For my final project I have two main things to be working on. The first is my actual animation and the second is a written report. However, before I can start either of these, I need an idea!
Due to the fact that I am looking at working the advertisement business, I have been playing with ideas based around a TV commercial. After meeting with Sabrina my personal tutor I have narrowed it down to three general ideas:
- Animate an actual advert where I would come up a brand new advert for an existing or brand new product.
- Take an existing advert and twist and change it, making it into a spoof.
- Do a 'behind the camera' style piece where I would look at an advert that's being filmed and animate that.
All three ideas have the potential to work well and create really go animations I just need to find which one will work best for me and my style of animation, but also look at which one will be the funnest to create!
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After sitting down and taking a good look down all three of the paths i narrowed it down to i finally decided on an idea an wrote myself a specification, which has since been approved by my personal tutor giving me the ethical approval to get the ball fully rolling and actually start some work!!
Below is my approved specification.
My Idea
For my final project I plan on creating a short animated sequence lasting between 1 - 2 minutes, starting from concept and finishing with a fully rendered 3D animation. This animation will be focused around a single character who is trying to film an advertisement. As my main focus for this project is to come up with a believable and successful character animation that portrays the character's emotions through both actions and speech, I have decided not to model and rig my own character. Instead I will be using a pre-made rig from the Internet; however I do plan on displaying some modelling skills by building the set and props that will be around the character throughout the animation.
The animation is set in a TV Studio. As the character tries his hardest to get to grips with his lines, thanks to an incredibly picky director, he is given a number of different approaches to sell the product that is in front of him. These approaches, to his annoyance, get weirder and funnier as he tries again and again to get that final shot the director is looking for. In the end it's all too much, he breaks down, gives up and goes home!
In order to create the best overall project I can, I will be breaking my project up into three sections. The first section is the 'Pre-Production' section where I will start off by creating appropriate mood boards and concept design, before creating my storyboards and animatic, writing my script and finally creating a video reference of my animation with somebody acting it out for me. Next will be the actual 'Production' of the animation where I plan on modelling and blocking out my animation before I finally animate the piece fully. The third and final stage will then be the 'Post Production' whereby I will test my animation on the public before finally rendering it. For this project I will be using Autodesk's Softimage to model, texture and animate all my work and plan on using Premiere Projects to render everything when it's finished.
Alongside the three stages listed above, I will also be producing a report. This report will be 8,000-10,000 words in length and will talk about each stage of my final project as I go through them. It will be written as I progress with the project and will include things such as my inspirations, as well as any problems I face and my view on the final result.
Project Schedule
October -November
Mood boarding, Concept designs, storyboarding and script writing
December
Animatic and video referencing
January
Modelling and blocking out
February - March
Final animating
March
Public test viewing and rendering
April
Print off all necessary papers and burn CD/DVDs ready for 4th April!So now I have my idea I have been looking around and seeing if I can find any reference material to help me further develop my idea into the vision I have for the final outcome. To do this I will be looking into things like styles of animation I like and images and videos etc
Due to the fact that my animation is all based around the my main character and the delivery of his lines I have been watching 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'. In this program 4 comedians are given a situation by the presenter followed by a style of acting they must ad lib to. This is perfect for me as the relationship between the comedians and the presenter is near enough exactly that same as the relationship I will be creating between the actor in my animation and the director!
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Now I have my idea, one of the first big decisions I have to make next is what model and rig I want to use as my main character. This is an important decision because the characters image can effect what is said in the scene.
Below is the rig I have chosen to use as my character, along with it's controls:
Other than being a very easy rig to use, the reason I went for this character was because when I saw him it instantly made another big decision a lot easier. You see by having my character be an alien I can now say that my main character is a guy in a suit pretending to be a new star from a very popular kids TV program, who is trying to sell toy action figures of himself!
Below is the rig I have chosen to use as my character, along with it's controls:
Other than being a very easy rig to use, the reason I went for this character was because when I saw him it instantly made another big decision a lot easier. You see by having my character be an alien I can now say that my main character is a guy in a suit pretending to be a new star from a very popular kids TV program, who is trying to sell toy action figures of himself!
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Due to the fact that my animation focuses around my characters reaction to the director's off screen voice, I will be focusing quite heavily on the emotion my character portrays. The link below is a really good example of emotional acting and these videos really have helped me get an understanding of how powerful emotion can be!
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If I want to be a good character animator and make my characters emotions look convincing I really have to look into the 'thought process' behind each emotion my character portrays!
1st – he starts nervous/jittery, his head is moving more, licking his lips, eyes darting.
2nd – he slows down a bit, starts to concentrate, eyes look down thinking about what must be done.
3rd – he reaches his decision, eyes slowly look up in an almost villainous way and then he stands up.
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I have decided to go for a real Pixar style of animation, specifically looking into the amazing animation that is in the Toy Story trilogy! The way the animators working on these films have used over exageration when it comes to emotion is exactly what I will be aiming to do!
I also have taken inspiration from Pixar's 'The Incredibles' especually when it comes to Lip-Syncing.
Below is the intor scene to the Incredibles and is actually a very similar set up to how I want some of my animation to be!
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Now I have my character my next step is to make the TV Studio in which he will be acting in! Before I can do this however I will need to gather some refference images so that my TV Studio will look realistic.
Below are the Moodboard of images gathered from Goolge which I used to help me mdole my TV Studio.
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With the help of the images above I believe I was able to successfully model a realistic TV Studio!
Below are some screen shots of the TV Studio including props like the TV Camera and Studio Lights. From here my next step will be to texture.
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As stated before the next tep after I had modelled my TV Studio was to texture it.
Using textures found in Goolge Images as well as some textures designed my self in Photoshop, here is what my scene looks like fully textured!
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