Assignment 3: 15-30 second Animated short
– Monday 10th May – 60%
Theme – ‘ Adventure ‘
Our third assignment was a group assignment where we had to organise ourselves into groups of five people and were tasked with creating a 3D animated short based on the theme of ‘Adventure’.
For our Adventure animation, myself and my group have been tasked with creating a 30 second 3D animated short film, entitled “Hubris”. My team consists of Neave Thompson, Joseph Catney, Jodie Devenney, Lauren McConachie and myself.
Pre-Production:
In the initial planning stages, our group created a Miro board so we could lay out the goals and targets for the animation brief and begin to generate various ideas of what our animation could be about. The Miro board enabled us to visualise these ideas as spider diagrams and to find connections or inspiration from these.
We began writing down what we would associate with adventure and how to go about creating a story and animating something for that. We also began going through potential characters that were simple enough for beginner 3D animators, settings, and stories.
After we had exhausted most of our ideas, we then began to choose our favourites and what more people were leaning towards at the time, which were the worms on strings, snow bunnies, rubber ducks and slime ideas. We then began to try to expand and combine these ideas into something we would all enjoy working on for the animation which would also have room for change and would appeal to many people.
For a while we had been resolved to go with the worm-on-a-string idea, however when we combined the slime character idea with the story idea of a wizard’s workshop with potions, the whole animation was very clear and compelling to all of us.
With our story concept decided, we decided to continue into brainstorming what variations of the slime our character would turn into in his hubris to drink as many transformation potions as possible. We each began drawing out rough ideas of what the main character slime character could look like as well as all their variations.
Our team needed to balance the start of 3D pre-vis production against the need to give ideation, conceptualisation, and planning enough time to evolve.
Our group found that the best way to communicate and work with the team was by having a group call scheduled once or twice a week as well as being able to talk in the class breakout groups on Blackboard. We created a Discord server specific to the animated short in order to be able to separate any ideas, designs, maya files or links and research that we did. We also used this to call on the voice channel and plan what each of us would work on for the week ahead. I was also fortunate enough to be bubbled with two other members of my animation group, and so we could easily plan and work with each other, as well as share what we had completed.
It was much easier to call and voice ideas to one another, so that everyone could get a part in the creation of the short, as well as being able to work together efficiently.
We had to think early on about how sound will balance your pace and impact the appeal & emotion of your work and wanted to stick with simple slime sounds and a cough at the end to keep our animation cute and simple. Joseph researched a lot of the sound early on and we created a discord channel specifically to post possible sounds we wanted to use.
We had to edit and cut down a lot of our storyboarded animation so it wouldn’t be too long or too much work for us to complete in time for the deadline to make the end animation achievable yet also coherent to others. We tried incorporating elements of the hero’s journey into our narrative also as we had been studying it within our class lectures this semester.
Inspiration:
Early in the ideation process, after our group had decided on the definite Slime animation idea, we created a Pinterest board to research other art and media inspiration we could use and apply to our group animation.
Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/Sumirerin/adventure-animation-moodboard/
A lot of our initial inspiration for the animation was based off of animated media and games that we loved. The slime character came from a mix of the slimes that could be found in the game Minecraft as well as the varying slime designs found in Slime Rancher.
We were very inspired by the colour schemes and background designs found in the Spyro the Dragon games, Kingdom Hearts, as well as the animated series Gravity Falls. Kingdom Hearts has a lot of fantasy-styled maps. Traverse Town is a great example of the type of aesthetic we had in mind. The buildings specifically, influenced our initial idea for the wizard house.
In addition, we looked at Studio Ghibli films for design and story inspiration. The film, Ponyo uses effective round forms in its character design and includes transformations reference to potions. Another inspiration was Howl’s Moving Castle which has very similar themes with a wizard, potions and magic. Not only that, but the character, Calcifer was an inspiration for some of our main characters designs.
Presentations:
First Story Draft:
Our initial story for Hubris followed the adventure of a slime trapped in a jar and kept by a wizard.
The story takes place in the wizard’s workshop, where, once he is gone, the slime decided to make his attempt to escape. In the process of escaping, he accidentally knocks over some nearby potions that clutter the tabletop. Curious, the slime decided to try some of the spilled potion and magically becomes bigger. This gives the slime the idea to continue trying as many of the wizard’s different potions as he can, transforming into many different versions of himself such as an electric slime, a plant slime or rock slime etc. The animation ends with the slime drinking a final, off limits potion which, consequentially, blows up in his face, literally. The animation then finishes with the slime coughing through the smoke and the screen fading to black.
We wanted to push the popular fantasy genre into something light-hearted and fun, narrative, character (or non-character) art in different ways and use our designs and problem-solving processes to work through issues.
Character Design:
Throughout the initial brainstorming, myself and my group wanted to keep our main characters simple and wanted to avoid full biped characters for this project as we had only just begun modelling and animating with Maya this semester. We went for a simple slime model, that would resemble a semi-sphere shape, and we aimed to make it as cute and likeable to the audience.
We had a few things to decide upon though, mainly the colour of the slime, the shape, and what their eyes looked like and where they lay on its face. As you can see, even just the slightest changes of shape and eye placement can change the way you interpret the characters personality drastically.
