Introduction
The blog will cover my University education over the last 2 years and highlight what I have been doing leading up to the final project. The major project module is different to all the other previous university tasks as it last the whole of Year 3 from September to May to complete.
For the Major Project this year I am working to create a full animated short with a blog detailing my activities. In creating the subject, animation type art style and story, it was enabled by the university to be designed by the team working on it.
Whilst the assignment could be worked on as a team, for this project I would be on my own this time for two reasons: firstly I felt left out when it came to my last group project as my work was not included in the final submission and I did not see my final part of that submission. Working independently means I will see the work I contribute as (with the exception of sounds as you can hire out a sound student to do it for you) all the work will be mine . The second reason was that I did not know most the students in my class thanks to the Covid crisis and the diluting of the student Discord in the 2nd year. What friends I did make within the class, managed to get an industry placement and would not be in the course for this year.
The final Animation, production elements and complete blog are to be uploaded by the 12th May and I have placed the link to the assignment brief below.
Link to the Assignment Brief:
Pre-Production Begins
The first stage of my major project development is pre production. At this point pre-production should be a stranger to no one, but for the purposes of the blog I will just go over the basic points. Pre-production is the stage where I cover mind maps, concept art, scripting and Pre-Vis etc. Basically it is planning everything out before you start to make the product. Not only will this give a clear idea of my goal, but it will help to identify any problem areas enabling me to prepare back up plans to deal with them.. While Pre-Production elements can change during the Production stage, It is a strong idea to you have the final story script and character designs completed as changing them later on could delay the project by a few weeks and may cause me some trouble in the long run.
Key Points and Storyboards
Before I begin any major work related to design and animation, it is best to decide on the overall story and how it is going to play out as it will a major factor in all decisions going forward. I had listed several ideas, but decided to go with an old childhood favorite, a superhero I created called Density and how he stops a crime in progress. There are two key elements in this choice. Alec (my tutor) was concerned that I was creating too many robotic figures, and he wanted me to develop my organic modelling. While I have developed other superhero creations, Density and his foes due to their silver game comic book inspirations have simple yet entertaining designs that can alleviate some of the more difficult modelling elements. To give a few examples, while all the characters are human, Blaster Woman will be the only one with her hair and mouth showing and Attractor will only show his eyes. With this in mind I created a document listing down key plot points in order of the events that transpired. This document would prove very important to my work and quickly made drawing up the storyboards a very easy and entertaining process. Even though I will be creating a pre-vis, the storyboards will provide a vital role, depicting extra details that cannot be done in the pre-vis at the moment, i.e.: hair and connected piping. I am content with how my storyboards turned out as I feel they are clear, visible and easy to read, despite the diagrams being more basic due to working on my own time which was limited.
Key Points document Link:
Key Time Points for The Final Project
Images of the Storyboards:
Concept Art
Before I continued further into the project I thought it might be prudent to get some concept art pieces produced. Because Density and his cast have been around since I first developed them in 2016 I already had produced some concept drawings and could use these pieces in the project which I have labelled in this blog as ‘Old Art’ . They do a reasonable job of showing how the main character evolved over time and how his look reflects his attitude which will help in terms of animation. However in addition to creating new art for this project as part of the standard pre-production line, I also had to create new art to fix problems that had arisen. The character of Blasterwoman had only recently been reworked as she was an incomplete character, with reference to her back story and detailed design features. As for Attractor, while he had strong character traits, the design was beginning to look outdated. Along with some general sketches to depict the movement and mood of the animation both of my villains’ they received brand new design updates. While on this topic, I will give a quick resume as to why each character was chosen outside of the model creation rationale as listed above.
Density is the main hero of the subsection of the comic world as created by myself and my brother Nathan for many years. His super power is to phase through walls by altering the density of his body to be drastically below that of the obstacle. His density can also transform in the opposite direction to become an unbreakable statue. This makes the abilities easy to animate in Maya as I just move his character through objects or hold it completed still. His age, being in the late forties, also allows some movement aspects such as his lack of agility and demonstrate pain and discomfort when overstretching his joints. Additionally I thought his costume being a two colour design could make for some cool monochrome shots.
