#devskills

[therelaxedcapybara]

This is a tutorial for ad music to Kodu Game Lab games 9 Adding background music to games.

[annasonkina]

Final Notes!

Looking at the result now I'll surely have things to say on what could've been done differently, how I could've saved my time if I knew that button was there and what I could spend more time on instead of focusing on minor things. I would want to go through these in my final post. Although I shall say there were moments, quite a lot of them, when I thought that maybe this film won't even be completed on time even when everything was going according to schedule, just because Blender decided to crash, or the renders were done from the wrong camera and so on and so forth, or simply because of the 'why does this environment looks wrong' moments.

Those notes are mainly related to the shots with the snake in them and I believe that some changes might improve a feeling of the 3D character belonging to the 2D surrounding, or make the action more readable. For this I do the quick paintovers which help me to visualise what I want from the general look of the shot without spending time on renders. For instance, one of the last shots has a disconnected shadow due to the specifics of the light. In the future passes I would want to experiment with its position and settings in order to reach the visual of the paintover.

As much as I expected the shot with the raven to be the most difficult, it was probably one of the most straight forward ones I had in the film. Contrarily, the shot with the snake swallowing the airpod was arguably one of the most challenging ones, potentially due to it being one of the central ones in the story. Making this action was rather complicated and I'd definitely adjust this shot in the future. In order to make the trajectory of the airpod visible I had to paint more of the environment and make sure that it works with the CG camera. I decided that it would be one of the solution I would go for if I get some free time. Another solution is to make the movement of the airpod itself slower and then rely on the motion blur making its line of action readable. In any case, at the moment the whole explanation of what happened?' is happening too quickly.

And I'd go for a slightly different lighting in this shot as well.

I am hoping to reach the visuals I wanted after I get back to the film in my free time. It is easy to go through all these notes and think what could've done differently, but only in the beginning of the semester it seemed to me quite unreasonable to think I'd even come to the raven shot. Working on this film has significantly expanded my knowledge within not only animation, but also, environment, colour and lighting side of production and I'm only planning to explore these areas further. 

[annasonkina]

Illustrations

When preparing for my presentation, I realised that I haven’t covered the references I got outside of the animation industry. Of course, working on an animated film implied looking at other animation references, films and perhaps even games. However, the style I chose for my film also prompted a thought to look at the illustration and painting references. Usually, when watching the animated films we tend to focus on the movements, while illustration captures the character in the action and enhances it with the surroundings and a picturesque lighting. Some of the paintings by Albert Bierstadt (1830 - 1902) capture the forest in the lighting I wanted in my shots. I particularly liked the saturation of the greenery in his works, and the relationship between shadow and light which I'm still exploring and trying to implement in my pieces (fig. 1)

Tom Thomson's (187 - 1917) works were a great inspiration of texture in the paintings to me. The brushstrokes, shapes and lines create an illusion of the dynamic lighting in his pieces. His art demonstrates a coherent combination of shapes and lines making the nature in his paintings almost tangible (fig. 2).

Other paintings I looked at while working on the film are done by Henry Rousseau (1844 - 1910). He has an unusual style and often includes animals into his pieces. I reckon his paintings can be easily turned into a 2D animated film. They’re filled with colour, interesting shading and shapes. Rousseau’s paintings create an illusion of a movement out of seemingly static shapes. And while he was often criticised for ‘not using linear perspectives’ in his paintings, the colours in his paintings always created this feeling of space (The National Gallery, 2023). I got particularly inspired by the variety of the green colour in his works. Indeed, his paintings are allegedly considered to be one of the first paintings of his time to have this range of colours due to not only the colours that became available at his time, but also the technique he was using and for hte colour combinations he was going for.

REFERENCES: PRIMARY: Figure 1 - Bierstadt, A. (1870) A Path Through The Forest. Available at: https://augusta-stylianou.pixels.com/featured/a-path-through-the-forest-albert-bierstadt.html [Accessed: 23rd December 2025] Figure 2 - Thomson, T. (1915) Artist’s Camp, Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park. Available at: https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/tom-thomson/biography/ [Accessed: 23rd December 2025] Figure 3 - Rousseau, H. (1891) Surprised!. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/henri-rousseau-surprised [Accessed: 23rd December 2025]

SECONDARY: The National Gallery (2023) Teachers' Notes. The National Gallery. Available at: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/media/rtxjdy2g/teachers-notes.pdf [Accessed: 23rd December 2025]

[annasonkina]

Environment: Part 2

Like I've mentioned before, getting out of the flat and finding a forest was probably one of the most helpful things to do for the environment side of this film. However, autumn forest didn't have the same colours I needed for some of the backgrounds which is why I was also looking for the inspirations online. I found mossy forests particularly interesting as they give an interesting filter to the lighting, which is usually vivid green with the saturated yellow. The forest seems to be much warmer and welcoming in this lighting, and the sun coming from different angles makes for a lot of opportunities for a cinematic rimlight. not only did it help with the atmosphere in the shots, but also with highlighting the silhouette of the snake throughout the film. Below I've put a few examples of how I was interpreting online references to my backgrounds.

One of the main tasks for the environment side was to make it look like a ready stage for the character to perform and to follow the perspective of the shots I had in animatics. The main idea behind these paintings was to be the least careful with the brushstrokes, which I found at first quite challenging, but later in the process rather freeing.

I figured that for every part of the environment I would use a different brush, otherwise the whole piece turned out to be quite monotonous. As expected, every plant, tree, or leaf has their own structure and it is much more difficult to reach this variety with only one brush. Plus, going for the painterly style required the brush strokes being visible and I wanted my paintings to have some rhythm in them and not be dull and texture-less. 

