In this project we were asked to explore the theme of ‘journey’ through a 3D animation. I was placed within a team consisting of four people, Aaron, Rebecca, Niamh, and myself. Once we had been placed we tried to come up with a story to tell. We used multiple tools at our disposal, but ultimately it came down to brainstorming and idea generators. One that was used was a website given to us by our lecturers, a website about using story dice to come up with a narrative (https://davebirss.com/storydice/).
This was the dice we rolled. Whilst almost everything was discarded, the hoover dice is what sparked the idea that we settled on.
We wanted to follow a classic ‘fairy-tale’-esque story of a knight’s journey saving a princess from a dragon. The limitations in place (no legs allowed) gave us a small issue of how exactly we were going to do this. So, we all brainstormed until we came upon the idea of portraying the story through inanimate objects. This started a snowball effect, each person contributed until the idea of ‘Crown and Clay’ came to be. The story is from the perspective of a young child, playing with their toys/objects around the house. Each character had a role to play, a sock Titled ‘Sir Pete’ would present itself as the knight of our story, riding upon his trusty steed, a mechanical toy hamster inspired by a real life toy called a ‘ZhuZhu Pet’. Then, we needed a princess. After racking our brains for a while, researching toys from our childhood and scouring the internet, we decided to make the Princess made out of ‘Play-Doh’, hence the ‘Clay’ in our title. Finally, we needed a ‘big bad’ something to use in order to make the story come together. We needed a dragon to steal the princess in order for the knight to save her. This is where the story dice came into play, giving us a hoover. We imagined that the hoover could act as a dragon, and with that all the characters of ‘Crown and Clay’ came to be.
The story follows Princess Clump (The ‘Play-Doh’ princess) who is saddened by the loss of her crown. Then, the dragon (Hydra Hoover) emerges from the closet and hoovers up the princess. Sir Pete, devastated, mounts his loyal steed (Mr.ZigZag) and charges into the Hoover, gently colliding into him. The dragon is so shocked by how cute their effort was that he laughs, causing Clump and her crown to be lodged in its throat. He spits both of them up and they hug him out of joy.
To get an Idea of what aesthetic we wanted, I took to pinterest to make a moodboard. This was the result:
The next step was to move onto the character design. We each allocated what character we either wanted to do/would happily do. I personally was given the task of designing, modelling, and rigging Sir Pete. Since his creation I already had a small vision of him, so I decided to put down my ideas into a drawing. At first he didn’t have a crown, that idea would come further down the line as we wanted to have a visual way of showing why Princess Clump was sad. So giving Sir Pete a crown, and making her look sad at it was a perfect way to do this.
These are the initial sketches of Sir Pete.
I played around with multiple things, The way he would sit upon Mr.ZigZag and how tall his wooden popsicle sword would be. I gave him the sword as a way to show that he is a knight, without adorning him in armour. If I could redo this part of the project I would have actually drawn him in armour. Thinking back on it, tin foil armour could have been an option and I should be more care-free when designing.
Colouring Sir Pete was rather fun. Seeing what colour palettes worked well in the environment and also him as a character was very exciting.
I tested different colours, and patterns. I personally really liked the idea of making him red, as it’s connotations of courage really resonated well with his character. This was my Final result.
The off white, reddish colour as the base went well with the desaturated red. I also incorporated the heel of the sock which acts as the back of his head.
We needed a border for the room, the idea was to have a knight fight a dragon. I was told it would be a tapestry, and offered to draw it for the group. After a few days I came back with this:
Once I had given them this update of my work, I was told that it would probably be too complicated for the scene. I agreed and went on to de-complicate it. This was my final result.
After I presented this I was told it needed to be repeating. I didn’t quite understand why, as I thought I was designing a tapestry. Luckily enough a teammate offered to make it repeating for the scene.
I also contributed to making a storyboard, although my entire idea didn’t make it to the final cut, some aspects did make it. For example, the force of Mr.ZigZag riding causing him to fly backwards.
This was the storyboard I had given.
Whilst I didn’t animate the Previs, I gave my contribution through my amateur skills in Premiere Pro. I added sound design and music to the Previs. This sparked a new joy that I didn’t realise I had. I found myself really enjoying Premiere Pro and specifically SFX. This would help the group later as I offered to give the final product SFX/crop together the whole piece, as well as fix any minor issues (such as timing).
