For this assignment we had to get into a group to create a 3D animated short film. The premise of the film was nature and we had to create a character each. Our group was formed pretty quickly and consisted of myself, Liam, Josh, Adam and Kharis, as we were all familiar and got on with each other as we usually sat at the same table and worked on a previous assignment together. Once our group was formed we used a white board to brainstorm ideas. We made lists for genre and story ideas and after discussion decided to go with a western standoff with insects/bugs, which would be called The Good, The Bad and The Bugly.
Our group made a Discord so we could communicate, this included different channels for story boards, character ideas/ designs, pre-vis etc. We used discord and class time to decide that there would be the two main characters in the standoff (a protagonist and antagonist), which left three more characters as there are five people in our group. The remaining characters would be a sidekick for the antagonist, and two civilian bystanders. My character was one of the bystanders. I decided that my character would be a slug, as Kharis’ character was also a bystander and a slug, so to keep continuity that slugs were civilians I thought it would work to make mine a slug too.
I brainstormed ideas for my slug in my sketchbook, I wanted it to be an elderly slug with some form of injury/ disability to add some unspoken backstory to the character. For example I wanted him to have a bad eye, a scar, or wear an eyepatch. I decided to go with a scarred, damaged eye with no eyepatch, as this shows it was a clear inflicted injury perhaps in combat, implying to the viewer that he received the injury in his younger days as a gunslinger. Whilst sketching concepts I also decided that he would be in a wheelchair, as I though firstly, it would be a fun challenge to rig and then animate the driving mechanics of a wheelchair, secondly as it further adds to the mystery of how he ended up in a wheelchair, along with the eye injury, then thirdly it meant that all f the characters in the film were unique, as Josh was Liam was doing a bug stood straight up, Josh was doing a worm, Adam was doing a fly, and Kharis was also doing a slug but much bigger than mine and moved by sliding on its front rather than rolling in a wheelchair. I enjoyed the concept process of creating my character as I could get visually creative by giving him backstory just by the way he looks. Once I had finalised the look of my character, I could get to modelling.
Before we began modelling, we finalized a story board. We arranged a time for a call on discord and over an hour we landed on what the films was going to look like. We drew a lot of inspiration from spaghetti westerns such as The Good The Bad and The Ugly, as it would involve quick cuts between the characters leading up to the moment they draw their guns. After the story board was finalized we allocated shots so the workload of animating was spread evenly. We chose as well to have it end with an actual cowboy boot stepping on the characters, crushing them, as it will provide comedy by ruining the tension of the standoff.
I began by modelling the body of my slug in blender, because it would allow for the creation of a smooth looking, bent to sit slug body. I also made the damaged eye with a scar in blender as it was good for creating a mangled looking circle. After creating this part of the model i took it into Maya and made the surface of the body live and manually retopologised it, then smoothed it using the mesh tools.
After I finished the retopology of the body I realised the moustache could be far better so I deleted it and made a better one in blender. While I did that I also made a cowboy hat in blender to be used for my character. Once they were finished I was able to bring them over to Maya and put them on my slug. The next step was to make a wheelchair, I wanted to make it look simple as the idea was that it is made out of wood so wouldn’t be very complex, so it didn’t take very long to make in Maya and put together with my slug. All I had to do after that was add a belt and arms to my slug and he was finished and ready to be rigged.
I ran into a bit of trouble when rigging but nothing major. I had the rig for the chair set up so that it was able to be moved in any direction but i wanted the wheels to move with the chair when it was moved forwards and backwards. I could only get them to spin in the wrong axis so I found a tutorial on youtube of how to get the wheels to move, which involved putting on control circles then arranging the outputs to move on a specific axis when the main control for the chair was moved.
After this was sorted i was able to rig the body which wasn’t too tricky, just needed a bit of help from Alec with the weight painting for the joints so that things didn’t move that weren’t supposed to.
Before animating, I textured the slug. I originally was going to use substance painter, but there was something wrong with the way it unwrapped around the eye so when I tried to put the textures on they exploded everywhere. I then realised and decided that I would get stock images from google and upload them as texture to my character, which I’m glad I did as they turned out looking better than what the textures from substance painter did.
here is the list of textures I used:
This is what they looked like on the character in Maya before and then after rendering…
Before:
After:
The shots I had to animate were a close up of my slug tipping his hat then sitting up in his chair looking surprised, and the second was him running into the coke can behind him before they main two characters shoot at eachother.
These are my two shots fully rendered before editing:
The shots took a while to render, especially the one with both characters, mostly due to the reflectiveness of the can, but the final result was worth it.
Once all of the shots were rendered, we got them all together as an image sequence which we put into premiere pro to edit. The editing process took slightly longer than hoped as when we finished editing the first time the file just disappeared and we started again. The second time round I got to be editor, then when the shots were all put together in the right order and the pacing was how we wanted it, we sat and gathered copyright free sounds to be used for the film. We all agreed that, after seeing the finished product on full screen with sound, we were happy with our work and rendered it.
(I will include reflection of this assignment in a separate post which will also include my reflection of my first year)