[annasonkina]

Anim References

While I was going for a very stylised animation in this short film, I still wanted to make it look like a snake. Seeking advice on how to make it I've found this rather useful video 'Zootopia 2: How Disney Creates 3D Animation' by Disney UK. This video explains in-depth how Disney animators made the animals who walk on two throughout the film still look like animals with their individual traits and not like humans in animal costumes. In order to figure out their dynamics and character they even went to a safari like in a studio a long time ago seeking for research and drawing the animals out or writing down their habits. At the same time, they wanted characters' emotions to look readable and easy to understand for the audience which is why it was so important to stay on this thin line between animal and a human.

I was trying to achieve the same effect in my film, however, it was a bit easier in my case as there were no changes in the snake's anatomy. In the beginning of the film I went for a classic snake animation, and gradually switched to a more cartoony style shot after shot. And while I couldn't go and watch snakes in the wild, I watched lots and lots of references, which helped me to make some of the shots more interesting. For instance, the shot of the snake looking at the nest became more interesting after I've noticed how often snakes use their tongue as that's how they smell and receive information about what's in front of them.

For my snake I mainly used the references for the garter snake. And while my snake had a hood, I didn't want to make it huge or threatening, but was going for a not too bright and clumsy look. Looking at the final render, what I thought would be beneficial for the next passes, is changing the textures of the eyes that might change the overall facial expression. While working on swallowing the airpod shot I wanted to show some excitement in the snake reaction and decided to go for some barely noticeable wiggles in the body which I've noticed in dogs when they're waiting for a treat.

Overall, it was quite interesting to work on such a creature which, frankly speaking, wouldn't have a lot of animals to look at for references apart from the snake itself. Nevertheless, the feature nature of this animation gave me some great space to experiment with behaviour, shapes and lines of action. 

[annasonkina]

Getting Feedback on the Short Film

Throughout the time I was working on No Signal I was asking for the feedback from fellow animators and even lighting artists. I understood that lighting is the essential part of the film which will either make the snake belong to the bg forest or make it look like two different layers existing separately from each other. Whilst the animation was quite experimental to give feedback on, I still got some of the helpful notes, but most of them were in the cinematography and on how to make the shots more readable. Some of the notes were quite challenging to do with the amount of time I had left, but I am sure I'll get back to them in my own free time in the nearest future and improve those as they're not technically difficult but rather require some restitching in-between the animations.

Out of the biggest notes that I've changed were making the airpod more visible in the beginning of the film, so the viewer will have less question as to where the music is coming from. Reducing the amount of shadows in the 8th shot as it was messing with an already dynamic action. Add the rim light to the snake in the 7th shot and make the silhouettes more readable and cut the third shot, so the action would flow into the next shot better. 

original

paintover

final

suggestion

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[annasonkina]

Getting back to one of the Animatics

In the meantime, while I'm finalising the short film itself, I thought it would be good to get back to the animatics I worked on back in October, the robot and the sunflower in particular. I had the idea for this animatic for quite a while. A story about the robot who's trying to figure out why the sunflower looks "upset". Somewhat inspired by Wall-e I wanted to play with a relatively simple rig and show the emotions via eyes controls, hands and floating in the air dynamics. While I understood that the animatic won't be able to convey the idea correctly without lighting, I decided to explain it with the eye colour, however, I've put a quick paintover just to visualise what I would want from the lighting pass (fig. 1) based on the example of one of the Shaun Dunn's works (fig. 3). I think if I were to take this animatic further into a short film I'd definitely play more with the camera angles, dynamics, lines of action and colour schemes. 

Also, I think from the animation point of view it would've been beneficial to experiment with teh silhouettes of the characters. While the robot is made out of simple shapes, I still think it would've been interesting to play with the squash and stretch, and perhaps, taken that it has fingers which are easy to read in the pose, experiment with the hands animation and make it look realistic and opposite to what is generally expected from a rigid robotic animation. Anyway, I still think this would be a compelling idea to develop, but that's for another time. 

REFERENCES: Figure 3 - Available at https://shaundunn3dartist.artstation.com/projects/qAbv5D [Accessed: 8th December 2025]

[annasonkina]

How Possible is That Film

That was the question I had, after I took a decision to go for this film with great excitement. Technically, if I find the right rig, this eliminates the issue of modelling, texturing and rigging, but then, what to do with environments. The first thought I had was to do it in Unreal, however, it would've taken me a lot of additional time to sort out the rigs, textures, environments, lighting, rendering and the rest of this unsettling list. In addition to that, even after figuring it all out, what are the chances that it'll look exactly like I imagined it? So I decided to draw all the environments by hand and then play with the lighting in Blender in order to make the snake match the overall atmosphere.

Like I’ve mentioned before, my main inspirations were Flow and The Wild Robot. My pipeline was rather linear, I was working shot by shot. Once I had an environment for a particular shot sorted out, I started working on the animation part. And then after I combined both of the components in Blender, the only part that was left was to set up the lighting and add a 3D nest based on the camera angle I have. To me the most difficult part was the shadows. If I could render them separately without having the main characters in the shot, they would’ve helped immensely, but that was something I struggled with solving in Blender. However, unfortunately closer to the end of the project I found a way to do saw via the ray visibility setting in Blender. So only free I spent some time trying to make shadows work with the lights only, I found this setting. In any case, that was definitely a valuable lesson for the future renders.

the pipeline I had allowed me to sync the changes. I.e. if I change the cache in Maya it was updated automatically in Blender, so I didn’t have to re-import and reapply the textures every time I change smth in my animation. It’s worth saying that the fact that the snake was done in 3D has definitely helped a lot with the dancing part. Sorting out the transitions between the poses would’ve been much more challenging if it would’ve been done manually. Instead I was just making computer calculations of the in-betweens cleaner and more appealing.