Animated Narratives Week 9 | Movement – The Faceless

By Bryn DC

Working from this week's theme of Movement, I decided to build the base model for my animation's main characters and then set up a skeleton rig so they can be animated.

The difficulty with the style of modelling I am mimicking - that of old PlayStation games with low poly models and low-resolution textures - is the restrictions it places upon the deformation needed for realistic movement. To compensate for this, I have tried to find an effective middle ground, where a minimum of polygons is used while still allowing the body to function and behave the ways that will be required of it in my final animation. I have created a robust skeleton from the ground up that has inbuilt switching between Forward Kinematics and Inverse Kinematics, clearly designated controls, and moves in a clean, logical way.

As much as my original intent was to replicate a Silent Hill 1 technical aesthetic for my film, my script calls for more action required of my characters, so I shifted up the functionality somewhat to be closer to Silent Hill 2 (2001) published by Konami and Directed by Masashi Tsuboyama. This was always meant to be my stylistic touchstone but pushing to have the modelling fit that of Silent Hill 2 will increase production time, while decreasing the time required to animate around models that would otherwise break.

Producing this took longer than usual because I was dedicated to learning 3D character rigging from the ground up and making sure I understood why everything is done a certain way, this I feel has contributed greatly to my ability to animate in the future.