This Week, I Planned to create shots 7, 10, 14 and 15, the most animation-intense week Planned. Due to the sheer amount of animation needed to be created this week, I started modelling environmental assets right away,
Shot 7
Beginning shot 7, I knew I needed to model a globe that gave vague impressions of countries. Due to the simplistic visuals of the film, I did not want to perfectly recreate a real globe with all the individual countries and instead used big pieces of mesh to imply a land mass. However, In order to successfully achieve this, there needed to be a variety of shaped mesh. Since the character who will be present for this shot resides in Canturbury, I wanted to give a vague impression that they were situated in northern Europe without modelling too much detail to keep the low poly effect.
When applying the toon shader to this model, I feel it really perfectly matches the low poly aesthetic of the film, and the shaded lines really help accentuate the colour.
While I said I wished to place the character in a rough northern European location, I feel that due to the nature of the camera pan I have planned, it needs to be on a larger plot of land rather than a smaller island so that surface gives the impression of being flatter ground without revealing the globe model until its zooms out.
Looking reflectively at the previous render test, I also felt that it would benefit from the rim lighting effect in the toon shader attributes to make it stand out from the flat, monotone blue background. This should also assist in accentuating the 3D nature of the assets.
Due to the low poly assets and referenced model, the rendering process went very quickly and smoothly, and as showcased below is the finished shot. Looking at the animation for this shot, I feel it is the most successful I have finished so far purely because of how expressive it is and how well it matches the spoken content. If I was to revisit this shot, I would focus again, particularly on one eyebrow movement that seems to snap down slightly too fast in a way that feels unnatural.
Shot 10
Moving onto shot 10, Since I already had a clear layout for this due to the previous shot last week, the main difference I had to make in terms of setting up was adjusting the lighting to change the time of day. To add some more dynamic visual shots, I wanted to create some visual difference when audiences are brought back to the interviewee and also give an indication that some time has passed in their location. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to explore different lighting sets up and how I will create these within 3D space. I also feel different lighting and time of day match different tonalities of speech. For example, as this house, in particular, gets more serious.
For the facial animation of this shot, I followed the reference footage quite closely, which I feel is clear in the expression and timing of the character of this shot in particular. I am especially happy with the eye movements, as I feel they time very well with the overall speech.
Reflecting critically on this animation, however, I feel that, again, the eyebrow movements are slightly off and, at times, float a bit uncomfortably due to a lack of adjustment in the graph editor. In order to fix this, I will ensure that there is a flat tangent when trying to hold a particular shot so that it appears still.
Shot 14
Moving onto shot 14, the main asset I needed to create was a small dumbbell so that the character could pretend he is under a lot of strain despite its small size of it for comedic effect.
Since the original environment I created is quite bare, I decided to re-create the X-Gen grass with the newer, more effective method I have learned, and hopefully, it will cover more surface area since it will be generated in metres rather than centimetres.
As is quite visually obvious, the newer testing looks much more effective in general, and the render with the toon shader applied still does not wash out the overall colour. Since the contour that is being rendered within Arnold for this texture is a dark green, they all appear to blend into each other in a way that does not bring attention to the outline.
Beginning the shot animation, I wanted to make sure there was a conveyance of heavy weight when the character is holding it, and to visually empathises with this, a puff of smoke comes out to be symbolic of a deep breath and energy exertion. I also used the eyebrows to accentuate the weight of the object but make it appear like he is struggling to lift the weight up while speaking. While it would have been funnier, I feel if the interviewee sounded out of breath, I feel it still worked nonetheless.
Since I had already expanded and improved the environment for shot 1, instead of remodelling it, I referenced the finished animation of shot 14 into the Maya scene, in which I was then able to render the model in the same place, making the shots look more consistent.
Below is the finished shot in the new environment; I feel that animation-wise, while it conveyed the general idea, there are several weight transference issues in the animation. I feel this is particularly highlighted when he leans to the side slightly, and the weight doesn’t give a heavy appearance due to the way it balances and shakes off the side of the roof. There are also several issues with the look of the render; for example, the cloud clips into one of the trees, and also everything appears much darker and saturated than in the test render. When revisiting this shot, I will re-render it will less specular on the roof tiles, a brighter situation and more consideration of cloud placement within the shot.
Shot 16
Following on again from the previous, I followed exactly the same process of following the reference footage as a rough guide for the eye and eyebrow motions and used the body language of the interviewee to base the motions of the building.
When rendering this shot, I initially had some stars in the sky however, even rendering with a maximum number of samples on all the lights and in the render settings, I was getting a glitch where these white specs would appear sporadically on the screen due to overexposure of lights. Due to this, I created a render in which the only mesh light is the moon, which I will enhance in post-editing to appear like it is glowing. I also feel the render overall is quite dark and will need lightening in post-production to allow for facial expression clarity. Given the chance to re-render the shot, I will also add rim lighting that adds a glow to the edge of the buildings to make the moon’s light look stronger and also separate the foreground from the background.
The finished animation, I feel, is also quite successful, however, I feel that, again some of the eyebrow motions could be timed with the rest of the motions more successfully. Going forward with this rig I will be more careful and try to allot more time to perfecting the expressive animation.