Dragon Bait and Animate

I created a really simple and rough animation to test out a kind of animation style I had been looking in to. I know I don't want something smooth or too natural looking as it wouldn't match the character art or environment. I recently saw the Into the Spider-Verse trailer and was really intrigued by this kind of 'stop-motion' style of animation so gave it a go in Maya. I tried the animation with auto tangents before switching to stepped tangents on every 2nd frame and then every 4th (roughly). I actually really like 4s but I want to see how this looks with a full body animation rather than just facial.

I spent some time pulling together a rough pre-visualisation. This took a lot longer than I expected as I was learning how to use Cinemachine and setting up each Virtual Camera. This was a bit of a learning curve but it should save me time in the long run as all of the cameras are already set up.   Each half cog/half camera is a Virtual Camera linked in Cinemachine. These are very light and don't slow down the whole process as they only use 1 main camera. Some of the cameras are attached to the character and 'Look At' certain parts of her, her eyes, the device, her wrist etc. Once she's animated and walking the cameras should bounce along with her.    The whole scene has been updated in Unity so that each camera angle has a full background rather than too much white space. I have also downloaded and imported Unity's Post-Processing Stack. This helps change the look of the film into something closer to what could be achieved in Maya and Premiere Pro

The last couple of weeks have been a bit weird, I've been trying out lots of different things both in 3D modelling for my character as well as in Unity to see how the film may look. I've also looked back on my storyboards and know where I need to tweak things to make the film work. I wasn't entirely happy with the character design and as Sang said, it needs to have good topology, especially in the face, as everything will be visible in the low poly style. So I took a head I had sculpted and retopoed in 3D Coat as a base: I also changed the body to make it simpler as well as changing the device on her arm to be more fragmented. At the same time I was doing regular testing in Unity to see how the character is going to work in real time as well as how certain parts of the animation was going to look. I wanted to have a play about with how the character might look, knowing that I have a fractured and abstract environment, I feel like there is a lot of room to

I spent a little while working on setting up a basic scene in Maya and found a lot of inspiration the the PS4 game 'Bound'.  I love the way they do the far away scenery and I like the idea of the world cracking and moving around my character so I tried to incorporate this into the test scene I was building.  There's a lot that still needs to be worked on, especially the far away background but I'm happy with how it's slowly coming together. I also spent a bit more time playing about with lighting in Maya and trying to get it to look a bit more like I wanted it to look originally and the idea that the face is projecting it's own light and coming to life. Again, there's lots more to work on but I feel like I'm getting somewhere.

I was thinking today about an older concept I had when I started developing the current idea for 'Cure' and I think it would be easier for me to focus on research on something I really care about: Mental Health. The narrative throughout 'Cure' was initially developed with the thought of depression and loneliness being at the centre. The loneliness aspect was singled out for most of the continued development but I would like to bring it back to its roots of depression. With this in mind, I spent today thinking about lighting. After running a couple of tests in Maya, (Lighting in Maya is hard) I sketched up some rough thumbnails of how I wanted the lighting to appear to the audience. So I want to run some more tests and practice lighting in general for the future. In other news, I put together a little comparison image of some concept art and the final model.

Yesterday we were talking about our projects again and Ryan reminded me of a game I saw at E3 a couple of years ago: Bound. Bound has a really cool low poly style which is particularly effective in the environments. I love the movement and how the environment pulls itself together and shifts as the character moves. I'm not sure how much I'd be able to incorporate into my final project but I think this is quite important in terms of inspiration.

I finished a base mesh of my model and it sits at around 1600 polygons. From here I extruded clothes and hair before adding in some grey shades through Hypershade as well as making the hair pink but I'm not sure if that's going to stay. With hair, clothes, eyes and the 'device' in my character's ear, I have around 2000 polygons. I want to run these models past my lecturers to see what they think and if the character looks 'low poly' or just like I have bothered smoothing out the character.  With a model finished, I tried messing about with the Quick Rig tool in Maya which was actually super easy to use and gave me a pretty good base that I could build on.  There are some issues with the rig, namely under the shoulders and the hands that need to be tweaked in the future but it's a start.

I'm going to put this here before I forget. I spent some time today trying to build a different head for my model as I do want to have expressions on my character but I ended up going back to the head I had modelled in November. I spent a while going through edge loops and deleting what wasn't absolutely necessary until I had something I liked a little more. As a test I imported this new head into the model I had finished up yesterday to see if they would work together and I think I like this style more than what I had initially whipped up. (Although there are several triangles... don't tell Sang).

I was pretty unhappy with the initial base mesh I had built in Maya that I then took into ZBrush. I had intended to use this mesh as a base for my Master's Project as well but I wasn't happy with the topology so I started again in Maya. This time I just aimed to create the head that I could use to test how the wireframe might look. I started off by sketching up what I wanted the character to roughly look like in Photoshop, taking some inspiration from celebrity photos. Then I loaded these image planes into Maya to begin modelling. After watching a few different methods of how to build a head in Maya I started with a single plane and slowly built up detail and geometry as I needed it. Considering I wanted a low poly, stylised, hard edged look, I may have too much geometry in this initial model but I'm much happier with it than the base mesh I had created. I also did a quick wireframe render and overlayed it in Photoshop to see what it might lo

I've always said that music is a massive influence in my work and for the longest time I wanted to create a simplified music video for my final Master's Project. However as time goes on, I've realised that I actually want to focus more on story telling and developing a character which the audience can sympathise with and relate to. As such, I no longer feel like the original music I was wanting to use is appropriate for the new world I'm building in this short film. So I went looking for new music and stumbled across it when I decide to re-listen to an album I had found a couple of years ago. Low Roar by Low Roar, in particular the song Patience: The song has a bleak feeling from the beginning and matches the general tone of the short film I'd like to create. There are also several other songs that have inspired the feel of the film that I've pulled together in a Spotify playlist here.   I'm sure I'll find more music as this progresses but s

After yesterday and today I'm feeling a lot more confident in the my general story idea. I like the pace and tone and now just need to find out what the ending means to me. I had several ideas about what it could mean including the guilt of selfishness as the character sits alone in a dead world as well as the feeling of loneliness and that no matter what my character did she was ultimately alone which I know can happen to people all over the world. However, yesterday we had a fantastic workshop with Mark Grindle where we got to talk about our ideas and hear his feedback. To him, my ending was comparable to the digital age and the loss of ourselves/humanity in a digital environment and I really like that concept, especially considering it's in a 3D setting. As for the story itself, there's one image that keeps sticking with me so I quickly drew it out today in Photoshop in about an hour to try and get it solidified in my head. I like the idea of the camera being close up

After talking through our inspirations and ideas yesterday, I went away and tried to research some styles and techniques that I could use in my final project and I think I know what sort of direction I want to go in. I love the low poly style of 3D modelling and animation but I don't want my film to look like a badly animated video game. I know a lot of good low poly work relies of keeping a sense of realism in the animation and not losing the character through a lack of definition. It also occurred to me that lighting in extremely important as that can change the entire mood of a scene but I have no idea where to look for lighting ideas in a low poly stylised animation. Until I stumbled upon an artist called Jona Dinges . Jona's low poly work is absolutely stunning and maintains a sense of self and personality across his designs. In particular he has some wonderfully lit mini scenes and even a small cloth simulation. This piece below was modelled in Blender be