Starting ideas
Unit 4 was a collaboration project. We were put into random groups and had to produce a 90-second animation using the information we learned from lectures. My teammates were Dana and Lulu. We each started by thinking of a story idea each then we discussed which idea we liked better. We all liked Dana's idea the most :
Logline
A man finally decides to go on a run after realizing the unhealthy ways of his lifestyle, however, the potential dangers of this could outweigh the rewards.
Synopsis:
A man is sitting on the couch, watching TV in the dark, while eating crisps and has a beer in hand. He has a stubble beard, a beer belly and is wearing pyjamas. An advertisement comes on to the TV, warning viewers of the dangers of not exercising and eating too much junk food. The man’s expression becomes increasingly worried as the advertisement plays. It then switches to determined, as he decides to do something about his current situation. He marches to his cupboard and puts on his exercise gear. He puts on sweatbands and trainers to the sound of “Eye of The Tiger'' music. He opens the front door and is about to step out before his face switches to an expression of deep thought. We get a look inside his head. A series of imaginary scenarios play out: he accidentally steps in dog poop, he falls into a ditch, it starts raining, etc. These scenarios become crazier and crazier with things like potentially getting abducted by aliens and getting struck by lightning. We return to reality, with the man staring out by his front door with a blank expression on his face. He slams the door and returns to the safety of his couch and television.
When it came to storyboarding we split the roles according to our strengths. We were also very concerned about how we would make our work look uniform as we all have very different drawing styles. To go around this problem we decided that Lulu and I would split the original 26 shots in half and draw them on paper, then Dana drew over them to make them look more uniform.
My Storyboard drawings
Dana's Digital Storyboard Drawings
Once we had created our storyboard and knew what we wanted to happen we started to get clear on what we wanted our animation to look like. To do so we created mood boards. After we had all created a mood board corresponding to our designated departments we began drawing and designing.
Dana's Outdoor Mood-boards
Lulu's Character Design Mood-board
Building a concept
This is what we believe our character's room should look like before we realise that it did not look very much like the images in our mood board. We did go back and hold discussions to confirm whether we liked the drawings before a started modelling everything in Blender. This was very useful because even though I was in charge of putting our ideas for Bob's room down on paper, I was not content with our first draft. It definitely looked like it was inspired by Simpsons Living room but it had not been developed further to show our character's personality.
These are Dana's drawings for the Outdoor Concept Art:
These are Lulu's drawings for our Character Development:
Final Turn Around Sheet:
Lulu designed the clothing:
(discuss the clothing issues)
I built the Indoor environment:
Layout Practice / Pre-Vis
To understand what we wanted the final room to look like I decided to build a "make-shift-layout" using pre-made assets. I used this build as a chance to practice building the props. I found this to be very helpful because I find it easier to design three-dimensional spaces that I can see and edit in real-time in comparison to drawing and having to be very meticulous about details such as perspective and scale.
I then made a layout room with place holder objects which I slowly replaced as I made the final assets.
Storyboard vs Pre-Vis side-by-side
In order to make his room look like a typical gamer's room, we wanted to make a mess. We wanted there to be cans of junk food scraps and packaging.
Just like after looking at the first concept art drawing, after building this Pre-Vis Layout we decided that the room did not look at all like we imagined it to be. It helped us to decide on what we wanted to add and change. It helped us decide on change such as lighting and object placement.
It also made me realise that we would have to delete a few walls in order to film properly. Just like a live-action set, most walls and props can be moved in order to create dynamic shots.
In order to do this, I duplicated the walls in the room and then deleted faces in edit mode so that when it came to animating, I could select the wall we wanted to turn off easily.
(add images of my folder layout)
This also made me realize the importance of structured files and folders. When I did not have organised assets and objects it made it very difficult to do anything. I spent most of my time trying to figure out where the object I had added disappeared. When I had a well-structured collections folder it allowed me to easily turn objects on or off and add or delete objects. It also made it so much easier for my teammates when it came to us using each other's layouts when animating.
One issue that kept arising when it came to rendering was how the screen was black or some objects had not been deleted from an earlier version of the layout file. But because everything was in its correct folder this was an easy fix. The folder's or individual object could be deleted quickly and easily.
Building in Blender
When it came to animating we kept to our "departments". this made it much easier to build everything true to our personal vision and style choices. This is because even though we may agree on a particular style for the living room, the execution may look different if two different people designed and made it. Although this is what happens in the Production Arts industry, we decide to do it this way as it would be easier for us to make our first-year animation.
Reference Images
Building objects in Blender
I built the sofa from a single plain so it makes keeping the topology even very difficult. I had a very difficult time trying to make the "L" part of the sofa look normal. I had accidentally intersected a few of the faces.
To add to the mess in his living room I wanted to create a pile of clothes. I first tried making them using a cloth simulator. This looked very realistic when it was just one piece of fabric but when I added more layers of fabric they all intersected each other. Instead of looking like multiple items of clothing it looked like one multi-colored fabric.
Building Assets
I wanted to add a few crushed cans so that we could see that the room looks more personal. Each can is never perfectly crushed or crushed in the exact same way so I experimented with different ways to make a crushed can.
To make the clothes look more realistic i ended up using texture painting on a few different plain cubes. I made then all different colors and sizes then began to collapse them in on themselves using the cloth brush. I believe this worked pretty well.
I used my new found texture painting skills to make the socks look old and crinkly. I wanted to add one distinct item of clothing to the pile to make the mess distinguishable as a pile of clothes.
I added a bookshelf with game cases so that his living room looked like it was a space that was actually lived in and not just a plain set. I did not have time to draw covers on the books and game cases so I made them all different colours instead and also made some balance on each and made others fall.
Final Animation:
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