Introduction
For my latest and final module assignment, I have been tasked with creating a 3d animated production short in partnership with a chosen group, consisting of Seána Mackin, Adam McCeery, Benn O’Neill and me. This is a group of people with whom I have already had experience doing a group project in a previous module, therefore, we could skip most formalities and get straight to work. The specifications for this project outlined that we had to make a 30-60 second long animation based on the topic of “food” which can be interpreted into the short in any way we liked and every member of the group had to create a 3D model that we had to animate, while also not giving them legs to lighten the workload as giving them animated legs would lead to the production taking significantly longer. Blender is the main software we were appointed to use, as that was the main 3d software we had been learning on for the last semester, and will allow us to have a sense of familiarity, which will also make the project far easier to handle.
3d Production Pipeline
In order to begin the project, we needed a pipeline to streamline the process of creating the product from beginning to end. One of the first things we did as a group was research production pipelines of similar works by artists in the industry. The production pipeline is an important thing to get down as it is essentially a pillar of our project, as it will be how we will know what stage we are at with the animation at any given point. We can go back and refer to it when we do not know what to do next. The production pipeline is basically a step-by-step plan for the direct path the team making an animation will follow with very little deviation in order to make the process as quick and efficient as possible.
These pipelines are separated into three different main phases: the Pre-Production, the Production and the Post-Production phases.
Pre-Production: Ideation, storyline creation, script writing, storyboarding, and finally the animatic. this is basically the planning stage where all of the concepts and ideas for what the project will be are made and how the animators will translate them into the next stage.
Production: 3d modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, cameras and lighting. This phase of development is where the main bulk of work is being done, where the team is creating the assets and using them to make the full animation, leading to most of the development time being spent here.
Post-Production: Compositing, audio, VFX, colour correcting and basically all things to do with editing the output of the production phase to make it fit as a final product that can be viewed by an audience without lacking in quality.
Below is a diagram I found from dreamfarmstudios.com that I proposed we should use as a basis for our group to work off of as it is quite simple and it covers all which we would need to do for each phase of our production, this was interpreted into the pipeline I lightly went over just above this paragraph.
Ideation Process and Concept
To begin the pre-production process, we started to come up with a lot of ideas for what we wanted to create for our project, as stated before, it had to be based on, or involve in some way, the concept of food, which can be very broad. To come up with possible plots for our animated shorts, we went through various famous shorts in a similar style to what we were thinking of, which were more comedic. This ranged from “For the Birds”, “Geri’s Game” and “Lifted”, all made by Pixar Studios.
We ended up coming up with 100 simple ideas for a short based on this topic, as was requested by our tutors and then began a process of elimination by picking out the ones we liked the most. It came down to our four favourite main ideas from each group member:
(My concept) An armadillo is mistaken for a melon, and it eats the whole batch, becoming very fat, and enters the biggest melon competition
(Seana’s concept) The Grim Reaper was looking for a new job and was assigned a place as a farmer, but he accidentally kept killing the crops
(Benn’s concept) a bowl of fruit having a zombie apocalypse as a bad apple becomes mouldy and tries to eat/infect the rest of the batch,
(Adam’s concept) And finally, the idea we settled on, a piñata going on death row trial for eating candy and then cutting to it being hanged at a child’s birthday party.
while it wasn’t a unanimous vote as each idea was almost equally as popular as each other, the pinata concept eventually won out over the rest for it’s uniqueness and smart play on the concept of pinatas and also provided a comical twist on their colourful nature by having one being a convict on death row. This ticked the boxes that we were looking to fill as it included the comedic elements that we wanted to have while also providing a story that could be condensed into the short amount of time that we had to keep it down to, while also having room to let us provide for unique character designs that we could all make for each of our roles in creating the animation. as he was the one to come up with this idea for a story, Adam took on a somewhat leadership role within the group and decided on a name for the animated short, which he titled “hung like a horse”. While I personally wasn’t the biggest fan of the name for the obvious innuendo, I will give it credit that it did play off the concept of a piñata getting hung rather well, and it seemed to go over well with the rest of the group, so I shouldn’t complain too much about it.
