• Entering the scene and introducing it to the audience, spotlight to keep the attention in the centre.

• Stead camera with a highlights on the sun.

• Low angle to emphasize the fox’s dominance and the bunny’s fear. highlights on the moon and green low light inspired by the classic Disney villain.

Render:

• We rendered it as a whole, thanks to having almost all the files linked into one blender file. and 4 separate shots as extras encase of a mistake in the main render, plus credits.

SFX:

We worked on after effects, it was, like many things new to me, but I collected a folder of sound effects over a few days on a OneDrive file and spent the day as a team adjusting the sounds to our liking, we added a filter to add to the grunge and creepy style we were trying to achieve.

Generally speaking we had no issues with the render.

All the props I made, rigged and textured:

Team issue:

We were behind on schedule, and I felt the most comfortable to do rigging, so I took a heavier load of work at this stage to allow my team member to focus on getting there rigs done.

All the textures were painted on substance painter with a combination of height maps to make it look like cardboard.

• Drawings for the moving background I used as a reference for some props:

Reference for the trees:

Early tree models:

I chose to use the round foliage because it was more suitable to fit in the stage when I added a longer trunk

Most of the props, like the cloud, bush and tree stayed the same but we decided not to use the sun and moon due to the stage being too crowded.

We initially changed the background to be circular as a replacement because we started to fall behind on schedule and focused on the priorities, but we progressed very fast and had the opportunity to do some changes, such as the originally planned background.

Reference children’s book:

I used the background as a refence for mine.

Here is the first animation of the props and (old) background, I used the damped track constraint shown to me by my lecturer, which later on changed.

Here is a test of two different option of constraints I gave my team: the damped track which eased animating by swinging on its own but wouldn’t work on the track I created and the copy rotation and limit rotation which worked on the track but had to be swung by hand. We decided as a team to use the copy rotation constraint with the track which is similar to the idea of the carousel in one of our early rigging exercises.

More props I made, rigged and textured:

• Final moving background.
• Signs.
• Short curtains.
• Day props.
• Children.

The children were recycled from the 3D previs, to cut down time and have more time for our individual models.

Overall view:

Final rigging of the props on a track:

Animation Test for the props:

We decided each team member will do their models animation instead, due to reaching a rough time in our schedule so we could get our work done on time.

I decided to be more experimental with my rigging to learn how to do it, as I’ve never done it before and it took me a little while to understand but with more explanation from my lectures and watching the exercise videos a few times I got a good enough hold of it. I even learned to solve my team members problems such as, little mistakes of forgetting to set it to local, how the limit constraints work, different styles of constraints to allow animating to be faster.

Example: making use of the copy constraints for parts that should follow the head for example, sharing to my team members how to use the damped track as the lecture did and more minor issues.

Animation tests:

1.Animation tests to show the rigs potential

2.The animation done prior to my final character animation

A more detailed look into my rig:

My problems/ solution:

• I was very unfamiliar with weight painting and made the mistake of altering the weight too much which eventually lead me to restart and reassigning the automatic weight, but that helped my understand how it works and not over doing it.
• The arms didn’t end up moving the exact same way but it was such a minor issue at this stage it was better to leave it be. I asked for advice from my lecturer and I learned it was probably caused by the bones not being symmetrical due to having to move them for the IK to work. As a note for my next model it is best to do it all on one side and eventually symmetrise it.

• Before drawing the final design, I did one last set of characters to see if the shape language I chose was right, which led to a few minor alteration.

• I used a human head as a base for the design to ensure the topology for the mouths movement would work.
• I took me a few tries to learn how to model the character and avoid stretching, unnecessary bump and feedback from lectures on the topology like straightening the head to not have difficulties in the rigging process and shortening the length of the arms to eventually reach the final model.

 

• Here the teeth and nose felt too realistic and wasn’t consistent with everyone else’s puppet so I chose to do a simple nose and solidified planes for teeth, to mimic little felt triangled.

The final design:

We managed as a team to get the models to look consistent as models, and with the help of similar fabric textures. While also having a unique set of characters.

What I would do differently:

Similarly to the feedback of the head, because I didn’t consider the tail would be moving I modelled it already curved which made it slightly awkward when animating, I would keep all moving elements in a straight T posing position next time to avoid awkward animation.

A turn around of my model:

My final 3D previs: