Once everyone’s models, and all our background props were finished, it was time to start animating.

I was animating two scenes from the timelapse, a total of 12 seconds. I was animating the first part of the timelapse, and the last part, as I offered to edit it and add the rain in after effects.

Manny made the main bee, and Charlie made both the Phatt Bee and Cranky Bee, seen here.

The main bee had some issues where I could not scale it up or down or it would ruin the rig for his eyes. Therefore I had to scale the entire scene, and the other two bees, around him, rather than scaling him to fit the scene. It took some adjustments but eventually I got everything at the size I wanted.

As I went along, I was sharing playblasts with my teammates for feedback. This was my first playblast for the first scene.

After sharing this with my teammates, we decided it was too slow, so I sped up the characters’ movements. When animating the bees flying, I made them bob up and down a bit rather than simply flying in a straight line. I also animated the main bee’s basket to move along with his movements. The fat bee moves slower than the cranky bee, who is more impatient.

My next step was adding textures into my scene. I added all my textures to my USB stick so even when I changed computers, my textures would load in correctly.

When rendering my animation, I had an issue where some textures were transparent. From this I learned I had to Break Connection.

Here was my first scene fully rendered. I was happy with how it turned out, though looking back on it now, I wish I had made the lighting a bit warmer for this scene.

For the 3rd scene, I changed the background and clouds to grey, added more clouds, used darker lighting, and I added rain effects in After Effects, I also gave the bees their little leaf umbrellas.

I was pleased with how this scene came out, but after rendering, I noticed for some reason the main bee had some green on his wings. I initially thought it may be the reflection from the leaf umbrella, but I think it may be that the texture for the umbrella somehow got on his wing. At the stage I noticed this, it was too late to go back and fix it, but I would like to at some stage.

Here is our final animation, all put together with music. One of our teammates has an extension so we have saved space for their scenes.

Reflection

Overall, I was very happy with how this animation went. I felt our team worked well together and our final animation turned out really well. Everyone’s models looked great together. This animation was such a huge learning experience – upon entering this course I had never even used Maya before and did not ever think I could make something like this.

My 3D modeling and animating skills have definitely improved, and I learned a lot about storytelling and framing. If I could go back and do anything again, I would probably work on my lighting a bit more, as I feel I could have done a bit better an adding more intense/atmospheric lighting – I feel the lighting I used is quite plain. I would also like to have edited my model a bit, and maybe rigged her eyes. It was not necessary for this animation since she had little movement, but I would still be interested in updating my bees character design and rig.

Overall I think my team worked really well together and I am grateful to have been with a really great and motivated group of artists. I’m proud of our final animation and our group’s effor really shows.

My character model for our animation is the queen bee. I did some rough sketches in Clip Studio, and then in Paint 3D, to get a rough idea of the 3d shapes I would be using. I wanted to give the queen bee a fluffy brown collar, I want it to look like a glamorous scarf or fur coat/shawl.

I was debating whether to make her more round like the other bees, or if I should make her humanoid. After talking with my teammates we decided the humanoid design would work bes to have her stand out from the worker bees, and because she would be waving them goodbye it would work better giving her longer arms. Our round bees have small and stubby arms so it would be hard to notice them waving.

These were my rough sketches in paint 3d.

I began making my model in Maya once I had gotten feedback from my teammates and lecturers. I started off with these shapes – spheres making up her head and torso, a hemisphere for her dress, and a ring for her fluffy collar.

Her antennae are made of sweep meshes with spheres on the end, and I created her crown from a ring.

I made her crown by making the ring thinner, but taller, and then editing the verteces to create pointy shapes.

I showed this finished model to my lecturers and after feedback, decided to change her arms to be longe so they could be rigged for waving.

I ended up with this. I gave her longer arms with fluffy wrist cuffs that match her collar.

The rig for my model was a pretty simple skeleton. It would only really be her arms moving, so she didn’t require too much complex rigging. I had an issue where her skeleton was going in the wrong direction for her head, which I fixed after getting help from a lecturer. I had some probems moving her head in general, as I wanted it to be able to twist around on it’s own without bringing anythng with it, so I had to unparent her collar.

I struggled a bit with skin weights. I was confused about them and didn’t realise you had to distribte skinweights and couldn’t just delete skin weight, as it would distrubute somewhere else. I didn’t know why my skin weight progress kept disappearing and thought it was because it wasn’t saving. Every time her wings moved, it would move polys from her collar too. It wasn’t until I had help from teammates I realsed what my problem was.

After I fixed my issues with skin weights, she was ready for animation.

I also made some models in Maya to use in the background of the timelapse scenes I would be animating.

I made these forget-me-not flowers and clover. Lel did the textures for them.