For the different slime forms, we went through a number of different ideas and concepts to see what would stick. We didn’t want to make our designs too complicated and therefore used more round shapes, organic lines and simple details. This would make it far easier for us when pulled into Maya- as we are beginners this is in our best interest. We also experimented with different types of slimes such as fire slime and plant slime. We tried to incorporate different personalities into our designs, for example, the demon slime is presented with menacing eyes and aggressive body language. This portrays the kind of character this would be. At the moment, we are currently deciding which slime designs are going to be finalised in our final animation.
Each one of our group members wanted to give their own take to the slime designs and, based off of Jodie’s initial basic slime shape designs.
My Slime Character transformation Designs!
Backgrounds/World Concept:
In terms of backgrounds, one of our ideas was to have it set around an abandoned campfire, where adventurers had left a bag of potions behind, allowing a wandering slime to get into them out of curiosity. We knew this type of scene would be easy enough to set up as there wouldn’t be many assets other than a barren campsite and a bag of potions, after exploring this idea a bit we decided not to go with it as we thought we had better ideas that would fit the story much more.
The setting we decided to go with was a wizard’s room. We felt this made more sense for the slime to be in as he would be part of the wizards potion experiments. This type of setting has a better atmosphere too as it looks much more medieval and magical than a campsite, which aligns with our idea better. We drew up two different ideas to get a general idea of what this room could look like.
The final design we settled on was made by Joseph:
Prop Design:
Because the base premise of our group animation is based around a wee slime getting its very atoms scrambled up and rearranged into different forms when it drinks a potion, of course we need bottles to hold said potion – and labels and designs for the bottles that showed what was in them.
Potion Bottle Concept Ideas:
Bottle concepts by Jodie and Joseph.
Bottle concepts by Neave.
My Concepts:
We had various ideas of what different forms we want our slime to turn into, so obviously we started creating concepts for the bottles to hold them. We had an idea to manipulate the vases we modelled on week 1 into potion bottles or at least impromptu props – but this isn’t exactly a necessity for us to do some we’re not sure we’ll do it.
While we’re still coming to concepts on what type of different forms our slime will turn into, we decided to come up with some fun potion bottle concepts for props in our animation anyway, which you can see here!
My Finalised Potion Concept Designs:
I also made a specific label for the Explosive Potion, however this proved quite difficult to texture onto the already glass textured bottle within the time limit, so the designs were never used. Here are the concepts I did for it:
Myself and my group were inspired by 3D modellers such as:
His 3D modelled bottles and the liquid inside were really nicely modelled and so I aimed for something similar:
Storyboarding and Pre-vis:
We’ve planned out our story enough that we’ve made a rough storyboard idea, here we see our little slime contained in a jar in a wizard’s room, and upon him leaving the slime blinks awake, and decides now is as good a time as any to break out! Upon shaking their jar off the shelf however, all the other concoctions that were beside it fall off too. In its first moments of freedom, it explores, and takes notice of a puddle of colourful liquid, when they take a sip, they grow! The first potion effect was cool, and they see around them much more puddles of potion that they’d tipped over. The next sip of potion turns them into a cat slime. This surely couldn’t end badly.
Story Boards:
A couple of storyboards of our initial animation plan made by Jodie:
Storyboard Animatic:
Pre-Vis:
As the animation had to be about 30 seconds, our group had to cut out some finalised character transformation designs, assets and shots in order to be time conscious and practical in creating our animated short.
Excel Sheet:
We tracked our progress and made deadlines for ourselves on Microsoft excel to make sure we were completing each stage of our animation on time, without rushing ourselves at the end.
Modelling:
Potion Bottles –
I was in charge of modelling the potion bottles for the animation and had to use my previous knowledge of modelling from earlier in the semester to make them all as well as following a few tutorials online.
I completely finished with modelling and UV mapping the potion bottles. I have also finished adding the textures to these and they are ready for the final animation. Our group wanted a coloured glass effect for each of the potion bottles and created these by adding materials onto the object on Maya and using Arnold Standard Surface ai Glass texture to see how these would render.
These models were the key props in the story and would be seen more clearly, and so more time was spent designing and modelling them. The glass effect has worked really well in initial rendering and so the effect of these has been achieved.
Unused, Labeled Explosion Potion.
Neave modelled the entire room and main objects such as the table and bookcase for our animation scene, as well as UV mapping, and texturing all of these. They also did most of the lighting and render settings for the room. Joseph modelled all of the other background props and pieces such as the other jars, scrolls, and books that can be found in the scene. Together we all set the scene and location of our animation.
Animating:
For our presentation, our group wanted to each start our animation. I made this test piece to understand how I wanted the slime to move for my part and wanted to figure out how the rigging, that Joseph and Jodie had made, would work.
However, I was not happy with this and wanted to completely remake it.
I animated the explosive bottle being pushed by the Devil Slime animated by Wren.
First draft, final animation:
Final Draft of my animated part:
Rendering:
The rendering process was mostly completed by Jodie, Joseph and Wren as the final animation Maya files only seemed to render correctly on their computers.
Final Render Images:
Compositing:
The composition of the animation was completed by Jodie who took all of the finished rendered frames of the animation and pieced them together. They then managed to fix the lighting of certain shots or frames where the render had changed slightly between frames. They also were the one who added the 2D animated effects that were found online for free, and created the smoke and explosion animations that really made the animation all come together and feel magical!
Final Sound:
The final sound edit was completed by Joseph using Premiere Pro, which turned out really great! The sound completely enhanced our entire animation and made it seem very professional.
Final Animation:
Title by Jodie.
Group 7’s final short animation, Hubris:
Our Team submitted our final film and uploaded this to OneDrive and Blackboard. Please enjoy!!