Modelling/rigging Sir Pete was the most nerve racking part for me. I wouldn’t consider myself well versed in Blender, only having learned it this year. To start off I thought I would converse inside and outside my group in order to give myself the best start I could. It was suggested to me that I make my Model flat, and rig it into his standing position. So, I did just that. This was the result.
Unfortunately I fell ill on the day we had the presentation with our current models, but I was lucky enough to have my team tell me the feedback from this part in particular. The advice that was given back to me was monumental in the advancement of my model. I was told to create him standing and to give him more life through wrinkles and realistic folding. I was able to get started a few days later after my illness had cleared up, and I got to work in modelling. In the class, Mike gave me some advice in creating the base for Sir Pete, using his guidance I managed to create the base of Sir Pete.
His design in Blender differs slightly from the drawings, as his body is longer, his crown is smaller, and his sword is less stubby. I thought that these design choices were better as it fit the scale of the environment better, as well as making everything proportionate to him.
I was constantly going to others for advice as well as help with blender, this was something I was reluctant to do before. I think that the quality of my models has improved because of this.
There were still some things that I couldn’t fix in the end with my model. For example, the pupils within his googly eyes, as well as the clear plastic of them. The pupils would constantly break the confines of its case, and the case itself wasn’t following its parent object despite all my effort and research to fix it. I would go back and try to fix these issues if I had more time.
Next I rigged the model. Rigging is something that doesn’t click with me as other aspects of 3D animation, I struggle to remember the correct direction to parent, as well as weight paint. My first version of my rig was terrible. The sock was done in a way where the inside of the model had faces, and that gave it an interior (small diagram below). 
The first issue that came about was that the rig was pulling the ‘outer shell’ through the interior, clipping through it.
To fix this, I reached out to Alec. Throughout my rigging process Alec was a big help in making me understand not only how to do something, but why it was happening in the first place so the errors won’t occur in the future. He suggested that I remove the interior faces as they won’t be visible anyway. After following his advice I then encountered my next issue.
Sir Pete’s automatic weights weren’t tuned for him, and I was struggling with the first step to fixing it. Reaching out to Alec once more and with his help I managed to fix the issue. What was happening was the tape over Sir Pete’s sword was clipping through his body. The way to fix it was going through vertices and setting their own individual weight to the main body. Also some smaller errors were fixed thanks to the help I got, like the bottom being influenced by the movement of the head.
Finally, the rig was complete and I had actually managed to overcome what I had considered the hardest part of the entire project. I exported everything as an fbx and took it into Substance, where I began to texture him. I didn’t face any issues in Substance as I felt comfortable with it, however, If I were to redo it I would make some smaller adjustments that I think I could do better. The stitching along his ‘nose’ came out rather ‘burnt’, I don’t really understand why that is, but I would definitely have researched why and tried to come to a fix for it.
This was the Final result of the model:
To test the rig, I did a small animation of his body falling over. This was the result of that:
My part of the animation was a rather small part, as not only I was unconfident in animating in 3D, but I had also offered to do the final ‘put together’ of the project. I was given the opening just before the tower of blocks fell, this part consisted of a pan, and Princess clump looking sad at Sir Pete’s crown. Even though I only had a small part I wanted to make it really nice for the final project. I didn’t encounter as many problems as I did with rigging, but when I did the answer was only one google search away. For the small movement I had, I wanted to make it feel as real as I could make it. That’s why when Princess clump throws her head forward there is follow through with her hair. And just before that she throws her head back dramatically, preparing you for the movement.
Lastly, I had to work on the audio. I collected all the clips into Premiere pro and added sound effects, as well as fixing the speed of certain clips in order to make it more natural. The process was fun, finding the correct SFX and cutting/overlapping them to fit was a relaxing experience. Just before it was all finished I wanted to have some ambience in the background that wasn’t just music as I thought that drowned out the sound/movement of the story. This is where I stumbled upon something called ‘Room Tone’. I added a room tone throughout the entire story and it was finally done.
FINAL RESULT
Overall, I really enjoyed the first year in the UU Animation course. I was very nervous to start with, having come from another country. But the environment, lecturers and students made the transfer easy and comfortable. All the modules given were informative and this one year in Uni alone has taught me more than the 3 years I did in college. If I could redo this whole year again I would do things a little differently, I think I would change smaller aspects of my time here. I would have started learning more about time management earlier and set myself a more humane routine to stick to instead of relying on bursts of energy to get things done. But, If given the choice between redoing this year I don’t think I would, as all the mistakes I made and learned from are vital for me furthering myself in the next year.