Final reflection
Throughout this course, I have developed a wide range of skills and knowledge that I previously didn’t have. Prior to being in my first year, I had no idea how much thought, effort and time were put into making an animation, so inevitably, this was difficult for me to adapt to at first. One of the main things that I am proud of is how I have now become experienced in so many programs, the main ones being Krita, Maya, Blender and Adobe after effects. In comparison to the beginning of the course till now, I feel very confident in the skills that I have gained from the past academic year as I am now able to understand animation, not just in theory but in practicality too. By learning about 2D animation at the start, it made it easier to carry on this experience to the 3D modules. As I am more experienced with illustration, the 3D topics were a bit of a learning curve at first, however, once I became acquainted with Maya, I found myself really enjoying the modelling and sculpting progress. Even now, I still prefer modelling and sculpting over everything else which makes me believe that this is definitely something I could progress to in future.
Screenshot of one of our daily (weekly) meetings
I found that the module itself was really beginner-friendly, as everyone in my group was also new to using 3D software- this made me feel more at ease. With our group, we started off using Miro boards to plan our initial ideas and story plots, and as soon as we all decided on the Hubris animation, we began making concept sketches and drawings right away. One of the main things we started off within the beginning was room layouts and slime ideas, and this is something I contributed a lot to. By making this step in the pre-production process, it helped me ease into this new area of animation, which made me incredibly nervous at first. I also did the modelling and rigging of the first version of the devil slime, progressing then to UV unwrapping, texturing and making the 2D slime. Additionally, I also did a huge chunk of animation and rendering which was extremely time consuming but entirely worth it for the end product.
Initial playblast test
This is the initial blocking out that I did for the animation. This was done solely for one of our presentations, thus, it wasn’t perfect by any means. The timing, posing and squash and stretch were done quickly in order to initially plan out areas of improvement. Although this was a rough draft, I am quite proud of how this turned out, considering it was a little rushed to get done on time.
Playblast- tweaking the slime’s movements
In this video, I tweaked a lot of the animation, including the timing, tail movement (which was really difficult to animate) and added in blendshapes and eye blinking. This took a long time to get perfect, especially with the tail rig as it could only be posed to an extent before the tail warped and looked unnatural. Despite this, I pulled through and did my best to make the movement and shape of it as natural as possible, which was really rewarding in the end up.
Camera experiment
After I tweaked the animation more, I decided to experiment with some camera work to help my group members understand what way it would move in accordance with the slime’s movements. We decided to change the way that the slime lands at the end of the animation, and this can be seen in the next preview.
Fixing the angle of the slime
As seen here, I changed the direction in which the slime would face. This was due to how the original sequence would break the 180-degree rule, which would end up making the animation unbelievable and probably really unprofessional and confusing.
Group animation playblast
Here is a playblast prior to rendering the animation…
Final animation outcome
…And here is the final render!
Overall, I feel like the final outcome of our animation turned out amazing, considering how we were really new to 3D animation. One of the things I like most about the final animation is how well each of our animation sequences fit with one another, being fluid and smooth which makes it really satisfying to watch. The sound and visual effects were very well timed with each other, making it obvious what the source is. Ultimately, I feel like our group worked great together, and the animation came out better than we all anticipated.