playblasts

Animation exercises and tests

FINAL RENDER

Create a small environment where an action will occur

A1 – Visual Style and Theme

Setting ideas:

• bedroom
  • maisonette/studio
  • depression room?
  • raining outside, night time – include details
  • killer hiding behind the curtain with knife
    • simple and easier idea – experiment with lighting

• city in the storm
  • futuristic or present
  • train station is a secluded area safe from the rain – there’s an abandoned stairwell
  • romantic meetings gone wrong?
  • girl has a bloody knife behind her in the bag and a polaroid with pictures of her lover who she’s confessing to
    • little bit complicated to put that idea forward

• calm lake with lily pads
  • mermaid coven deep in the forest. child comes to the lake and is talking to a mermaid – they are peering up at him but underwater is bones – they want to drag him in.
    • slightly complicated with modeling but nice idea with environment

Chosen idea:

Maisonette death

Setting: a maisonette studio on the top floor of an apartment block in the midst of a rainy evening
• Film Style:
• Visual Genre:
• Architectural Style:

A2 – Experimentation, Ideation

Gather references and images to establish theme and mood. For inspiration

https://pin.it/7mQnXb9 – a Pinterest board of some references

A3 – Mood

Create rough sketches and mood boards

Planning

firstly, after choosing my idea, before blocking the objects out I created an assets list so I would know what to create and how to plan my scene out. I also made a calendar so I knew how to plan my animation around my own schedule so I could get it done in time.

I had a lot of assets that needed creating. I love adding little details, so it was not a problem – but some, such as the pillows and clouds, I downloaded online, as they were more of background assets so I didn’t want to spend a lot of time working on them. If I would start over, I would choose to challenge myself a bit more and spend time trying to make every single asset, so that I could enhance my skill sets.

I tried to simplify things as much as possible – and planned to get as much of it done ASAP so I would not be rushing to finish things on time – as I have done in the past.

While I ended up having my blocking, modeling, and texturing done on schedule –  the animating and rendering proved to be more of an issue.

I did some research on camera angles, shot scenes, life-drawing to draw realistic models and positionings, and house types – to which I figured out that the house type I was trying to make was a maisonette.

Storyboards

When it came to storyboarding, I knew I would only need to create storyboards for two of my shots, as the animation in the second shot would be a simulation. I acted out the scene myself, on a wheely chair by a desk so I would get an idea of how to move the mode, and then I created a basic storyboard to look at as I animated. For the fridge scene, I drew a small change for the positioning of the hand in the blood for the particle simulation.

I started by planning out the camera angles I wanted to encapsulate, and then by drawing the scene from a top view so I could get an idea of where to place the cameras. While this gave me an overall idea, I did end up changing the second camera as it didn’t flow very nicely, and I wanted to have a believable transition from one camera to the next in a  way that the audience viewing this animation could understand the story easily.

Task 2: Blocking

Blocking was very useful as it showed me what would and would not make sense in the scene. It also allowed me to see if I should add new objects to make the scene warmer and more homely, for example, I had originally not planned for a rug, or for all four walls, and decorations, such as a plant pot, or a painting. Planning the scene out helped me see if it was coherent.

I struggled a lot with not rushing to immediately model everything, as I was a bit overexcited to start with. After I had done the base blocking, I asked some of my peers, as well as Sam, my tutor, if I should change or add anything. I knew that this was very necessary as sometimes when you’re focusing on a specific task you can be blinded to some faults. By getting a fresh perspective I was able to accept criticism and change what I could according to what would make the most sense to the audience.

Modelling

My favorite object to model was the lamp. I loved creating tiny details such as the light bulbs and the mechanics inside of them. While the lamp itself was quite plain, I textured it to allow the light inside it to shine through. If I could work on it further, I would have tried to add some details to make the lamp more interesting on the outside, as well as the inside.

The pictures are some examples of the models I created. Modeling was my favorite aspect of this unit. I loved creating little details to put inside my animation, such as the detail on the microwave, and the sink. Out of all these models, the cupboard was the most difficult, as I didn’t want the mesh to be too complicated. I ended up recreating it three times in order to get it exactly how I wanted it to be.

Cameras

I struggled a lot with the camera positions. One of the classes we had were discussing cameras and I could not understand the idea of which cameras were which and how they worked on emitting a certain emotion.

I decided to go with a slow zoom for all the shots in order to give off the atmosphere of suspension and mystery.

I almost went with a slow zoom and 270-degree turn for the first camera but decided not to as it felt too out of place with the other cameras.

Texturing

Texturing took some time, but it was a task I really enjoyed. I was very proud of how the bloodied knife turned out. Once I sorted out the UV maps it was very straightforward. I downloaded a PNG of blood dripping and added it to the knife to give the illusion that it was a murder weapon.

I disliked that when I would export my models to Substance Painter, they wouldn’t be smoothed out, so I had to redo a few textures, including this one, so that it would appear coherent once fully rendered.

When texturing the laptop, I wanted to give off the impression that it was well used – I created the outline and then mixed a few premade textures in Substance Painter to get the texture up to how I imagined. I downloaded a PNG of a keyboard and uploaded it on the UV map for the keypad so that it would look realistic. For the lights, I just used some color emitters in Maya.

One of my criticisms of the outcome of my textures is that I should have added more detail to make it a murder scene. If I would add anything it would be more blood splatters – for example, on the floors, and surfaces.

Lighting 

Lighting took a lot of time and involved me even creating new models, such as lamps, to make the scene a little bit brighter in a way that would make logical sense.

When I first added all my lights and was satisfied with the result, I pressed render and found that all the lighting I added was not showing up in the render, resulting in a very dim scene – the opposite of what I wanted. Eventually, after speaking to some of my peers, we realized that the problem wasn’t with the lighting, it was that the camera exposure was on 0 and therefore they weren’t letting any light in. I fixed the problem and was happy with the render

If I would change anything about the result, I would have spent more time on the lighting to get it to an even better place. I’m not completely happy with the outcome and will spend more time in the future tweaking it to get it to the place I want it to be.

Animation

Rendering

Rendering was the most stressful. My render kept on aborting early with no reason as to why, but with a lot of research I managed to figure out that my file names were too long, and it couldn’t find them. In the end, I had to change the file names to fully render my scenes.

For future projects, I will try to stay more organized, as my problem would have been fixed easily if I had been organized with my files to start with.

I wanted to give my render a grainy effect, rather than a clear shot, as I wanted the atmosphere for the audience to be slightly uneasy, and slightly uncanny. I feel that I achieved this result.

If I would change anything I would work on making the scene a little brighter than it ended up being, and slightly more of the aesthetic vibe I wanted to go for. 

Week 1

For this challenge I worked with 3 other students. We were given a challenge to create a story for a short film based on 6 random prompts telling the genre, the cause we are working for, the plot twist, the setting, the time period, and the overall theme.

• Genre: mystery 
• Cause: healthcare access 
• Twist: virtual reality 
• Setting: post apocalyptic wasteland 
• Time period: 1980s 
• Theme: redemption