Play the Game

Although I love to model objects and scenes, my field of study is 3D Animation. I was tasked with the challenge to demonstrate my knowledge in forward kinematics.

The Challenge

Artists put a piece of themselves into everything they produce. It’s what we don’t know or see that speaks through what is visible. In this project I was tasked to solve a few problems throughout the animation.

Research and select a creature that has six or more legs.
After making a selection, develop a story that has a problem, a solution, and a resolution.
The animation does not have to have sound but, if we had time to, utilize sound effects and music to add a sense of immersion to your animation.
Use the knowledge you have gained about forward kinematics to animate your creature through these three steps without using words.
Preferrably, give it a happy ending.

Concept

The briefing is over and now it’s time to develop a concept. I know what is required of me to appease the customer and they want to know what I have come up with. I have a personality that loves to laugh, enjoys a good story, and appreciates when the success of my projects have the value of fun and entertainment. So after sitting down and thinking….and thinking some more…and staring into nothing with a pencil in my mouth…I came up with an idea.

Creature: A Flea.
Setting: Empty living room on a board game and wants to play.
Problem: Flea has to roll the dice, but they’re huge in comparison.
Solution: Flea kicks the dice over to get his movement of spaces.
Resolution: Flea makes it to the first square where he has to perform an action.

Figuring It Out

Sketching is not my favorite thing in the world to do, but once sketches were complete, it was time to get an idea of the project’s timing. This is the time where requirement and opportunity collide with drive, motivation, and commitment. There was a lot to consider here. First, and above all else, make sure that all three portions of the animation are easily identifiable and demonstrated throughout the animation. Second was to understand how I could display this concept the client had given me. I have my idea for the story solidified, but now it’s about how to execute that idea and form it into a visual. One of the easiest thing I can do to understand how a project will flow, when it comes to animation, is to put my sketches down as an animatic. An animatic can help me gauge the timing, the motion, the sound effects, and help me get an overall idea of what my goals are going to look like before I start devoting all my time towards it. Having a plan is always an excellent asset when it comes to building anything. So before I even began to use my 3D programs, I needed to see what I what that challenge was going to look like. VERY ROUGHLY!

Rough Pass

After sketching out the process, and crafting my model flea, my first task in animating was to block out the scene and do a rough pass through my concept. This helped me to understand what the timing should be like in the following passes to come. It also helped me to grasp the idea of what I was looking at in terms of work ahead of me. Without this small animation, I would be developing my project based on the needs of MY preferences rather than the needs of my client. I can drift from a project at the whim of my artistry very easily, and sometimes that can throw me off task, so it was important to me to develop the beginning, middle, and end requirements as a foundation for what I was going to be creating. Anything in between could be added later.

It’s rigid in movement, shows the basics of locations, helped me to understand the direction my character needed to travel as it solved this process.

Results

After a rough pass, I ran through the process of refinement, where I developed the story, animated my character, maintained a bit of the fun I had included in my blocking pass, and taken some creative liberties to add a bit of flare into the process of the ending. Every show needs a good action packed ending and I think that shined through in the final result. The client was happy and there were a lot smiles when it was unveiled.

Close up

I learned a lot about the processes that I have to go through to thoroughly understand what I’m doing and to accomplish my goals. I think the process is important to having a clear path to the finish line. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, and I achieved the animation side of it to the best of my ability. I laughed a lot while making it and enjoyed seeing the faces of the people who were able to watch it. As a last look at the project itself, I made a side by side comparison video, of the two passes I posted above, where you can see the check points I followed throughout the process.

The Viking Shipwright