My Model (Research/Inspiration)
To start my model, I obviously had to figure out who in the story I wanted to create, as did each of the other members, so we had a discussion to see who should model what. After our discussion, I came to the conclusion that I should model the characters that were found in the background scenes of the animation, such as the jury and the people in the crowd, as the piñata gets hung. I decided to draw my inspiration from the Disney film “Wreck-It Ralph”, which has a world called “Sugar Rush”, based on Formula 1 and candy. Given the sports theme of that area, it’s clear that there are many crowd members to derive inspiration from, which could help make mine look diverse. Also, while not a crowd member, i did take a lot of inspiration of my character’s appearance from “Sour Bill”, the king’s main advisor, as he had a design that i thought was appropriate to base a generic candy crowd off, and then i added in a lot of colour variations to achieve the diverse look that i wanted the crowd to have.
Using these inspirations I gathered from my research, it came time to create a concept reference image for my character, which I created in Photoshop. I mainly chose to focus on simple shapes and expressions to give my characters a more expressive range of emotions to convey, and to make them not draw too much attention away from the main character as much as possible. Also as per request i did avoid giving the character feet as to make the animation process a lot quicker and easier for my inexperience, along with that i also did not give the character any arms just like Sour Bill, who he is based off, however my character went from being a jawbreaker like the character he is inspired by, to a head of a lollipop to give them a more defined silhouette. I also attempted to give him connected eyes, similar to characters like Sonic the Hedgehog as a design quirk, but as I found out in the modelling process, that isn’t so easy to do. Here’s the final concept drawing I made of the generic crowd member:
Modelling Process
As previously stated, i used Blender as my means for creating the 3d model that i will be using as my character for the animation, as not only was that the main one we were instructed in using, but also because i have become very familiar with its tools and operating system, even moreso than Maya which i started out the year knowing more thanks to previous experience. Blender is also a better option as that is what my other group members had their only 3d experience in, therefore making it compatible with their files and making it more accommodating for them.
Creating the model was somewhat simple as i began with a regular sphere shape and didn’t have to deviate too far from that for the main body, as for the piece looping around the main body i simply used the extrusion feature to bring that part out, then bevelled it to make the edges far more smoother. Afterwards, I created two spheres, squished them down to an ovular shape and joined them together to create the eyes that line up with what I had in mind in the concept art of the candy, with separate spheres being used for the pupils to make them pop out. After that, I moved on to making the hands, and I used a very helpful tutorial I was given last semester for the 3d digital literacy module to make hands that had detail and were easy to model and animate. I made sure not to connect these to the model but instead to parent them to it to allow for them to float like I intend them to do. After that, I added a subdivision modifier to the model and made sure to not apply it so that the model takes up less space and runs smoother while appearing at a very high poly count.
Lastly, I added the textures to the model using the material editor in Blender. i did the texturing this way as i believe the model was simple enough and didn’t need the extreme detail found in other models in this animation, and i also thought it would be a good idea given how there will be many duplications of this model so having such high-resolution textures applied will make the animation process far slower without being necessary. Below is a screenshot of the model i had up to this point:
as stated in the conceptual stage I eventually ran into problems with my model with how I would approach animating the eyes as I created a singular connected eye with two pupils as I believed (and still do) that it would provide a better look for the character, but given my current skillset with modelling and animating it ended up being something I just could not do, therefore I removed the eyes and took a step back to figure out the best way to make them.
After some discussions and feedback from my tutor, I then decided the best approach to creating the eyes was to just make them two separate spheres, but to get an oval shape for them, I could use the lattice tool to squish them a bit, while not affecting the model in edit mode. This led to the eyes being far easier to animate than they were before. Below, I have provided pictures of the final complete model along with a wireframe view of it to show the techniques I used to create it.
