depth of field look then some extra fire, smoke and any other additions like bloom, and lens flare. Film grain, chromatic aberration and other post-processing effects were considered but ultimate wouldn’t have match the look of what was wanting to be established.

Lastly what was needed was the entire team’s footage together to be rendered however only this was ready for post, in future what should be done is everyone having similar rendered scenes all done and then one person taking over for post-production and not at the last moment. As it would of given time for everyone to have the short be similar in look throughout.

The finished animation, all three clips were created and put through post production. What should be considered for next time is the animation, rig and other scenes as the animation holds its own fine but some areas could be cleaned up and smoothed out, the rigs could of had controls more refined for what was needed and the post production could of been heavily established early enough of a timeframe so individuals wouldn’t have scenes that were misaligned. Overall however the team did their best with what they could do and overall the film has come together, solid work throughout.