Blaster Woman is altogether a younger and more aggressive character. Whilst similar to Density’s powers in they are relatively easy to animate, being VFX blaster effects,. Her heightened agility and role as a mercenary means her fighting prowess gives her a ‘Hit and Run’ approach. This sets her apart from the rest of the cast. Another two reasons are her mercenary style means she is the perfect character to intervene in my story as I also wished to have some strong female representation.
Attractor as a Chemical Scientist will make sense as I need a character who knows what they are dealing with when stealing chemicals from a warehouse. Unlike the other two characters, he does not posses a super power but rather uses his intelligence and technology to commit his crimes. Because of that he is slower than the others, exacerbated by having to carry the equipment he needs to fulfill his function. This equipment is necessary to enable him to remotely move objects to attack other characters. He is however a reluctant villain and will be visibly more expressive particularly when feeling fear. He will demonstrate this with trembling and panic contrasting heavily with his two assailants. Finally the last character here is the mysterious Taker who whilst not important at this juncture, will be introduced at the end of the animation. The Taker’s interest in Density, his teleportation ability and the fact he is the only character we truly know very little about will add to that sense of mystery within the overall story
Images of the Concept Art:
Old Art
New Art
The 1st Presentation
Every month at key interviews, I am to create a small presentation to update my tutors and the class on what I’m working on, what I have completed so far, as well as what work went really well and other work where I experienced difficulties. Whilst there is nothing important about these presentations in relation to the blogs however it is still worth adding them for historical records and my perspective at that time of production. This Presentation can not be uploaded due to file size.
Turnarounds created this Month
While Turnarounds could count as part of the concept art I have decided to give them their own paragraph since they are important enough to have their own section and they came later on in the month. The basic idea is that I would have a Turnaround for each of my characters that would be mostly to the same scale and also show a clean view from the design’s front, back and sides. This meant when it came to the modelling phase I could easily refer to these documents in co-ordination with the textures, to get as accurate looking models and colours as possible. I would also use templates to assist me in getting the right shape and size for my characters which worked quite well. However as it is the end of October I could only get Density and Blaster Woman done. Next month intend to complete the Turnaround for Attractor.
Images of Turn Arounds for Density and Blaster Woman:
Beginning the Pre-Vis Creation
With my Storyboards completed, I was recommended by my tutor Alec to create some visual aids in motion using Maya. In the industry this is known as pre-vis. These animations are not meant to look particularly clean or well made. Instead they give me an idea of spacing and timing, not to mention helping me understand how complex some of the movements that I want to create in 3D may be.
This felt very strange to me, however to create this way because it asks me to produce rushed and unpolished animation, something that I’ve been trained not to do. It feels like working backwards and it just took a while to get used to. This could be the reason why I wasn’t able to complete the pre-vis this month, but I did get Scene 2 to 9 complete so I’m still roughly ahead of schedule for completing project on time. While it does feel off putting to see the unfinished animation work, it gives me confidence that my animation can work and that it should not be time consuming providing my rigs on the final models are up to date and fully equipped to handle the assignment. One thing I am proud of coming up with is making sure all the models were colour-coded as even if they are a simple as a stick figure you can still differentiate one from the other. To illustrate this, Density is green and Blasterwoman is orange.
PlayBlast Test:
PlayBlast for Scene 2 to 12:
For Next Month
For next month I need to wrap up my pre-production by completing my Pre-vis and creating some checklists for each of the tasks I have to do for the overall project. I should also refine the setup area for my overall project. A tidy workplace should reduce some stress and make hunting for any specific work easier thus saving time.
I will start production by starting on the 3D assets like the boxes and barrels. On that note I will have to make sure my licenses for Maya and Substance Painter are up-to-date. I also came to the conclusion that I would need to write up a document detailing my character’s power sets, movement and personality in more detail, as well as how they would act. I had it listed down there for my classmates or tutors to take a look at so they will not get confused as to who’s who and who does what.