Contents Introduction Page 2 Pre-Production Page 3 Production Page 5 Conclusion Page 7 1
Introduction This is the evaluative report for my 3D character animation show-reel. At the end of the second year, we were told that there will be a summer project brief to work on over the summer to get ready for the start of the final year, which we were told to produce 3 final film ideas or portfolio of the career choice that we want to get into the creative industry. At this point I was struggling to get any final film ideas and was I ready to create a final film so I decided to go with a portfolio route, which I think is more suitable and flexible for me to work on. From the 3D Production module of the second semester, I found that I really enjoyed doing 3D character animation because I felt that was my strongest point during the couple years in university and would like to pursue a career in character animating, this is my strongest area is mainly I enjoyed acting for character references and observing real life movements. So for my final major project is focusing on 3D character animation show-reel and I decided to create a list of things to include in my show-reel at this stage I had no clue if I wanted to go into films or game industry so at this point I have added a variety of things that I wanted to do on the list. Figure 1 Pre-Pre Production portfolio list 2
Pre-Production From the start of the semester, I was cutting down my list because from the list that I had on notepad was too much so I had to choose on what I would like to do. At this stage I decided that I wanted to go into film industry route so my list must have at least some lip sync in the show-reel. The first planning for the 3D character animation reel was previously listed as: Character lifting/pushing/pulling weight (give them a realistic situation, not just a box in an otherwise empty room) 11 second club lip-synch Sitting and standing up situation test on timing and spacing Walk cycle mix up the different walk, add moods etc. Waiting for a late bus show the expression of the character a bit more Run cycles showing different types of run cycles Changing from one emotion to another this then will help on understanding eye darts and face controls Animal walking cycle Set up a scene with a fully rendered lighting this is also will help me knowing how to render properly using Arnold render so I can be comfortable on how to finish up a finished animated piece. Flour sack jump do some basic animations involving with sacks This was the first list that been created on what to include on my final show-reel piece. I had many changes to my portfolio list and looking back to my list. I felt that there was way too much to do in the time lapse that I have and some of the list clashes with one other, so from this stage I had to narrow down my list so it is easier for me to work on and have more time to polish. After I have worked more on my portfolio list it has then gone down too: 2x 11 second club lip sync 2x Dynamic Skits Locomotion/ Quadruped Walk Cycle Life Drawing anatomy sketches Figure 2 Life Drawing When I finalised my list of things I want to include in my show-reel it makes it easier for me to work around so I have more time to improve on different bits of the scene. Once I had the list sorted I then went ahead and collected audio for my 11 second club lip sync and a plan for my dynamic skits which then I brainstormed ideas for, I was struggling to find any ideas for it as I overthink whether if it is too empty or too complexed, so I went to find some videos references of dynamic body animation to grab ideas and then brain storm to narrow the idea which Figure 3 Skit Scene Brainstorming 3
resulted to coffee scene and fight scene. I also collected rigs to use for my character animation, I decided to use paid rigs to use because since I am only focusing on animating, modelling and rigging the characters myself would be too much work for me to do and saves me a lot of time. Finding rigs at this point was not much of an issue as I was finding rigs to use during the prepre-production stages. I then proceeded forward to do reference footage for my scenes, reference footage was taken in the pre-production stage is so that I have some material to work with which I found was the best idea to do, this is because reference footage can take up a lot of time as the 11 second club can be done various different scenarios, which then I took all the ideas into one shot and chose the best reference that I wanted to animate. Figure 4 Kayla Rig Finally, for the last part of the pre-production was to block out all my scenes. Blocking pass was done at this stage is so that I do not procrastinate at this point because I had all of the planning done and was ready to go to the next stage and also to take further feedback on each scenes. Overall, I was confident that I can finish the whole show-reel in time because I felt that the blocking pass takes a lot of the time in 3D animation and I knew that I will get a lot of feedback to take ready for the production stage of the project. Figure 5 kill the chicken blocking 4
