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ANC230 Post-Mortem

This trimester, I help created a minute animation of two characters with a small group. I was in charge of making environments with a second teammate and animation when the characters were modelled and rigged. The purpose of the project was to make a short animation and starting story for the character; Celine. We wanted to give a taste of this character’s life and play it like a trailer for a series, similarly to how Rooster Teeth promote RWBY for one of their main characters.

Key Accomplishments

There was a number of things I’m proud of during this whole project, while I put a hand in almost every creative role in the project

Designing the inside of the carriage

Animating Celine and Derus through tricky clipping and issues by smart thinking.

Breaking Celine and Derus’s models in order to give more life.

Modelling the interior carriage

Helping everyone with their roles

Key Problem Areas

There was some problems while making the animation, some issues were technical while some were social that halted the project at some portions, but lucky due to some quick problem solving.

Celine was a re-purposed model what was edited for four weeks

Derus was in design phase for three weeks

I had no set role, thus I was toss around different roles, doing a mixture of things.

Team wasn’t organised well due to lack of leadership

Assignment being merged with Studio 1 cause role problems

A studio 1 student/teammate did not do their portion of their work, causing us to scrap the first scene and work on the carriage as a whole.

A number of my works were scrapped due to time or disagreements.

Key Lessons Learned

I learned a number of things that I didn’t in previous projects or was things I’ve learned previously and improved upon it thought out this project. These lessons will help me in the future.

Being more vocal with the team about tasks, issues or for help

Breaking the character models can help hugely in animating them and making it more natural

While animating for the camera is ideal, animating the whole character while only adding details to areas on the character that will be seen is a lot better and easier.

Spend as much time on working as possible to help the team in the long run with schedule so they can work on certain things sooner.

Address problems within the group as soon as possible, it might take a huge turn for the worse if left alone.

Overall, this project was a coaster. There was some ups as well as downs, we got though them even if some of them took longer then expected to be solved. I wasn’t in my best form, there were some times I let myself sit back and let everything unfold when I shouldn’t have and should have spoken up earlier. Yet what is done is done and this project is finished to a degree that I cannot argue with. I enjoyed this project as a whole and has inspired me to do more in the future and work on more things that I felt wasn’t good enough and left in the dark.

ANC230 was fun, I enjoyed it.

#ANC230

Studio 3: Animation Progress

When it came to the animation of Celine and Derus, there was some struggles that I had to solve through some smart problem solving. While Celine was modelled, rigged and skinned beautifully, she did have some problems when it came to pushing her limps to certain limits that we needed them to go. None of the animation called for fast movement besides the final scene, but even simple poses were a little much for the model and parts collapsed on itself. So how does one fix such a problem without editing the skinning and keeping the pose. You hide it.

The one thing I learned in 3d animation from watching and listening to behind the scenes works for movies or even games like Overwatch and League of Legends, where they stretch the characters to help with the movement. While Ceilne wasn’t doing fast movements, I still stretched parts of her dress to hide the fact her knees were collapsed inward.

Derus on the other hand, was a nightmare to deal with. Due to the fact he’s in armour is problem in of itself as the skinning has some some of the chest acting like skin then metal, especially on his back. But the biggest issue was posing him with his shoulder pads. They’re ridiculously big and it makes it hard to move without clipping, a design problem that should have been thought of before.

But okay, how does one pose Derus’s arms without the should pads clipping thought his chest? You break his shoulders and arms.

Because Derus is always viewed from the front, we didn’t need to worry about how he looks in the back, since we need him to have his hand pushing on his back like he was stretching, I had to pull his shoulders and upper arm away from his body slightly, the giant shoulder pads, that caused the problem, hiding the deformation.

In the end, I animated my portion as much as I could with as less viable clipping as possible. I’m happy with the results.

#ANC230

Celine’s design

I designed Celine in a way she would stand out and look appealing while having symbolism to reflect her character.

Celine’s bright roange and yellow hair symbolises her glowing potential and adventure-longing spirit thats hidden inside her. Her constrasting blue and white clothing symbolises her being caged by her family’s motivations for her.

Her dress is very fitted and straight edged and has many diamond-shaped cut aways and slits to symbolise how trapped her life currently is but also that there are gaps for her to escape to freedom. The straight edges also constrast with her voluminous soft pillowy curled hair and tail.

I chose to have many contrasts between her and her clothes to make it seem like they don’t go together.

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Relfection on my Model

After seeing my model animated, I could see the flaws in it and I recieved feedback from team mates on how I could improve it. Because my model was made from a model I made previously, I only really altered it to look different and build on top of it. Some parts, for example her breasts, had to be remade as the previous model’s were not good at all. Some things I wish to improve are:

. When modelling animal ears on characters, make the hair and the ears a single object. I made the mistake of modelling the ears from the head and making the hair separate. By making the ears and hair together it makes them deform better and look better when being animated.