Animation Process (Rigging, Cameras, Lighting, Animating the model)
The next part of the pipeline I had to follow in the production phase was to rig the model and animate it, which was a challenge for me. I have always seemed to struggle with creating rigs for 3d models and using armatures, and unfortunately, this was no different, as I had trouble with things like parenting the bones to the model, and to each other so that all the parts of the model could move together as I move the higher parent armature, or figuring out how to use shape keys to animate the face, however with a lot of learning and trial and error I managed to find my way through the rigging process and ended up with a complete and rigged model which can be seen below.
I continued the pipeline by beginning my animation process. i did this on its own without any scene around it as I wanted it to be duplicated to many characters but then offset each of their animations, therefore it would make more sense to create separate files of the character doing different animations then add the files into the actual story scenes that will be in the final product. i created three different main animations, two of which are on loop as they will be made for the general crowd, while the third animation will be made for one specific audience member that will get a quick focus on in the courtroom scene as they scream in horror as the pinata is shown chewing on bubblegum from the judge.
After that I then added many copies of the same file into each of the scenes that the characters were due to appear in that I had to add in, by using the append tool to add the collections that the models are found in into the scenes, after that I then changed the colours of the candy to be more varied and shifted around the timings on their animations to give it a bit of realism. The time to create the scenes came, and so I added some lighting to the scenes, making sure to mainly highlight the main character, the piñata, while also still making the crowd have a presence, then I moved on to creating the camera cuts. I made sure to make the camera move as smoothly as I could and to provide dynamic shots while still fitting with the scenes made by the other members of the group so that mine don’t stick out like a sore thumb. The scenes that I produced were scenes 11 and then 5 and 15 along with Adam, as these were scenes where our characters crossed over. The scene I added with the gumball screaming in horror was a suggested inclusion from one of my tutors as feedback after we presented the animatic of our presentation.
Finished Production
The final production can be found in my upload area, with essentially all of the scenes with the crowd making appearances, along with a few audio clips which I inserted, as the file is too large to put in this blog.
Conclusion
Reflection on my Contributions
I believe I have done a great job in creating my model and animating it, though I do believe there could be more I could have contributed to the project, ranging from vfx, editing and sounds, I also believe that I could have also taken up a little more scenes, even though it was slim pickings as others were quick to take up some scenes. while I think there were many things I could improve upon if I attempted this project again, such as time-keeping or creating better rigs for my animation that would be far easier to use, I am glad that I was still able to do it the way I have done it as I was able to improve my skills a lot in certain areas which I would typically struggle, and thanks to the help from my tutors and my teammates I was able to get past these struggles and make a product I am proud in. I am thankful that we were able to do presentations of our animations so that we could get feedback that would improve them, like Alec showing me how to rig my model and set up the oval eyes, and Rachel suggesting I add the candy screaming in horror at the piñata eating the gum.
Reflection on the Group
I had a lot of fun working with my group as we already had some experience working together in a previous module, however, I do believe that certain members were a lot more hands on and would assert their vision over allowing for more fun experimentation at times, however it was nothing major that impacted me. I believe the rest of the group ended up with some amazing work, and that allowed for an excellent final product. I really enjoyed the unique character designs and humour expressed in each person’s scenes.
Reflection on my first Year in Animation
After completing this module, this will be the end of my first year in this animation course; I have had a lot of fun, not just learning lots of new techniques and animation styles, but also meeting new people and having the experience of living on my own in Belfast. This has allowed me to network with people and find my own style in creating art and has let me experiment a lot more in digital art, which will likely be very important for my future in the industry. I also got to learn about many places in Ireland and nearby where I could possibly look to in the future as avenues for employment if all goes well. I am surely looking forward to the next few years in the course, where I will develop my skills even further beyond what I have learned this year and possibly go down a road of becoming a professional in the animation industry or elsewhere where I could use these skills.
References
Pipeline: https://dreamfarmstudios.com/blog/3d-animation-pipeline/
For the Birds: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248808/
Geri’s Game: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131409/
Lifted: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0945571/
Wreck-It Ralph: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772341/