AGI Studio 1: Folio 2 Plan

Folio Two Plan

1 RATIONALE: Intention

For the last 6 weeks of Studio One, I aim to practice my 3D animating skill as well as my project management skill. I want to give my animation production pipeline a go and see if my method is working effectively. My plan will be loosely based on brainstorming for ideas, creating sketches, producing and editing animatic, modelling, rigging, animating, lighting, and rendering. Besides my focus on animating, I will also be examining my storytelling and directing skills along the way, as well as experimenting with lighting and overall mood of the animation during production.

In short, my goal for Folio 2 is to create a short animated film that is approximately one minute that combines cartoony elements with 3D.

Update (05/06/2020)

For Folio 2, I have completed an animation vignette and 2 animation short flips, one being a test animation on the water droplet character rig, the other being the seaweed character animation under the water. During my animating process, I focused more on exploring the possibility of character movements, as well as understanding and constantly applying the 12 principles of animation to my workflow. Moreover, I did the editing, compositing, and sound design as part of the post-production of the animation vignette. I was constantly posting my work onto different platforms to receive feedback which then allowed me to improve my work.

In short, Folio 2 has laid the foundation of my animation workflow for me. It has also taught me that simple characters could be used to create decent animation when the character movement has been vastly explored.

2 CONTEXT: Field and Site

My work will be sitting within the 3D animation category.

I was inspired by Robert Löbel’s short animated films ‘Island’ and ‘Wind’ when I was brainstorming ideas for Folio 2. I wanted to create an animation without a specific storyline and play with sound effects at the same time. Also, I wanted to produce a rather simple looking animation that looks more cartoony (e.g. with bean eyes, no complex texturing, flatter colour). 

The work of Eran Hilleli also inspired me when I research on his animation. Although he uses a lot of flat colours and low poly modelling in his animation, his work is still visually appealing and entertaining to watch. His colour choices, composition, and structure of his animation are all worth learning.

3 METHOD: Conceptual, Technical, Craft & Management

From week 7 to week 12, I will be mainly practicing the pipeline of producing an animated shot. The pipeline consists of brainstorming for ideas, creating sketches, producing and editing animatic, modelling, rigging, blocking animation, reviewing playblast animatic, adjusting timing using graph editor, reviewing the curve of action, feedback, and final adjustment. I hope to build up the habit of receiving feedback and, therefore constantly improving my animation quality. 

In the meantime, I will be experiment with the MASH tool in Maya. I aim to use it to create the crowd animation in my shots. I also aim to create some scene modelling using the tool to speed up the process.

In addition to that, I will be doing research and write out reflective pieces on existing work. This is to examine the cinematic language and the lighting method, as well as the use of sound effects and background music in them, which will then all contribute to my own practice.

Update (05/06/2020)

After a few experiments, I found out that the MASH tool is good for creating a crowd simulation. However, it did not apply to my case. I did not want other water droplets character animations to become something that was in the background. I still needed them to have a variety of movements so that they were different from each other. Therefore, I animated the water droplet character rig one by one.

Nevertheless, I still used the MASH tool in creating the firefly/bug animation in the vignette. It’s curve, distribution, and time nodes are the main tool I used when animating. They produced a fine and quicker result in comparison to animating the firefly/bug on my own.

4 PRODUCTION: Tools

How will you make this work, what is your process, when will you do what?.

Below is the weekly plan I created in order to complete the animation project.

For week 7 and 8, I plan on finalising the animatic and sketches of the scenes. I also plan on creating 3D modelling for the scenes in the animation. Meanwhile, I will try to do test lighting and position the camera to get the overall feeling of the shots.

From week 9 to week 11, I will mainly focus on animating. I will also be doing sound recording for the shots. I will try to create more WIP sequences in between, upload to MAGI site, get feedback from peers, and improve my animations.

If everything goes as my plan, I will be doing rendering and composition in week 12. I hope that every animating-related problem is solved by then. But I will always try to fix it if there is still a major problem in my animation.

Update (05/06/2020)

Reference

Eran Hilleli (n.d.). [Online]. Available from: https://eranhilleli.com/ [Accessed 21 April 2020].

Robert Löbel (n.d.). [Online]. Available from: https://robertloebel.com/ [Accessed 21 April 2020].