Production During the production stages I decided to choose a workflow before I started to animate which was re-block the whole 5 scenes and then grab feedback and animate. At this point I was struggling and feel a little behind because for 5 weeks I was just only blocking and not moving on and for my skit scene had many different changes where I had to create a new idea which set me back from continuing my animation. So from there, I have decided to change my work flow which was to focus on one scene get it polished and finished, which at this stage I feel more confident in moving forward with my project instead of being held back to just re-defining and creating new ideas. Having said that, I focused on the 11 second clubs first because there is a lot more in depth animation to do. I had troubles with the lip synch for both pieces because of the mouth and lip controls with the Kayla rig was hard to get the proper mouth shapes. I was being too complexed with the mouth shapes in particular and trying to get every mouth shape possible but that became an issue with the timing of the lip synch. I then revisited back on the lip synch and fix the issue, before I re- did the lip movement, I created a dope sheet for both lip-synch scenes because I feel that it would be easier for me to identify where I can create a shortcut for the mouth shapes. Figure 7 Contract Lip Sync Dope Sheet Figure 6 Kill the Chicken Lip Sync Dope Sheet I found that doing the dope sheet really helped me with identifying the shortcuts of what mouth shapes could have been used which made doing my lip synch much easier. As for body gesture wise for both, there were only slight changes which I had no problems in fixing and solving. I think I spent far too long on the 11 second club because I still had other scenes to do, so I decided to make a bit 5
more polish after I done the other scenes because if I kept on doing the 11 second clubs only then I will not have any time to start the other scenes and make it to a consistent standard to the 11 second club. After my 11 second clubs I did the dog scene. I found that the dog scene was the most interesting bit to animate because it was something new that I have not done which I was looking forward to the most out of every other scene. I struggled on the dog scene because the rig had confusing controls where some parts of the dogs body were misplaced which resulted a broken animation. There were some parts of the animation where the dog slides across during the walk which I then had to cut the scene shorter so then I do not have to fix the walk which gives me a quicker solution than making adjustments to the walk. Figure 8 Dog Scene The two skits scenes I had many troubles with because of the lack of time and the amount of changes I had on it. My first idea initially for the skits is to have a coffee scene and a fight scene but I had major doubts within those ideas as the coffee scene needed audio to make it work and the fight to dance scene had too many complex poses so I had to make the scenes much simpler. I can defiantly see that the skit scene is my weakest out of all of the animations that I have done so far but, I will do as much as I can with the skits and finish it off afterwards and define it more. I was worried that at this point of production that I did not have enough within my show-reel as the maximum duration is 90 seconds and my show-reel is overall 50 seconds, so from there I can add any extra animations into the show-reel to make it longer or making the skit scenes longer as they seem really short or add the behind scenes of where I reference to polish to add up the seconds. The music I was going to contact a composer for my show-reel but I decided not to because my show-reel was not complete as a sample which will make it harder for the composer on what I wanted. At this stage I just find copyright free music for the music so it is easier for me instead of worrying about the music. 6
Conclusion To conclude, I am happy that I took the step as doing a portfolio because I already knew that I was not ready to create a final film. If I had more time in doing my final major project, I would have liked to do more scenes to fill up the empty extra seconds so it does not feel like I am lacking a lot of things to animate. I should have spent more time on the skit scenes because I felt that I could have made better animation and spent the same time as I did with the 11 second club, if I spent the same time with what I have done with the 11 second club I would not have finished this show-reel on time so for what I have found out that the skit scene is the weakest out of the other scenes however, there are times to fix and improve after as this show-reel will be my main 3D portfolio. Whilst doing this project, I felt that my skills in character animation and using Maya have improved since the start of the year. I can see from every change I have made, especially with the 11 second club is that it is getting better and better which I am happy about but there is a lot more that I can improve within that time to make my work look more advanced. I have had concerns within this project that 5 scenes was not enough in this matter and wanted to add more to make up the seconds although, having 5 scenes overall on my project allowed to me polish my older work better, which I think is a good idea for me because I would rather have some strong work to show than the animations being shown is rough and I would want my quality of the work to be consistent. 7