. Celine’s hands were a problem when deforming and its because of how long her fingers. They looked like E.T hands and I could’ve easily altered them to look more appealing and added more topology so they would deform properly. This was overlooked by me.

. Celine’s eyebrows were an issue when they were animated. I textured them on but they should’ve been a plane sitting just above the skin where they would have their own controller to deform. Celine’s current textured eyebrows look squiggly as the mesh deforms and causes them to be that way.

. Celie’s eyeballs were not lined up in the socket and gaps can be seen when viewed from a certain angle and lighting. Another thing I overlooked.

. Celine’s model did not have any teeth or mouth. Although she did not have to it would’ve been a plus so animators didn’t have to animate to avoid showing the inside of her mouth.

. Celine’s dress caused alot of clipping and skinning issues. I should’ve made the dress apart of her body instead of making it two different objects.

. Celine’s tail and hair should’ve been straight instead of hanging down naturally. This would’ve allowed them to be deform a lot better.

Overall Celine’s model looks appealing when in the static pose but once animated, many flaws show up. I should be more mindful of these in the future.

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ANC230 - Post Mortem

At the start of the trimester, I was super passionate and motivated to work on it as it was a project myself and my teammates had started conceptualising when we were on break in preparation for this trimester. We had five characters and wanted to do a short animation which briefly showcased each character like a character introduction sneak peak teaser. This however was out of scope so we decided on using one or two characters and make the animation a short introduction of the story. We ended up deciding on Celine and Derus as they seemed the easiest to model.

By week 3 there were already running into problems. It took us longer than expected to flesh out the story and character concepts. There were also problems within the team that was not being solved and caused the group to be slowed down and aggitated. There was a large amount of problems piling up inside members that weren’t communicating and the organisation and leadership of the group was severely lacking. This caused us to fall behind as we were basically at a standstill.

This was left unsolved until week 7 which was very late and worrying. I wish I was more vocal about these things as I did bring it to the attention of the individuals I had problems with but didn’t push them hard enough as it was apparent that what I said was ignored. I think after the TSM meetings, everyone in the group had fresh feedback from our lecturer who had been observing us. In the indiviual meetings, everyone was about to finally vent about their problems properly and get guidance from our lecturer on what we should do better and what needs to be done to make the group work smoothly. For there on then, we were much more organised and started to get back on schedule. We had weekly meetings so everyone was on the same page and if there were any problems, there would be a time to discuss and resolve them.

As the project hit the production stage, things began to come together however because the preproduction phase was such a mess, there things still left undecided and I felt things were decided on the fly and not thought out properly. We also decided to down scale the scope and scrap out the first half of the animation which required an entire set to be made. This was a good decision but could’ve been decided earlier because we spent a lot of time fleshing out that part of the animation only to have it later scrapped.

By the time models were being finished, everyone was now working on their specialied areas. Things began to finally flow a lot nicer than before as we had a leapfrog system where someone finishes this and it can be passed onto another and everyone was constantly working on something.

By the rendering phase, this was what I feel was the strongest and most smoothest part of the project. Everyone was working strongly and cooperatively. Things were finally coming together which motivated the team to finally finish the project.

I was on character concept art, character modeling and texturing. I feel what I have done in the project is good but I could’ve done better. Character concept art, especially for Celine, was easy and I cleared that with ease however the other character caused me problems which made me pass the job to other members. Character modeling was okay and I used my previous project’s model as a base for Celine’s model. It was a shortcut I had to take as it was a model close to Celine’s I could easily alter to become unique and I tend to spend alot of time perfecting things. I also worked on the other model, Derus, and cleaned up and finished him off. I encountered problems getting him to match Celine’s model as he was lower poly and not as smooth and appealing to look at compared to Celine. I tried my best to make him look appealing as I could with the time frame I was given. I could’ve done a lot better if the model was originally modelled to the right style and had enough polys. My texturing phase was not the best but I managed to produce something appealing in the end. I could’ve managed my time a lot better as most of my time was spent on Celine.

Overall I have learnt a lot from this project, especially with working in a team and how crucial each stage of the pipeline is.

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ANC230 - TSM Reflection

In Week 7 I had a meeting with my lecturer to discuss and reflect on the current standings of skills and work ethic.

