About
I acted as a character animator, technical artist, and compositor. These were my main responsibilities. Besides this, I worked on lighting, shaders, texturing, story-boarding, pre-production, color grading, cinematography and quite some small tasks such as cleaning up scenes and geometry. I joined the team with the idea of being the character animator, but responsibilities changed and grew throughout the project.
The main goal of this assignment was to end with and promote the initial letters of the field that we study at the NHTV, Breda University of Applied Sciences .
IGAD, this stands for "International Game Architecture & Design". This was one of the main requirements and the goal was to create an animation that would introduce those letters.
The main goal of this assignment was to end with and promote the initial letters of the field that we study at the NHTV, Breda University of Applied Sciences .
IGAD, this stands for "International Game Architecture & Design". This was one of the main requirements and the goal was to create an animation that would introduce those letters.
Pre-production
I did editing on the storyboard in Premiere in order to get the timing and feeling of the shots exactly right. The goal was to have a very dynamic and action oriented animation, and to show this clearly in the animated storyboard. I helped out with some of the ideas for the first few shots as well.
The first idea which I introduced for the plunger shot |
|
Rigging
At the start of the project, I knew close to nothing about rigging in its entirety. Our team suffered from a lack of a technical artists who were able to complete this task. We agreed upon it that I, being the character animator, should be rigging the character as well. This was brilliant, because I can now rig 3D characters.
At first, I created simple rigs to act out the first animatic of the film. This also served as good practice and preparation for rigging the final complex character rig. Below, you can see a very early rigged version of our pinball machine player, for the scene outside of the machine. As well as the first rigged character model, which was used for the simple animatic animations, as well as a very early iteration of the legs of the final character design.
At first, I created simple rigs to act out the first animatic of the film. This also served as good practice and preparation for rigging the final complex character rig. Below, you can see a very early rigged version of our pinball machine player, for the scene outside of the machine. As well as the first rigged character model, which was used for the simple animatic animations, as well as a very early iteration of the legs of the final character design.
Final main character rig
This is a very dry example video of the final rigged character, being positioned in a random position (you can skip through it). This rig also included the possibility to transform to ball form, which included a replacement model (will be included in final video).
|
|
Animation
Character animation was probably my main responsibility overall. This video shows a breakdown of my animations.
|
|
Rendering
I was responsible for setting up the render for the scene outside the pinball machine. This includes all the lighting and render settings as well as a few shaders.
Composite
This was the most foreign type of work I have done on this project. I would have never imaged myself doing this kind of work. It was very difficult to get into the process at first, but I pushed through. I am glad I did.
Below are before and after comparisons of the compositing process.
Below are before and after comparisons of the compositing process.
Video breakdown of composite
Rachel inspired me to do a short Composite breakdown video. This is cool, cause it feels as though I am a real professional at this stuff. Even though I am not.
|
|
Epilogue
This is a picture of my cat!