. Strong work ethic

I put myself as room for significant improvement as I said I get easily stressed and tired by teammates and conflict in groupwork situations which hinder my ability to work to the best of my ability although I am passionate about the project. My lecturer said that he feels I am a strong worker and put me down for successful application however my lacking communication skills is the cause of my stress which deters me to keep working consistently. I agree as I don’t voice what’s bothering me and it bundles up and stresses me out. Speaking up about the problems I encounter will help clear things up with teammates and hopefully the team can work together to resolve the issues.

. Positive attitude

I put mselft down for successful application and so did my lecturer. I said I was passionate about the project as I like what its about and will strive make the project look amazing.

. Effective Communication skills

I put myself down for room for significant improvement. As mentioned before I need to improve this skill as it affects my work ethic. My lecturer also agrees and says I can easily improve this by simply speaking up when things are becoming a problem for me so atleast the team knows and that I’m not suffering in silence.

. Time management

I put mself down for room for significant improvement and said that I take a lot longer than others to complete a task as I want th quality to be of a high standard. This is both good and bad as I spend way too much time on things and not enough on others however what I produce is of a high standard, usually visually. My lecturer put me down for successful application although he agrees I do spend longer than needed on tasks but the final product is of a high standard. He says I should learn to know when to move on and a sticking to a stricter schuedule would be ideal.

. Problem solving skills

I put myself down as successful application and my lecturer agrees. I would say I am better at solving problems I run into on my own but I should be more capable of dealing with problems relating to group team work. My lecturer also agrees.

. Ability to accept and learn from critiques

I put myself as successful application and my lecturer also put me down for that and moving into masterful. He said that I am proactive about asking for others opinions and will tend to side with what the majority of the team wants over my own personal idea if enough people say so.

Overall my lecturer thinks I am on the right track and can easily bump myself into masterful if I communicate more effectively, pace my work and stick to a strict schedule.

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ANC230 - Post Mortem Report

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-V42FQ6LQE58_RlHN7igD_R40BD1yDXcdBzh2xdLluA The post mortem report was completed on Google Docs, and the link above leads to that.

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ANC230 - Blog Post 3

The animation industry, despite being vast and encompassing dozens of different disciplines and specialisations, often relies heavily on cooperation and collaboration with other industries. Animation becomes very limited without sound, so its almost always necessary to get in contact with the audio and music industries to help produce the assets that animators can’t create. Likewise, the video game industry practically always needs animation for their productions, and so companies often reach out to animators to produce assets and clips for them. The audio industry is filled with creative individuals producing a variety of different types of audio in a wide array of forms. For animators, the key things that are produced in this field are music and sound effects. Adding music to your animation can elicit a greater emotional response in the audience, giving an addition level of depth to your creations and tying all your moments together in a neat package. A good example of music enhancing the animation experience is one of the opening scenes of the film Up (Docter, 2018), as shown in the following video.

In addition to music, sound effects are also a vital part of any animation process. Without the correct sound effect, actions can seem weird and unrealistic, ruining the believability of a scene. For example, image swinging a punch and hitting someone, but instead of a smacking noise, it makes a duck sound. Doesn’t sound right, does it? Creating sound effects is known as ‘foley’, named after a famous sound producer Jack Foley (Almo, 2016), and it often involves a specialised set of skills in creating unrelated or fantastical sounds from everyday objects. The following video is a great example of the sound creation process, and the unexpected ways they’re made.

The audio industry isn’t the only field that often cooperates with animators, and one of the other key fields that does so is the games industry. Ever since the dawn of video games, animation has been a major element, from sprite work to modelling, it all comes back to animators. In fact, the only video game genre that doesn’t feature at least some level of animation is text based games which, as the name implies, only feature text. Animating for a game requires a different level of focus than animating for a film, as the assets and scenes you create are often interactable and viewble from custom angles, so it needs to be flawless from all angles and viewports. Games, with the advent of the CD-Rom, also began using pre-rendered scenes, fully animated videos that appeared during or before the game to fully immerse the player in the world. An example of one such scene from the video game Final Fantasy X (Square, 2001) is featured below.

These scenes are usually of much higher quality than the animation and models used in the game itself, as they’re designed to be viewed only from their set angles and can be rendered without taking the game’s mechanics into consideration. These scenes are where animators can really flourish, creating high quality scenes for these worlds, and adding their flair to the project and overall enhancing the production quality. In addition to these scenes, it’s an animators job to create every motion and action that the game includes. Swinging a sword, casting magic or even walking animations are all the handy work of animators, and are vital to creating a believable and immersive world. In conclusion, the creative industries are always working together, assisting and cooperating to create vivid worlds and experiences for their audiences. From musical to the interactable, animators are everywhere, working in tandem with other fields to bring their dreams to life, and share them with the world. It takes more than one style of creativity to make something truly wonderful, and working together with other disciplines and creators is the one sure-fire way to achieve that.